Three hours later, I admitted the book defeated me.I’d read the same paragraph six times, each attempt dissolving into thoughts of calloused hands and blue eyes and the way he saidKätzchenlike it was both a tease and a prayer.I tossed the paperback onto the cushion beside me and stared at the ceiling where the last light of sunset painted amber shapes that shifted and disappeared.
I’d made dinner, washed the dishes, taken a walk along the lake’s edge.All the things a woman enjoying her solitude was supposed to do.None of them had filled the space Oktober left behind.And not once had I even thought about Eric.I had never been consumed with Eric like I now seemed to be with Oktober.I wanted to blame it on great sex and avoiding having to deal with my emotions over finding Eric and Jade having sex in my bedroom, but I didn’t feel like that was the strict truth.
My phone sat on the coffee table.I’d turned it on that morning for the first time since arriving, scrolling past seventeen missed calls from Eric and nine from Jade without listening to a single voicemail.I deleted them all.But I kept the phone on, screen facing up, volume turned high.
I wasn’t waiting for him to call.I was simply being responsible.Available.In case of emergencies.Right.
At eight seventeen, the screen lit up with Oktober’s name, and my heart slammed against my ribs so hard I nearly knocked over my wine glass lunging for it.
“Hello?”I answered, cringing at how breathless I sounded.
“Kätzchen.”His voice poured through the speaker like warm whiskey, that slight German accent curling around the syllables.“I said tonight.It’s tonight.Did you not believe me?”
I pressed the phone tighter to my ear, as if I could pull him closer through the connection.“You did say tonight.I wasn’t sure if you meant it or if it was one of those things people say when they’re leaving.”
“I always mean what I say, Mia.You’ll learn that.”A pause, then his tone shifted and he cleared his throat.“Did you eat?”
“Yes.”
“Something real?Not chips and wine?”
I glanced at the half-empty bag of kettle chips on the counter and the glass of Pinot Noir sweating beside my abandoned book.“Define real.”I couldn’t help but grin.
“Mia.”
“I had a grilled cheese and an apple.The chips and wine came later.”
“Gut.Did you lock the door?”
I found myself smiling, a wide, unguarded thing I was grateful he couldn’t see.“Both locks.And I moved a chair in front of it, just for you.”
“Don’t mock me.A woman alone in a cabin --”
“-- is perfectly capable of locking her own doors, Oktober.”But my voice softened despite the words.His protectiveness should have grated against every independent nerve I possessed.Instead, it settled over me like a warm blanket I hadn’t known I was cold without.
“Tell me about your day,” he said, and I could hear something shift on his end, the creak of what might have been a couch.I imagined him stretched out somewhere, boots off, hair loose, phone pressed to his ear.The image made my stomach flip.
I started talking, and once I started, I couldn’t seem to stop.I told him about hiking the ridge trail alone that morning, how the silence had felt different without him.I told him about the book I still couldn’t read and how I blamed him entirely for ruining my concentration.
“My fault?”His laugh rumbled through the phone, that deep sound that started from somewhere primal.“How is your inability to focus my fault?”
“Because you’re distracting even when you’re not here.That should be illegal.”
“Add it to my list of crimes.”
He told me about the ride back and how Darby had hustled a trucker at arm wrestling for twenty dollars.He described the way Nashville looked as they rolled in from the east, the skyline catching the late afternoon sun, and how he’d thought of me when he passed the exit for Vanderbilt.
“You thought of me at an exit sign,” I said.“That might be the least romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me.”
“It was a very nice exit sign.”
I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
A comfortable silence stretched between us, the kind that doesn’t need filling.I could hear him breathing, steady and even, and the intimacy of that sound made something ache sweetly in my chest.
When I finally glanced at the clock, over an hour had passed.“I should let you go,” I said, not meaning a word of it.
“Should you?”The amusement in his voice told me he knew I was lying.
