Total pages in book: 39
Estimated words: 35507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 178(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35507 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 178(@200wpm)___ 142(@250wpm)___ 118(@300wpm)
"Stay," I tell her.
"I'm not a dog."
"Then don't make me treat the door like a leash. Thirty seconds. If I don't come back, you drive down to the mill and you don't wait."
Her mouth flattens into that fierce, stubborn line I've started recognizing from too close. "If you don't come back I'm coming in after you. We've done this bit. It ended with you shoving me out a window."
"And you're still talking. Take the win."
I take the keys, the pistol, and the porch steps. The lock turns clean. Inside is dim and cool, one main room with a stone hearth, a kitchen that actually has food in it, a bathroom with a tub I already hate because I'll put her in it if the windows go again. I check closets. I check the back deck that hangs over a drop so steep it’d make a tourist sit down. Clear.
When I look back she's already out of the truck, camera up, shooting the roofline like the house asked for a portrait. Damn, this woman will be the death of me, I swear.
"I said stay."
"You said thirty seconds. You took forty. I got bored and also I wanted the light on the west wall before you started barking orders."
"Get inside."
She lowers the camera and walks past me into the house, close enough that her shoulder brushes my chest, close enough that I catch the smell of apples and sweetness radiating from her. She stops in the middle of the room and turns a slow circle, taking it all in.
Then she sees the bed.
It's across the room, a wide mattress under the eaves, made up in dark blankets, the only bed in the whole stubborn building. Alden wasn't kidding. One bed.
Oakley looks at it. Then she looks at me. The smile she puts on is all fight. "There it is. The famous furniture we're not supposed to break."
"You're taking the bed. I'm taking the floor by the door."
"No."
"Yes."
"That's martyrdom with extra gravel in your spine. The bed is big. We can share it like adults who have already been shot at and forced to eat pie under fluorescent lights."
"Adults who have been shot at sleep in shifts. I'll take first watch."
"You'll take the floor and then you'll be stiff tomorrow when something actually happens, and I'll have to listen to you grunt every time you turn your head. I'm declining that soundtrack."
I set her duffel on the table harder than the table deserves. "This isn't a vote."
"Good. Because you'd lose." She peers at the mattress, and then folds her arms. She looks at the couch, which is more like a loveseat. “You won’t fit on the couch, but I can. So, you’re not sleeping on oak planks so you can feel noble about a woman you keep calling Vega like my first name burned you.”
"Oakley."
"See. You can do it. Use it when you tell me you're getting in the bed."
The pull of her is a raw, inconvenient heat under my sternum, the same heavy thing that started on the ridge when she crashed into me talking, and it has only gotten worse since the diner booth and the truck with her knee parked against mine. I can hold a perimeter. I can hold a pistol. Holding the line on a mattress while she looks at me like that is a different kind of work, and I'm not convinced I'm qualified.
"You talk in your sleep," I say, because I need something that isn't her mouth.
"You don't know that."
"You talk when you're awake. Probability is on my side."
"Then suffer horizontally. At least you'll be warm."
I drag a hand over my face and go to the windows instead of answering, because answering her when she's winning makes me want to put my mouth on the win. Outside, the last of the afternoon is thinning into that blue, wet hour the falls wear so well. I check the sightlines. I check the deck latch. I check the window even though I already did.
Oakley opens cupboards with the unearned confidence of a woman who has decided this house belongs to her for the night. "Pasta. Coffee that isn't instant. Alden's niece eats well. Or Marin shops like a woman who refuses to be judged by a pantry. Either way I'm cooking, because if I leave dinner to you we'll have trail mix and a lecture."
"I can cook."
"Really?" She glances at me over her shoulder. “You can cook?”
"When I'm hungry. I cook soup from a can. Beef jerky. Protein bars."
"Heating up soup isn’t cooking."
“Sure it is.”
She raises a brow. “I’ll cook.”
She cooks. I pretend to ignore her and fail, because ignoring Oakley Vega is a skill I haven't built and don't expect to build by dark. She moves through Alden's kitchen with restless, luminous energy, hair falling out of whatever attempt she made to tame it, sleeves pushed up, talking at the pasta like the pasta started it. I think about the grocery store we’ll have to hit in the next day or two.