“I like that. I don’t use it to write or anything horribly cliché like that. Why would I use this time, this freedom, for anything like that? I like to do nothing. Stare at the night. Wander around in the dark. All my demons keep me company, there’s not enough room for others. Not until the sun shines. So that’s why I’m awake at three in the morning right now. Because I always am.”
He didn’t soften with my words, with my exposure to him. In more ways than just my skin. I knew he could tell this was out of character for me because he calculated character. He measured people up, down to the millimeter, so he knew how to tear them apart.
Don’t ask me how I knew that.
Maybe I didn’t know that; maybe that’s what I was creating about him, for my story. I did that sometimes. Only knew people for as long as it took me to get a skeleton, then Frankenstein bits of flesh together to make them into a character that suited me. Suited my stories. Was I making him up, or was he already a Frankenstein?
Saint didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
No wolves howled at the moon. All other predators were silent.
An icy breeze swept through us, and pushed my cardigan to the side, so the edge of my nipple teased at his vision. I didn’t make a move to cover it. Why should I? He was in my space.
Plus, a modicum of hunger teased itself from my pure silk underwear. A need that was so animalistic in nature, it surprised me. I was not a sexual person. No matter what I wrote in my books, what I wore, what I said in interviews. There was no feral hunger in me to be thrown around like some kind of prop.
Even…before.
But yes, I was feeling it now.
Surely something to do with hypothermia I was meant to be recovering from instead of catching all over again.
Saint’s almost lazy gaze sharpened from my chest area and darted toward the wood pile that was now long forgotten, hypothermia or not.
In one blink, he was bent down, scooping up the wood with ease.
I waited for it.
The gruff order to get back in the house, get off my feet while he tended to my warmth and well-being. He certainly had the air of a man who liked to order a woman around.
But nothing came.
He straightened, walked straight past me and into the house.
No offer of his jacket, no ask if I needed help getting inside, or dealing with the pesky bout of arousal somehow intensifying with his detached demeanor.
I didn’t like the idea of him being in my space again. With my rumpled, damp sheets, the scent of my sweat still hanging in the air. The empty wine bottle. Empty whisky bottle. Empty fucking heart.
But here I was. And if it were a choice between dying from exposure five feet from my home or going in to brace an awkward situation with a man I found attractive, it was going to be the latter.
I’d given up once.
Once.
Which was pretty darn impressive if you asked me, considering my history.
But once was it. All I was allotted.
So, I hobbled into the house.
He hadn’t turned on more lights, like most normal people might do. People felt comfortable lighting up their houses like beacons when it was dark, so everything was visible, nothing hiding amongst the shadows. As had previously been established, I relished the things that hid in the shadows.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise Saint did too.
The man was a shadow.
I had expected the fire to be roaring by the time I made it in. He was a man, he make fire, impress helpless woman.
But no.
The firewood was piled neatly in the chic basket allotted to it. The fireplace itself, dead and dark.
“You know how to make a fire?” he asked. His voice was colder than the night air, bursting in from the door I hadn’t bothered to close.
I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t a question. It was an assumption. He knew I was a city woman. Expensive car. Unable to handle myself in the outdoors. So, it played that I wouldn’t know how to make a fire.
Instead of answering him, I made my way over to the fireplace, gingerly and awkwardly and without offers of help. He just watched me struggle to crouch down, heft two pieces of wood in first, then the tinder, then more wood. Then strike a match and light a piece of newspaper to ignite the kindling.
I was slow, but confident in my motions. Didn’t rush it. I was stuck in a memory. In nostalgia. That didn’t happen often. Snippets of my past packaging themselves into something palatable, something comfortable.
It soothed me. The fire. Its ability to create warmth, life, at the same time it could burn everything to ash, destroy everything in its path.
Once the fireplace was roaring, I leaned back ever so slightly, far too arrogant to turn my head and make eye contact with Saint, who hadn’t moved.
Not even a grunt of approval.
There was a beat of that yawning silence that even the fire couldn’t fill. Then boots thumping on hardwood.
Heat that only a male could produce hit my back. My spine stiffened. I didn’t move.
“You got no excuse to be sittin’ in here cold now,” he rasped. “I keep you stocked with the wood, you keep the fire burnin’.”
And, as if that wasn’t a completely ridiculous thing to utter in someone’s ear, he left.
The door closed on the way out, keeping the heat in, but letting his warmth out.
I stayed to watch the fire for the rest of the night. To feed it.
Chapter 8
“I found her by chance. I didn’t usually look for them in small towns. They were missed easily. Too many variables. Curious neighbors. But she didn’t have neighbors. Not for miles. No one to hear her scream.”
One Week Later
Saint was true to his oath.
My firewood stocks remained healthy. As if by magic. There were no more late-night meetings. Not even a glimpse. Just a woodpile that never went down, despite the fact I hauled it in continually.
Despite the effort and pain it took, I kept the fire burning, and the cold out of the house at least.
Katy was true to her promise and my scripts came in.
Margot was kind enough to pick them up for me, along with supplies.
Which was mainly wine and whisky, with some food scattered in.
She knew I didn’t eat much, and instead of harping on about “putting meat on my bones” or some such thing a woman of her age and personality might make, she said nothing.
Didn’t push her time on me, as if she could taste the blackness of my mood. Nor did she seem offended when I didn’t even thank her for the effort, time and expense of it all.
I wanted to thank her. Something in me desperately wanted to thank her. Smile. Maybe even hug her. Like the woman who had once lived in this house certainly would’ve.
But that wasn’t me. I didn’t have the tools for that. Instead, I handed her a wad of bills she didn’t try to shrug off. I liked her more for taking it. Not holding onto some false kindness, that she didn’t want the money. That she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart. I didn’t know her financial situation, but I could guarantee mine was better. Unless she was some eclectic millionaire, which would’ve been interesting.
Whether or not she was, she took the money. My version of a thank you, a smile.
Katy texted intermittently to tell me the dangers of taking too many painkillers and mixing them with liquor. Dangers I, of course, ignored. The only way to take painkillers was with a whisky chaser.