Page 6 of A Lifetime of Afters
Finally, I reached the outskirts of town and pulled over. Somewhere, I’d read the statistic that most car accidents occurred within a mile of home.
It wouldn’t be the first time.
My eyelids weighed heavily as I fought to keep them open. My head nodded forward, my chin nearly hitting my chest before it shot back up. I needed ten minutes, just ten minutes to close my eyes and then I could make it home. It’s not like I could see even two feet in front of me anyway. At that last turnoff, me, myself, and I were the only ones going to Sage Ridge.
I blasted the heat while I pulled over. Just a few minutes and then I’d continue on.
Frantic shouting and aggressive banging on my window woke me from my stupor. Bruce lay curled up on my chest, my nose tissues shredded between his tiny paws. Oh, God, the smell. I blinked my bleary eyes. Where the hell was I?
A blanket of snow shrouded every window save the one Hawkley presently pounded on.
Was that Hawkley staring at me through my window? He looked furious. Did Max beat him at Mario Brothers again?
Was this a dream?
“Noelle, open the damn door for fuck’s sake!”
No, not a dream. He never spoke to me like that in my dreams.
I rolled my window down. “Hawkley? What are you doing here?”
He gaped, then his eyebrows crashed down over his stormy eyes, and he scowled. “Me? What the fuck are you doing here?”
“I was heading home…” I trailed off. How did I get here?
The storm had ended, and the world lay blanketed in white. Silent. Sparkling.
New.
He leaned in the window toward me then recoiled, his mouth twisted into a grimace. “What the fuck? Did you shit yourself?”
“What? No!” I sucked in a deeply mortified breath, at which time the true extent of Bruce’s unsavory condition made itself known to my olfactory system.
I gagged and covered my nose. “It’s Bruce. The car ride didn’t agree with him.”
“That still doesn’t explain what you’re doing at the bottom of my driveway,” he barked. If possible, his face darkened further with anger. “And who the fuck is Bruce?”
My lagging brain struggled to process information that seemed too fantastical to be real. These things only happened in romance novels.
Instead of answering him, I clarified, “This is your driveway?”
His mouth gaped open again. “You don’t even know where you are?”
Beginning to fully wake, I took him in where he stood a safe three feet back from the fumes. Beanie pulled low over his ears, his beard wild, a thick, fleecy lumber jacket worn over jeans that did all kinds of good things for his long legs that drew my eyes steadily down to his sturdy work boots.
Combined with his angry scowl, he looked like a slightly feral mountain man and my neglected lady parts wanted to climb him.
I brought my eyes back to his to catch him staring at me incredulously. “Are you checking me out?”
That tiny shrapnel of humiliation supplied the brisk mental shake I required, and I snapped at him. “Close your mouth. You look like a mutant guppy.”
His jaw slammed shut.
“I didn’t know this was your driveway.” My voice seemed to echo across the snow. “I’ve been driving all night. I needed a break, so I pulled over. I didn’t think I’d sleep this long. So sorry to disturb you. Believe me when I tell you, I wish I’d picked another driveway. Any other driveway rather than yours.”
He smirked. “The only other driveway on this stretch is Mrs. McGillivray’s. You remember Mrs. McGillivray? She still makes homemade yogurt on the kitchen counter, the old-fashioned way. Can you even imagine the smell of sour milk mixed in with you and that fleabag?”
Half mad, half trying not to laugh, I opted for sass. “Probably still would have been preferable to you and your dramatics.” I grasped the window crank to block him out and turned the key in the ignition.
