The Heartbreaker of Echo Pass by Maisey Yates
CHAPTER TWELVE
HEWASAdamn fool. And he cussed himself the entire way back up toward Echo Pass. A damn fool. He should never have touched her. He should never have let her kiss him.
But he had. And he’d been... Consumed by it. Like it was a flame. Like it was everything.
Chocolate chip cookies had nothing on Iris Daniels’s mouth. If he could savor one thing for the rest of his life, it might be that.
It was the sweetest damn kiss he could remember.
And that made his head feel messed up. Made everything feel sideways.
He wasn’t married. He knew he wasn’t.
He pulled over, his heart pounding so hard that he felt sick.
There had been a time when he would have thought the kinds of emotions that he grappled with made him soft.
His dad had raised him to be a man’s man, after all. Stoic in all things. Strong. Not emotional. Not led around by anything half so fickle as feelings.
But that was before grief had become his second skin. That was before he’d cried rivers over things he couldn’t change. Tears hadn’t felt weak, not then. They’d left him hollowed out. Left his throat raw and his body in deep, unending pain.
Tears like that weren’t for the weak.
That was before he’d found out sorrow could make you sick and there was a kind of feeling that existed beyond that. A gray haze. Where you felt nothing. Couldn’t see the end of it. Couldn’t see your hand in front of your face.
You couldn’t work your way out of it, drink your way out of it. Couldn’t punch your way through it.
There was no being man enough.
No being enough at all.
And that was worse than the pain.
It was better to be retching your guts out on your front lawn, overcome by the dark, awful truth of your life, than it was to feel like a ghost, hovering over the world, unable to be in it or out of it.
He didn’t worry about whether or not he was strong or weak. Not anymore.
He was alive. That counted for something.
He rested his head back on the truck seat. “Okay,” he said in the nothing. “You know, the least you could do is haunt me a little bit. So that I know you’re okay.”
There was no answer. Nothing but the ticking sound of the remaining heat, popping and settling in his truck engine.
“I don’t know how to live. I don’t know how to do it. And why should I? Why should I when you don’t get to? Why should I be happy or satisfied? Why should I enjoy anything?” He gritted his teeth, memories of his past life scrolling through his head.
“We weren’t finished. You weren’t. It’s not fair.”
He took a breath, hollow and shot through with knives. His life stretched on ahead of him and...
And this heat that burned inside of him reminded him too much of fire.
And fire killed. It destroyed.
It had burned down his whole life.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
And as always, there was no answer.
No advice. No epiphanies.
No meaning.
He had no idea what to do with that. No idea what to do with the desire that still roared inside of him like the beast.
He steered back on the road and drove on.
Yeah, it had been easier to want nothing. To survive without feeling any sort of craving.
This... This was some kind of hell.
And all right, maybe a lot of it had to do with him. But he wasn’t lying about protecting her.
She had no idea what she’d be getting if she took him on. And he was supposed to end the five-year bout of celibacy with her? She was inexperienced, that much was clear. She’d been shaking like a leaf when they kissed. Her touches had been tentative, even though she’d been enthusiastic. And he wouldn’t have been able to be as soft as she was.
Iris was all softness and baked goods, and caring. And she’d been through enough. She’d been through enough without him dumping his shit onto her. And he had shit. She had no idea.
It was best if she didn’t know him. It was best if she didn’t get involved at all.
Keep telling yourself that.
It was true, though. Even if he couldn’t shake that accusation she’d made. That he was only protecting himself.
When he pulled the truck up to the cabin, killed the engine and went inside, he stood in the middle of the living room for a long time.
No. He wasn’t protecting himself. There was nothing left to protect. That was the problem. He was nothing but a shell. Burned completely from the inside out.
Just like his house in the hills.
Just like everything he had ever loved.
And the kind of ash it had left behind was the kind nothing could grow out of. Desolate. Devastated.
There would never be anything there again.
And if there was one thing he could do, it would be to spare Iris from trying to grow something there, when he knew it was impossible.
He opened up his fridge, and the only thing in it was food she’d made.
He couldn’t escape the woman.
He slammed the fridge shut, and went and sat on the edge of his bed. He was headed for another sleepless night. But it was no less than he deserved.
He didn’t really care.
He didn’t really care.
He repeated that, a few times over.
Until he could feel it.
Until he could believe it.
Surviving had been enough for the last five years. It would have to keep on being enough.
IRISDIDN’TKNOWwhat to do the next day. So she set about finalizing her bakery plans.
She contacted the local print shop and had some basic flyers made. Because there might be endless reach for things on the internet, but if you wanted to let someone around Gold Valley know what was going on, then you had better put physical advertisement in brick-and-mortar spaces.
She decided on an open date, and commissioned a local artist to make her a sign.
So there, she had at least been productive in her day, after all.
The clouds hung low in the sky, and she felt that they might open up at any moment, drowning the land in rain, which seemed fitting in many ways, because she was feeling awful, and a sunny day would have been an assault.
She spent the night at the bakery.
In the apartment.
It still wasn’t fully habitable. In that it didn’t have internet, and she wasn’t able to watch any movies or shows. She also didn’t have any of her knitting with her, which was inconvenient.
But she hadn’t wanted to go home. She hadn’t wanted to face Rose, who probably would have been able to tell that something was wrong, and then would have questioned her on it.
She didn’t want to have that discussion. She wanted to pretend that nothing at all had happened. Wanted to pretend that things were exactly as they had been.
That she was working with a man who was a little bit grumpy, and that was the end of the story. That she certainly hadn’t put her hand on his shoulder, then pressed her mouth to his. That she hadn’t taken a risk only to be rejected.
But thankfully, she had an endeavor to keep her busy anyway, so she had a reasonable excuse if anybody noticed that she was scarce. She wondered how they were feeding themselves. But it wasn’t her problem. She had a life all her own, and so did they.
Her life might suck, currently, but she did have it.
“This is the problem. You weren’t supposed to be doing this, but then you did, and now you’ve gone and made it difficult. When it shouldn’t have been.”
She growled internally at herself. There was something else going on with him, and she knew it. She just didn’t know what. But when he pulled away from her, it hadn’t just been disinterest.
She’d been over it a hundred times. And he’d said as much. He’d said that he wanted her. He’d said he hadn’t been with anyone in a long time.
Was that why he was isolating himself on the mountain? Had something happened? Had his heart been broken?
She wasn’t going to find the answers inside of herself.
She could only ever get the answers from him. It was just sadly obvious that he didn’t want to give them.
The next day, she was still upset about it, and the sky had broken open, what might have been a brief summer thunderstorm turning into a muggy, overcast day with a constant drizzle that occasionally changed to a downpour.
And, it was her day to bring food up to the cabin. He hadn’t told her not to.
And if she didn’t come, then he would know it was because she had been defeated by that kiss. That she had let it affect their arrangement. Which was what he said he was trying to prevent.
And she had way too much stubbornness to let that happen. She had her pride, kind of. Maybe not as much left as she would like, but she had done something to preserve what remained. She couldn’t not come. He would think she was a coward. She would be a coward.
Devastating her dreams over a kiss.
She wouldn’t be able to respect herself. So she gathered up food items—extra food items—because she was not going to allow this to impact her job with him at all. If anything, she was going to do it better. She was going to be even more competent. More amazing.
She drove up, determinedly not thinking about what it would be like to see him.
The rain was coming down in big, fat drops that hit her windshield, then radiated outward, creating intense pools over the glass, making it difficult to see. Her wipers could barely keep up.
But her anger fueled her on, and when she was at the top of the mountain, she realized she was barely conscious of having gotten herself there.
The weather was vile, so she was almost certain he would be inside the cabin. Not working on his mystery house that he would give no details on. Because why would he be out in this weather?
She walked up to the front porch, her arms full, and knocked with her elbow. But he didn’t answer. She knocked again, and again, no answer. So she pulled the door open and went inside and found the cabin empty.
She tried not to feel concerned.
She shouldn’t. If he wanted to be out in a thunderstorm that was his too bad. If he wanted to be out there getting soaking wet, there was nothing she could do.
And she shouldn’t care.
She huffed around, straightening, and cleaning.
“How does one manage to make a mess in such a small space in such a short amount of time?” She kicked a pair of muddy boots to the side. “Why do you even have more than one pair of boots?” she yelled down at his shoes.
It didn’t make sense for the man to have more than one pair of shoes. He only did one thing. He never went anywhere.
He was ridiculous.
Everything was tidied, and Griffin still hadn’t appeared. She didn’t want him to anyway.
She didn’t.
Except, she found herself stepping out of the cabin, standing on the porch. She crossed her arms, and looked out at the weather. She hugged herself, rubbing her hands up and down, trying to ease her goose bumps. But she found it didn’t work.
The drops were coming so thick and fast she couldn’t see farther than a couple of feet. And then, through the sheet of water, she saw movement. A stark silhouette in the gloom. No jacket, a black hat, water pouring down over the brim. His head was lowered, at least as far as she could tell as he got closer, and when he looked up, he stopped.
“Hi,” she said.
“Didn’t figure you would still be here.”
“But you knew I would be here.”
“It’s your day,” he said.
“Yes, it is. I’ll get out of your hair.”
She started down the steps, and he reached out, his hand going to her arm. “Iris. There are things I don’t like talking about. Things about my past. It just seems... It seems stupid to bring it up. Because I came here to get away from it. It’s not the kind of thing you can get away from. But it’s the kind of thing you can... Everyone knew. Everyone in my life knew. And every time they looked at me. It was all they thought of.”
“What?”
He opened his mouth, then closed it. “I... I lost my wife. A few years back.”
It took her a moment to process that, but when she did...
Grief pierced Iris’s heart like an arrow. His wife.
His wife.
“Oh. Oh. I...”
“That’s the problem. I’ve been there, and I’ve done all that. I’ve got nothing left. I’ve got nothing left in me at all. I haven’t been with a woman since... And yeah, I want you. But I can’t care about anyone. There’s a reason I’m here. There’s a reason that I’m not part of the rest of the world.”
“I don’t... I don’t know what to say.” She took a step closer to him, and the rain was pouring down on her now too.
“No one ever does.”
She nodded slowly. “I know that. I know how foolish people can be when it comes to grief. How they can hurt you without trying. Without realizing. They turn away from you because it’s too hard.” She put her hand on his face, his skin cool on the surface from the rainwater, but warm underneath. “I’m sorry.”
His pain was naked. Raw. She understood why people had looked away from her all those times, all those years ago. But she had lived in a house of grief, of pain. She knew what it meant. She knew what it was. And she knew how isolating it could be. He didn’t share this with anyone else. Thus he was in a house by himself. Cut off completely from any potential support.
She wanted to give him a lifeline. The kind that no one else had, at least, so it seemed. She wanted to... She wanted to do something. She wanted to fix it, but she knew that was impossible.
Because these were the kinds of things you didn’t fix.
They were wounds. And they stayed there. You could walk around with them, just fine. But nobody could ever take the loss away.
He’d been in love. And he had lost that.
He was just so powerful, so stoic and imposing. So hard, that the idea the world would have dealt him such a cruel blow seemed especially wrong. She didn’t know why. Why it seemed worse because he was larger-than-life. Why it seemed particularly cruel.
“I’m just sorry,” she said.
Because there was nothing more to say. She was sorry. Or rather, she was filled with sorrow. For him. For the pain he’d been through, the pain he was still going through.
She’d known. Looking around this cabin she’d seen a life scarred by pain.
“I don’t need pity.”
“Sure you do. Everybody could use a little bit of pity.” The rain nearly drowned out her voice.
But she spoke anyway. “Do you know what the hardest thing was? When we lost our parents.” She swallowed hard. “It was when everybody else forgot. But we hadn’t. Other people felt bad for us. And their lives changed for a while. But ours changed forever. There was no fixing it. There was no...reclaiming it. We had to take the pieces of what we had left and move forward. For a while, the whole community felt affected by the tragedy. But in the end, people have to go on with their lives. But when you’re the one that lost, you can’t. Not in the same way. Because you never forget. The only time they remember is when they see you. Somehow, impossibly, you need to make a life that’s about more than that. And it’s this terrible two-edged sword. People don’t just think of you. And when they do, they only think of loss. And you think of it every day. And then feel sorry when some days you don’t.”
He said nothing for a moment, the rain pounding on the ground, filling the silence. “I think about it every day.”
She looked around. At this place, removed from the rest of the world. Of course he thought about it every day. This was his monastery of pain. Designed, in many ways, to be a constant reminder of what he’d lost, free of any distractions or comforts.
Free of food that he enjoyed. Free of pleasure. Of any kind.
She could understand that. She had felt like perhaps they were entirely different people. That he was a man who’d lived an experience entirely different from hers. That seducing him was insane because he was clearly beautiful and experienced in ways that she wasn’t.
And that may be true.
He’d been married, after all.
Had loved someone enough to vow to be with them for the rest of his life.
For the rest of hers.
But at the base of it, down deep at their hearts, they weren’t different.
They were both scarred. Devastated by the loss that they’d endured. Parents... It was a terrible thing to lose your parents. Always. More terrible still when you were children and there were so many years, so much more time that you should have had. And particularly cutting because childhood was supposed to be magical. A time that was sacred, in some regards.
And theirs hadn’t been. It had been dark. And the kind of monsters that haunted other people’s closets haunted their regular, daily lives, great and toothy and visible. Those things that other kids saw in their deepest, darkest fears, they had lived.
But falling in love, and losing that person, that must be such a deep cut. People expected to have to lose parents eventually. And how to find a way to live without them. With a husband or wife it was different. One of you would lose the other eventually, but if everything went well... You shouldn’t have years and years of figuring out how to live without the other. And he did.
But he was too beautiful. Too compelling to be up here forever. To cut himself off from every good thing. She just wished that there was some way she could... She just wished...
She angled her head, lifted up on her toes and kissed him.
It was absolutely the most inappropriate thing to do to a man who had just said he thought about his wife every day. That he lived with the pain of her loss constantly.
It was wrong, but he seemed to accept it. Sipped the water from her lips and pulled her in close. He held her, like they might both break if he released her. Held her like she mattered. And she... She poured everything into the kiss. All of her sympathy, all of her sorrow. Sorrow that she had for him, but for herself as well. She felt absolutely helpless to do anything to fix this. To fix him.
And she wanted to.
Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be able to take them both back to a place where they were new.
Maybe if her parents hadn’t died she would be a normal thirty-one-year-old woman. She would have had lovers, maybe a few of them. She would be confident in herself and in her body. She would be equal to the task of having him.
And maybe he would be charming. Easy.
Maybe they could flirt. Maybe they could go on a date.
Instead, they were sharing a fractured kiss in the rain. And she felt like they were drowning.
Sinking into an endless well of need that she wasn’t sure they would ever escape.
Her clothes were sticking to her body, and so were his.
She pushed at the hem of his shirt, and he gripped the end of it, pulling it up over his head and taking his cowboy hat with it. His skin was slick and hard, and he held her flush against his chest. Her hands were pinned there, and she could feel his heartbeat raging against her palms.
This was insanity.
Or maybe it was the first real thing either of them had done for a long time.
Because there was no forethought here. No decision to seduce. No decision to turn away. It was out of their hands. Swept along by the raindrops that fell from the sky. At the mercy of this torrent of desire rushing through them.
But wasn’t it better than being at the mercy of fear? The mercy of grief?
They both knew how that went. They both knew pain.
Why couldn’t they know this?
His hands slid down her back, and he let them wander down, all the way to her bottom. He cupped her, then lifted her up off the ground, urging her legs around his waist as he held her there in the rain, one hand cradling the back of her head as he took the kiss deeper. Harder.
She moaned into his mouth, letting everything they talked about wash away. Letting this cleanse them. For in this moment, maybe they were new. Maybe they were fresh creatures that had never known anything but this. This overwhelming sense that they needed each other more than they needed their next breath.
This was better.
Better than deciding to be with him, with all her nerves and insecurities jangling through her.
This was more than just wanting an experience. This was real.
They were real.
They were alive.
A hysterical bubble of laughter welled up in her chest, but he swallowed it with a voracious kiss.
She had lived.
To have this moment. With this man.
And all those years it had been so easy to hide away. To protect herself from loss, to protect herself from pain. But this was what life was for. To kiss a man in the rain, and to revel in it. And everything they could be. Whatever happened after this, it didn’t matter. Because now was perfect.
She was sorry, so sorry about the journey he’d had to go on to get here.
But he was her reward.
This felt inevitable, and right, and like it was what she’d waited for.
He carried her up the steps, her legs still wrapped around his waist, and pushed open the door. They all but stumbled inside. He stripped her wet T-shirt up over her head so that she was only wearing her bra. She was frantic to see more of him. To touch him everywhere. And so she did. Moved her hands over that broad, well-muscled chest, down his stomach.
Watched as drops of water rolled between his perfectly outlined ab muscles.
Desire swept through her like a wind. Stole the air right out of her lungs. Carried it off somewhere. And she didn’t even care.
Kissing her still, he backed her toward the bed, and lowered her down, his body slick over the top of hers. When he undid the snap on her jeans, her breath caught. But he lowered the zipper slowly, and then worked the denim down her damp legs as best he could. He was kissing her still, like a man possessed. Desperate. She was sure she must look like a drowned rat, but she never felt more beautiful. Because he was beautiful. And he wanted her. In this moment, he wanted her.
With trembling fingers, she undid the button on his jeans, dragged the zipper down, but she was too clumsy to divest him of the damp denim. She cursed, which was something she almost never did.
“I got it,” he said, his words slurred. He pushed his jeans and his underwear down, kicked his boots off along with them, and his socks. He was naked.
But he pulled her back up against his body so quickly she barely had the chance to see. But she could feel him. Hard and bare and hot pressed against her hip.
He reached around her back and unclipped her bra, tugging it off and exposing her. His hands were rough as he palmed her sensitive flesh. Her breasts were impossibly needy for his attention. And in another set of circumstances she might have been embarrassed. But not with him. Not now. There was no embarrassment at all. Nothing but a deep, intense desire. To give pleasure. To receive it.
For they were held in thrall by this equally, and she couldn’t be embarrassed about that.
He kissed her neck, her collarbone, drew one nipple deep into his mouth, and she gasped.
Her mind was blank of everything. Potential expectation, everything she’d ever known about herself.
She wasn’t her past. And there wasn’t a future.
There was just this.
Just this brilliant, white-hot need.
And it was perfect. He pushed his hands down beneath the waistband of her panties, sliding fingers through her slick flesh. She was shocked by the white-hot feel of pleasure there. How it burned.
Gloriously.
She found herself arching her hips in time with the rhythm of his hands, her need escalating inside of her with each glorious stroke. He pushed one finger inside of her and she gasped at the unfamiliar sensation. At the invasion. She knew there would be more. Bigger.
She could feel that part of him still against her. And she shivered. Now wasn’t the time for nerves. She didn’t want fear to have any part of this.
She arched her hips against him, and he moved his thumb over that sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. And pleasure broke over her like a wave. Sending her soaring. She was sobbing with desire. She had never felt anything like this. It was beyond. She could scarcely breathe. Then he wrenched her panties down her legs, a wild look in his eye.
She realized what they were missing.
“I’m on the pill,” she said.
“I...”
“I haven’t...”
He nodded, as if he understood what she was trying to say. But she was pretty sure he didn’t.
Instead, he positioned himself between her legs, nudging the untried entrance of her body, before thrusting into her completely. She gasped, the pain a lot more intense than she had imagined.
And then he started to move. And this was just different than she thought it would be. Raw. Physical. Not soft and romantic with a gauzy veil drawn over it. Something that connected her. To him, his breathing and her own. The beating of their hearts. The bed. The room.
It was everything. Everything real and terrifying that she had never known and always avoided.
And then as she began to ascend the peak she had the thought that this was what she’d been looking for. Something sharp and hard that might match that intense violent grief she had experienced all those years ago. That might transcend it.
But she should have known that it wouldn’t be a sensation of undiluted joy. Of something purely good.
It wasn’t a piece of cotton candy. Sweet and one-dimensional. Fluffy and easily dissolved.
It was sweet and bitter.
There was a darkness here that called to the darkness in her. To the pain that she had experienced. And it was richer for it. She knew that it was. For all the hurtful things they’d endured.
But there, in the midst of the storm, a shaft of light broke through. And she knew that it was brighter for all the darkness around it. That the peak of pleasure would be more exhilarating because of where they had been.
She didn’t need cotton candy.
That was easy. For people who knew easy and needed easy.
She was stronger than that.
This was for her.
She needed it strong. Strong enough to block out the pain.
And this was.
More than. It made her feel like her chest was going to break apart. Like the light in need in her soul was expanding beyond that which she could accommodate. But she welcomed it. Because this was how you found a new way forward. It was a fight. She knew that.
It was why she had stayed where she was for so long. Because she had sensed that. That there was no way she could be new without first going through a hurricane.
And he was a hurricane. A storm that moved through her like a devastating monsoon.
And she clung to him. Like he was the anchor.
The anchor and the stormy sea, all at once. The reason she was being tossed. The reason she was held secure.
The source of her danger and her delight.
His movements became hard, fractured, along with his breathing. And pleasure overtook her thoughts. Pleasure overtook everything. She clung to him as her climax grabbed her and pulled her under, a current she couldn’t fight, even if she wanted to.
And then he broke too, shivered and shook as he took his own pleasure on the heels of hers, and when he collapsed against her, sweat slicked and breathing hard, she realized that he had been in the middle of the same storm.
Not a force larger than nature, but a man held captive by it the same as she had been.
They were slick with rain and sweat and breathing hard. And she clung to him. Because she was afraid he would let go if she didn’t. Because she was afraid that he would throw her out. Because she wanted to lie there for a while, rocked by the experience between them. By the change that had just occurred. And it was a change.
She was changed.
Made new from the inside out somehow, and she didn’t know how she was supposed to move forward. She just wanted to stay.
He didn’t seem in a rush either. Instead, he turned over, his arm heavy over the top of her.
And it took her a moment to realize he had fallen asleep.
She looked at him, at the lines on his face.
He didn’t look restful, even asleep. The lines on his forehead were still creased, his brows still drawn together.
A man whose heaviest weights didn’t lift from him even when he had passed out of consciousness.
It made her heart hurt. To know that his was a burden that didn’t lift even then.
She could remember that. Being in the thick of grief and having nightmares chase after you as you tried to find some peace. She lay there on her back, staring up at the ceiling. The light was gray. It wasn’t night yet.
But she didn’t want to get up. She’d had sex for the first time.
And she had to face the possibility that it was with a man who had been thinking about someone else.
That made her ache. He had told her about his wife, and then they had kissed. She knew that he hadn’t been with anyone since. That he had turned her away the first time, likely because...
Of course he was still in love with his wife.
He should be. It was... Understandable and reasonable.
It was okay.
She tried to breathe, and found that it was far too shallow. Found that it was making her dizzy.
She slowed down, deliberately.
Of course it hurt her to imagine that he had thought of someone else.
But wasn’t she using him to work out her own issues? To help move her on in her quest for finding that new stage of her life?
She hadn’t thought of any of that when they’d come together, of course. And she didn’t think he’d been thinking anything either.
No. Whatever had happened, it wasn’t manipulative. Or deliberate. They’d both been lost in feeling. She was confident in that.
But if for him it had been a moment to recapture something he’d lost, and if for her it was to find that new piece of herself, that wasn’t wrong and wasn’t less.
And it didn’t mean she didn’t matter at all. At least, that’s what she would cling to now.
Finally, she dozed, and when she woke up it was dark. And she needed a bathroom.
She had deliberately not stayed up here long enough to need to deal with that.
She turned over onto her stomach, wiggling against his hard body. He was hot like a furnace, and still naked. A thrill of erotic desire shot through her, and she frowned deeply at herself.
She rolled over onto her back, feeling aggrieved.
“What is it?” His voice surprised her in the darkness.
“I... Bathroom.”
“I’ll get a flashlight.”
“Oh no,” she said, her cheeks heating up.
“I’m not having you walk out there in the dark by yourself. You don’t even know where it is.”
“But I might die,” she said.
“Of?”
“Embarrassment.”
“I’m not really sure how you could die of embarrassment over me walking you to an outhouse after what we just did.”
“Then you haven’t known very many women.”
He chuckled. “I have, actually.”
“I don’t want to hear about it,” she said, feeling grumpy.
“Get your shoes and a blanket,” he said.
She felt petulant and annoyed. “I don’t want to.”
“Iris,” he said, turning over to face her, pressing his thumb against her chin. She didn’t know how he’d found it so unerringly in the darkness.
And it was dark in here. There was no light pollution at all. “Do as you’re told.”
She huffed. He got out of bed, and found a flashlight quickly in the darkness, shining the beam over to the door by her shoes. The rest of her clothes were littered about.
“Just my shoes?”
“Yes,” he said.
She angrily got out of bed, and he shone the flashlight on her with no regard for her modesty at all. It was different to be naked in front of him now. When she had to pee, and not when they were in the middle of having sex.
But she got her shoes, and then grabbed the blanket from the bed and swaddled herself in it. For his part, he had pulled on his jeans and a pair of boots. But nothing more. He still had the beam of the flashlight pointed on her, but there was a bit of residual glow coming from the back of it, illuminating his stomach and chest, the hollows and planes of his face.
“Scamper along,” he said.
“I don’t scamper,” she muttered, heading for the door. The light followed her.
“You do.”
“I don’t. I’m too dignified to scamper. Though, if we take any longer, I am going to have to ramp it up to a scurry to make it to the outhouse.”
“God forbid,” he said.
Following the path he let the light blaze, they ambled down the trail to a very simple wooden building. He handed the light to her.
“Don’t drop it in.”
“I’m not going to drop it.” She gathered the folds of the blanket, and the flashlight, and went into the rustic building. She heard his footsteps move away, and she was grateful.
Wrangling both blanket and light, she managed to take care of the necessities, and with great relief stumbled back outside.
And he was there.
They walked in silence, heading back to the cabin.
When they got back inside, she went to the bed, still wrapped in the blanket. He relieved her of the flashlight and went over to the fireplace. He started to light one, the glow of the flame casting orange ambient light all around them. Warmth quickly beginning to fill the space.
“You hungry?”
“A little,” she admitted, curling herself deeper into a ball at the center of the bed.
“Well, thankfully I’m well stocked with food.”
“Imagine that.”
“I’ll get us some.”
“Thank you,” she said, suddenly way too tired to continue to be obstinate. It had been a fine shield for a little while. And had made her feel not quite so vulnerable. But now the weight of holding it up was just making her cranky. He got a cheese tray out of the icebox, said nothing as he began to slice a loaf of bread with the flashlight nearby, then brought two beers and the bread and cheese back to the bed.
“I don’t really drink beer,” she said, wrinkling her nose. But she took the bottle anyway.
He cleared his throat. “We going to talk about this?”
“What?” But she felt prickly, and afraid that she knew what he was going to ask.
“You.”
“Me?”
He sighed, heavily. “Have you never been with anyone before, Iris?” he asked, his voice grave.
She could feel her face heat. “Oh.”
She took a piece of cheese off the plate, stacked it on some bread. Took a bite. Chewed very slowly.
“Iris...”
Really no point lying. “No. I haven’t been.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“You don’t have to be afraid of anything. I lost my parents. I raised my sisters. That’s not normal. Sex is normal. I missed a whole lot of normal because I was busy trying to be an adult when I was still just a kid. I skipped a lot of steps. I’m trying to fix that. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m really, genuinely fine.”
“I feel like you’re just starting out. And I’m not. You deserve better than that. Better than me.”
“Why? I don’t see myself that way. I haven’t been innocent for a long time. Sex isn’t about... Innocence. You know what takes your innocence? Finding out that nothing in the world is all that safe. That your parents, who take care of you, who are supposed to be the strongest people, were just human. And that you were never safe. Not ever. Not a single day of your life. And then you have to figure out how to walk through the world knowing that. Somehow. It’s the worst thing. The worst. Suddenly, everything in the world looks dangerous. And it’s taken me all this time to figure out how to be brave again.”
“But there are things you don’t have. Things you haven’t had and haven’t done. I do understand, Iris. I do. But there... The only thing I think that might be worse than what you went through, is being the one that failed to protect the people you were supposed to.”
“I’m sure that must be...”
“You don’t understand.” Everything seemed to stop for a moment. Somehow, the air went completely still, and neither of them dared draw a breath in that space of time. There wasn’t even the sound of a critter rustling anywhere. Not a cricket. As if time itself had stopped to listen to Griffin Chance. “I couldn’t protect them. I didn’t. I didn’t protect my wife and my baby girl, Iris. You don’t come back from that.”
