Page 13 of Drenched for the Mountain Man
“Only when you ask me math questions.”
“Nobody asked you a math question.”
“I could feel one coming.”
I stood. “Go back to sleep.”
“That’s it? No bedtime story?” But she was turning back into the quilt. Right before she was pulled back under, she muttered, “Not the worst hotel I’ve ever stayed at, but room service could be improved. That’s what I’ll write in the review.”
I walked back to the chair and sat down, a small smile tugging at my lips. I knew she’d be disappointed at missing that.
I sat there, waiting for the timer to go off again. I knew I wouldn’t be sleeping. I wasn’t planning on it. That part of the protocol suited me fine — I hadn’t slept through a night in years, and at least tonight the not-sleeping had a job attached.
Somewhere in the second watch, a pair of coyotes started up on the far ridge. I listened to the crickets fill back in behind them. I’d never had a woman in the cabin before. If I needed to scratch an itch, I went a couple of towns over and found someone who knew the score. No attachments, just a night. I did the same thing in my civilian life as I had in the military. Kept the perimeter clean and let nothing inside.
And yet, here she was. And I knew more things about her than I’d wanted. The way she narrated fear instead of swallowing it. The exact pitch of her laugh. The soft weight of her thigh in my hand while I’d treated her wound — which my body kept replaying on a loop, adding things I shouldn’t.
Like her under me in that flannel with the buttons undone. Her over me, all that softness spilling out of my hands. Her cries of satisfaction loud enough to scare the coyotes off the ridge. Me waking her up slowly with my mouth on her, shutting up her smart mouth.
I dragged my eyes back to the window and urged my cursed body to obey me.
She didn’t help my control at all. She snored. Once. A small, cartoonish sound, and I caught myself with the corner of my mouth already moving and stopped it out of pure principle.
The buzz of my watch again.
“Amy.”
She didn’t even open her eyes when she spoke. “I answered these already.”
“New round. Name.”
“Bigfoot’s Assistant.” A yawn cracked her jaw. “Amy. Marsh. Still thirty-two, unless I slept longer than expected.”
“Where are you?”
“You can’t keep asking that. Eventually I get it right through repetition and the data’s contaminated.” She dragged herself half-upright against the arm of the couch, her cheek printed with the seam of the cushion and looked around the moonlit room like she was confirming it was still real. “Your cabin.”
“Headache.”
“Still there. I’d give it a two-star review.”
“Good.” I put the water glass I’d gotten before I woke her up in her hand. She drank it without arguing, which told me she was tired down to the bones, and handed it back. Her fingers brushed mine on the glass and I felt that in all the places I shouldn’t have.
“Garrick.”
“Go to sleep.”
“You should sleep too.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re sitting in a chair in the dark watching a stranger breathe.” She was sliding back down as she said it, words slowing as she tucked the quilt under her chin. “Wake me up in two hours, I’ll watch you breathe, we’ll take shifts.”
Gone again.
I sat back down. Watching her sleep, I could not stop thinking about the sound she’d made when the current took her under. Three seconds. I’d been in the water before the thought finished forming and standing on the bank afterward with her coughing in my grip, what I’d felt hadn’t been relief. Relief is clean. This had claws in it. This was knowing if the river wanted her back it would have to come through me.
Where had these feelings come from? Over a woman who’d had me stepping into the river and called me Bigfoot?
