To my surprise, she actually does what I say. This entire thing is ridiculous, but I take her elbow — doing my best not to think about how it feels to touch her — guiding her through my place. We pass down the hallway, through the small living room, and into the entryway.
It only takes a few seconds to reach the front door, and I sigh in relief.
Except when I open it, the first few splatters of rain are starting to come down, painting the dirt beyond the porch darker brown. The trees out past that are already starting to dance, that familiar intense sway that speaks to a high wind.
Together, we stand in the doorway, the moment stretching out.
“Fuck,” the woman mutters, and when I glance over at her, I realize she’s opened her eyes. I sigh, remove my hand from her elbow, and watch as the first few plops of rain quickly turn into a heavy, persistent pour, the mist from the impact hitting my shins.
It would be beautiful if it weren’t for the fact that it’s trapping her here. With me.
“Fuck, indeed.”
CHAPTER 5
LOLA
Ihalf expect him to push me forward, out into the rain, and lock the door behind me. With all the secretive,close your eyesstuff, it would make sense.
My journalistic instincts are sparking right now, telling me that there’s something here. Something about this guy that says he’s notreallya mountain man, after all. There’s something too refined about him, too clean-cut. It’s somewhere beneath the thick, rugged beard, but it’s definitely there.
“All right,” he says after we retreat back inside his cabin. I sink down into an armchair, trying not to make it obvious how badly my ankle is hurting. The throb starts at the bottom of my heel and pulses up to my knee, nearly taking my breath away.
“All right,” I repeat because he trails off after that, his gaze fixed through one of the front windows.
“I’m going to go get your drone,” he says, then turns and walks out the front door and into the rain. I blink after him, shocked at his sudden absence. He just said it and disappeared.
Then I think about how slick that roof was, even without pouring rain, and I stand up through the pain, moving toward the door, not even sure what I plan to do. He could slip and go catapulting off the roof with a single wrong move. Then what do I do? Try to find him? Scramble down the side of the mountain in the dark, in the pouring rain, to look for his body?
I’ve worked myself up enough that I’ve already managed to take a few staggering steps toward the door when it swings open again, letting in a cool, misted breeze from outside.
The man reappears, his gray T-shirt soaked and clinging to him, the scent of outside hanging over him like an expensive cologne.
He’s dripping wet, breathing hard, and holds my drone in his right hand. With his other, he reaches up and runs his fingers through his sopping hair, flicking a few water droplets back against the door.
It’s practically obscene. Like something out of an underwear commercial. And I can’t take my eyes off him, my heart pounding in my throat, a little spark of heat forming between my legs.
No, no,no. What thehellis happening to me? Less than five minutes ago, I was terrified he was going to trap me in his basement and wear my skin. And now… what? I’m drooling over him simply because he’shot?
I remind myself of the halo effect. Pretty privilege. It’s just statistically likely, behaviorally likely, that I would feel this way about him. He could still be a murderer. In fact, the way he lives — so privately, out here in the woods — means there’s definitelysomethingwrong with him.
And being handsome might make himmorelikely to be a murderer.
“Oh,” I say, because during all this thinking, I haven’t been able to slow my momentum toward the door, which means I’ve basically just given him a chest bump. He blinks down at me, his eyes dark, water droplets still running off his face.
While looking at him, I accidentally shift some weight onto my injured foot. A ripple of pain shoots from the bottom of my heel and up into my hip.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice gruff, his eyes darting down for the briefest moment to my lips. It sends a full-body shudder through me, in a very good way.
I open my mouth to answer him, but I do something horribly mortifying instead. The stars in my eyes grow bigger, twirling like a kaleidoscope, and I pass out, slumping forward against his broad, warm chest.
If I werea little more dramatic, I might question whether I’d died at some point once I come to. The scene before me is romantic, too heavenly to really be taking place on planet earth.
I’m swaddled and propped on a very comfortable leather couch. A fireplace in the center of the room flickers merrily. A dog sits at my side, her head resting on the cushion beside me as she watches me with wide, brown eyes.
And the man sits across from me, his back against the other couch, my drone on the coffee table in front of him. He’s on thefloor, has changed into dry clothes, and he’s using what looks like a set of tiny tools to explore the drone’s mechanical innards.
Or electrical innards. I have no idea what I’m talking about.
