"And yet you're already getting on my nerves.
I wince and look past him. The cabin's interior comes into wobbly focus by the light of a single yellow lamp and the orange of a fire crackling in the hearth behind him. It's a cute place, truly. Quaint and charming, straight out of an LL Bean spread. The ceiling is low and beamed, very rustic. A moose head hangs over the fireplace and a basket in the corner holds neatly folded blankets that look just like the one draped over my lower half.
I look down at my legs, just to confirm that they are still attached to the rest of me. They are—that's good.
Of more concern is the fact that I can see my bare toes wiggling beyond the edge of the blanket.
My boots are off. So are my socks. And seeing as I've been unconscious since my high-speed faceplant, that can only mean one thing…
"Did you take my shoes and socks off?"
Afon keeps dabbing at my wound without looking at me. "You snore when you're concussed."
I blink slowly. "Is… Is that relevant?"
He shrugs. "Thought you'd want to know."
He's crouched next to the couch, which puts his face at roughly my eye level. Now that he's close, I can see things I couldn'tfrom twenty yards out behind a tree. I was right about the gray in his beard, but up close, it's more of a handsome silver. Highly distinguished. His eyes are an exhausted brown-green, the color of a lake in late October, and they look sick to the death of me already.
"How… how long have I been out?" I ask.
"Couple weeks."
"What?!" I bolt upright and immediately regret that choice when I get smacked with a two-fisted double whammy of pain in my head and nausea in my stomach. Afon lowers me back down with a firm, steady hand on my upper back.
"I'm joking," he says, though his voice is so dead and flat that I wonder if he understands how humor is supposed to work. "I found you twenty minutes ago."
"And what's the prognosis, Doc?" I close my eyes as the thudding, screaming pain in my skull continues to reverberate through me like I'm a pair of cymbals wielded by a manic, clapping monkey.
Afon studies me. "You'll live. Which is more than you deserve, considering."
I squint at him through the tiniest slit possible that doesn't further antagonize my migraine. "Consideringwhat,precisely?"
"Well, you're trespassing on private property. It would be well within my right to shoot you."
"Toshoot me?!"I'd have bolted right back up again if Afon didn't anticipate my reaction and keep me clamped to the couch.
"Yes," he replies. "Shoot you. I still haven't ruled it out."
"You really know how to reassure a girl."
"I'm going to go get you some medication. Can I trust you not to do anything stupid, like try to sit up again?"
I scowl at him with one eye squeezed shut, like a pirate. "No promises."
"Hm. Well. Like I said, I haven't ruled it out."
I watch helplessly as Afon stands up. He is quite tall when one is horizontal. He crosses the room, floorboards groaning under his weight, and disappears through a doorway, leaving me to take stock of my situation.
Situation, as follows:
I am, it seems, alive. Still on the earth on which I was born and raised, too, and not yet having my feisty audience with the Big Man Upstairs.
I definitely cracked my noggin pretty good. Evidently, I'm not concussed enough to die, but probably enough that I should not be operating heavy machinery, drafting legal briefs, or, say, making any decisions about how to behave around a man like Afon Satyrin.
That aspect of things is made harder by the fact that I'm in his cabin, on his couch, tucked nicely under his blanket, with my naked little piggies dancing in the air. But if I can keep my hands to myself, so can he.
I hope.
