Her mouth fell open. “Wow, arrogant much? I just didn’t want you to get cold.”
I laughed again as a flash of lightning lit up the trees outside the window. “No one is getting cold in this humidity. “
“Yeah.” She shrugged. “It’s the storm and also… August.”
A crack of thunder vibrated through the cabin. “It’s getting bad out there.”
“It normally does during a tropical storm,” she said with a bit of snottiness.
For some reason, my dick twitched with excitement. That was new.
She moved to the window by the bed and unlatched the shutter. “I like that these have internal shutters. That way we can all keep our shirts on.”
What a pity.
She hummed as she worked on closing up the cabin.
“You’re really not freaking out yet?” I asked as she made it to the door where I’d taken up space watching her work.
She stared at me for a moment, the light hitting her eyes at just the right angle, making them sparkle as she stared. “About what? The storm? Or my boat?”
“Take your pick.”
Emerson let out a deep sigh that gave me a bigger sign she wasn’t as unaffected as she seemed. She stood less than a foot from me as her gaze slid to the now boarded-up window across the room. Emerson flicked her head, her ponytail coming closeto my face. She smelled of salt and sunshine, like the perfect ending to a perfect day at the beach.
“I figure it’s safer here than on the boat during the storm, and who else has their own private SEAL to see them through it? I’ll save the freak-out for once this is over and deal with it all at once.”
Silence stretched for less than a minute before she broke it again.
“Plus, to be honest, I’ve got a lot more than boat and storm problems. Maybe this is Mother Nature telling me it’s time to throw in the towel and try again somewhere new?”
That was an interesting way to word things.
“Is that what you normally do?” I asked, leaning up against the door.
She turned to face me, her smile growing. I didn’t understand how she was smiling with everything waiting for her on the other side of this storm. “No.”
“No?”
Emerson shook her head. “Nope, normally I’m stubborn as a bull. Or at least that’s what my mother would say. But…”
She paused to think, and I let her.
“Do you ever feel you’re working so hard to keep the walls standing, but everyone’s trying to tear them down? Maybe it’s time to let them fall.”
Her words gripped my heart. “Believe it or not, babe, yeah.”
“Really?” she asked, her gaze full of hope.
“Yeah.” I nodded slowly, getting lost in my memories. “I wanted to stay in the military and make a lifetime career out of it, but the harder I pushed to find my meaning there, the more the universe showed me it wasn’t.”
It took a long time for it to get through my thick skull, but I eventually made it out.
Another flash of light, immediately followed by a crack of thunder, shook the windows.
“Shit, this is moving fast,” she said, staring at the wall as if she could see past it outside.
The heavy wooden door moved; claws scratched against it. Emerson and I both froze as we stared at the spot where the noise originated.
