CHAPTER SIX
Ice
AFTER I LEFT Lindsey alone in the kitchen this morning, I went outside and got to work on repairing what I could on the house. I was in no mood to rebuild right now. Sure, the house was going to need more work than it was worth, but rebuilding just wasn’t feasible right now. Some people were worse off than I was at the moment. It took all morning, banging on the house to pull my mind from the hell it had gone to after my conversation with Lindsey. Even if she didn’t want to admit it, she was so naive when it came to the world. She lived in a bubble that I popped the moment I stepped into her life. She didn’t deserve to have been dragged into all this shit, but I couldn’t leave her either. She would have been killed and I would have one more dead body on my conscience. “Could you put some shorts on at least?” she groused at me from the doorway of the bedroom. I was ready to slide into bed, completely nude, the way I always slept. But then the princess walked into the room and had to open her big, fat yap. “No, I can’t. This is my house and I can’t sleep in clothes.” “You can’t or you won’t?” “Both,” I snapped. “I get too warm and this is my damn house and if I don’t want to sleep in clothes, I won’t.” “And if we weren’t sharing a bed, I would agree with you, but we are. The decent thing to do is put on some clothes.” “Guess what, princess. I’m not a decent guy that’s going to take your feelings into consideration. I am who I am and if you don’t like it, you can go find someone else to stay with.” “I would, but-” “I burned down your house. I know. You keep reminding me. And just to clarify, I didn’t personally burn down your house. In fact, there is nothing I did personally to you, except keep your ass from getting killed.” “Ugh,” she grunted at me. “You are so infuriating. Just stay on your side of the bed and I’ll stay on mine.” “That’s the plan, princess.” “And stop calling me princess. I’m the furthest thing from a princess that any girl could be.” I grumbled to myself as I threw back the covers and slid into my bed, sighing in relief that I was finally lying down for the night. I spread my legs like I did every night, trying to find the cool spots at the end of the bed, until I came across something that was way too fucking cold. “What the hell is that?” I shouted. “My feet are cold. You keep it like an ice box in here.” “So, put on some damn socks, woman!” “No, I can’t sleep with socks on. My feet sweat and then I get uncomfortable.” “So, it’s okay for you to sleep how you’re comfortable, but not me?” “You’re sleeping naked. There’s a difference between being completely naked and sleeping without socks on.” “For all I know, you could have some toe fungus and I could catch if from you because you don’t have socks on.” “Really? A toe fungus?” “People get them. I don’t know you. You could be one of those people that only changes their socks once a week.” “This coming from the man that couldn’t remember the last time he washed his sheets,” she snorted. “Hey, I work out of town a lot. It’s not like I sleep in my bed every night. And I always shower before I get in bed. It’s not like I’m fucking dirty.” “Sheets that aren’t washed regularly can cause acne. All that bacteria that lives in your bed can clog your hair follicles and your skin could break out.” “I have flawless skin. I’m not worried,” I said in irritation. “Do you know how many skin cells you leave behind in your bed?” She sat up and turned to me with a sneer. “You lose about 30,000 to 40,000 skin cells every minute. So, in an eight hour night of sleep, you would lose at least 14,400,000 skin cells that are just hanging out on your sheets.” “You have way too much fucking time on your hands if you figured that out and remembered it.” “Did you know that a third of your pillow weight can be made up of dead skin cells, bed bugs, and house dust mites and their feces? That’s all in your bed with you.” “Seriously, who knows that shit?” This woman was fucking crazy and maybe a tad bit of a hypochondriac. “I own a bed and breakfast. It’s my job to know this stuff.” “It’s still creepy.” “Did you also know that when you sleep you collect bacteria in your mouth? And then if you’re a drooler, that bacteria ends up all over your sheets. Just festering. In your bed.” I started to feel like bugs were crawling all over me and it started to make me squirm, even though I had just washed the sheets. “Technically, you’re doing the right thing by sleeping naked because the more you sweat, the more bacteria builds up in your bed and microorganisms love bacteria. But it’s still disgusting considering that a stranger’s in bed with you.” “Is there a point behind this? Other than trying to turn me into a germaphobe?” “Also,” she continued as if I hadn’t said a word to her. “The average bed could have up to 1.5 five million dust mites. They’re less than a millimeter long, so you wouldn’t see them. But they feed on human skin and they produce allergens that can easily be inhaled while you’re sleeping. So, you should really not even make your bed because moisture builds when the sheets and comforters are all piled on top of one another and that’s the ideal condition for the little critters.” Seriously, I was feeling bugs crawling all over me now and this woman was just lying next to me as if she didn’t have a care in the world. How could she just lie there knowing all this shit? I kicked the covers off the bed and flung them to the floor. “I wouldn’t do that either. There are more germs crawling around on your carpet than on your toilet. When was the last time you vacuumed?” I quickly snatched the blankets off the floor and pulled them back up on me, though now I wasn’t sure which was worse. Having them on me with bugs in the bed or having them off me and freezing, but knowing they were getting dirtier on the ground. “You know, you’re a real fucking pain in the ass.” “Takes one to know one.” Takes one to know one, I mouthed in the dark of my bedroom. I had been reduced to mocking the woman in the dark. It was really clear to me that our current living arrangements weren’t going to work for too much longer. She needed that insurance money, fast, or I would be finding her a new home. Like one six feet under.