Her voice was the first thing he heard. Calm and confident she asked for a bottle of water. It was the least hostile Toby had heard her voice, and that scared him. Her voice shouldn’t have been anywhere near him as far as he remembered. His memory tended to be hazy when he came too after one of the headaches.

He recalled eating and feeling the beginning of pressure behind his eyes. There was a conversation about him being a killer that he could barely pay attention to. After that, everything was dark.

The only thing he knew was that somehow he’d gotten home. There was no denying the lumpy mattress underneath him was the one in the cabin. The stale smell he was used to also hung in the air. He’d wondered while he cleaned things up if it was a dead animal of some sort, but he hadn’t found one.

“What are you doing here?”

Toby’s head felt better, but he kept his words quiet, much like Meredith had when she requested the water. He hoped she didn’t have ideas of throwing it on him to see if it would wake him up. He wouldn’t blame her, but he preferred to keep the bed dry.

“Making sure you aren’t dead. I was worried you were having an allergic reaction to the stew and were running home for one of those pen things people use.”

He shook his head. He needed to open his eyes to get a handle on the situation, but he wasn’t ready. He had no idea what time it was and any amount of light threatened to keep him in bed longer.

“It’s just a headache. The food was great, like I said repeatedly.”

“Thanks, honey. Why don’t you go sit down in the living room and play with your toys for a few minutes while I talk to Toby.”

The direction of going to play wasn’t needed to know Meredith wasn’t speaking to him. If she was for some reason calling him honey, he would’ve had to hit his head hard.

“Is he gonna be okay?”

“I think so. Let me just talk to him for a few minutes and then we’ll head home and let him rest some more.”

Toby didn’t hear Caleb’s retreat, but he assumed the boy left. From what he’d seen, there wasn’t much of a troublemaker bone in the kid’s body.

“How often do you get the headaches?”

“What makes you think there have been others?”

Hazarding the wrath of the light, Toby opened his eyes a sliver to test the waters. His room only had one window and even after cleaning, the haze on it worked like a curtain. The noisy generator wasn’t running, so Toby already knew the light in the room wouldn’t be on.

Those things combined made the instant pain Toby was already cringing away from negligible. There was still a tinge of hurt as he opened his eyes wider. Meredith wasn’t within his immediate sightline, but he felt her sitting on the bed to his right.

“You knew what was going on last night and said the last time it happened you were out for hours. So, how often do you get them?”

Toby didn’t remember saying anything about it, but he didn’t doubt her. She said last night, so it had to have been another long-term blackout. He was surprised she was still hanging around. She had to be exhausted if she’d stayed up all night watching him.

“Hmm,” Toby grunted as he tried to sit up.

Even though he could see, his body wasn’t quite ready for moving. His arms felt like gelatin as he tried to but some weight on them.

“Just sit still. I’m not sure we didn’t break something getting you back here. I knew you were a big guy, but I didn’t realize just how solid you were.”

Toby blinked his eyes a few times and shook his head from side to side. He wasn’t usually delirious when he came to, but he had to be.

“Care to explain what you just said? Who moved me where?”

He knew Meredith and Caleb were in the house, but he hadn’t heard Paul yammering on. Toby had observed the guy seemed to be good at that. It was probably what set him off.

“I did. You only made it about a quarter mile before you ended up curled next to a tree trunk. We don’t see bears every day in the woods, but I have my shotgun for a reason.”

It was easy to picture Meredith walking around with a shotgun slung over her shoulder. Toby couldn’t think of a time he’d ever thought that about a woman, or person.

“Did your wannabe boyfriend help?”

There had to be someone else. Toby weighed two-twenty the last time he weighed in. A week living off canned dinners could have dropped a few of those pounds, but not enough to make it so Meredith could move him around. Whether his head was in it or not, he lifted his neck so he could verify she was in one piece.

He was sure he looked like hell, but the bags under her eyes that he immediately took note of told him she’d had a rough night. No clocks were in the room, so it was hard to say exactly what time it was.

“Paul will never be my boyfriend.”

There was a strong emphasis on the never. Toby wanted to smile, because that was exactly the vibe he’d picked up. He kept his reactions to himself as she went on.

“I can’t waddle through the woods very well, so we brought the ATV out and hooked a cart to it. There was a lot of rolling you around and such, which is why I mentioned the possible broken bones.”

Toby took a second to assess what he already knew. Beside the subtle pain in his head and weakness when it came to moving, he felt fine.

“I watched you walk away from the dock. You don’t waddle.”

A smack to his leg wasn’t what Toby expected from what he saw as the truth. The immediate apology curbed some of the shock the move caused.

“I’m so sorry. Sometimes my hands react without thinking. That didn’t hurt, did it?”

With his head still in a position to see her, Toby saw her eyes widen immediately after the slap. After more fights than he could count, Toby wasn’t unfamiliar with being hit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been slapped though. Usually his fights involved closed fists.

“I’m sure it won’t even leave a bruise. Did you sleep at all, or have you just been sitting there staring at me?”

Meredith looked down at the floor to the side of the bed. If Toby didn’t know better, he’d swear she blushed.

“I didn’t spend all night starring at you. When I unbuttoned your shirt to make sure we hadn’t done any damage, I saw the scars.”

“And they’re hard to look away from.”

Toby nodded as he realized why she appeared to be shy all of a sudden. He’d never thought they were that bad, a few souvenirs from playing a full-contact sport wasn’t unexpected. When he started his pro career, he got the worst of the bunch during a freak accident when a skate blade cut into his chest. Thirty hurried stitches weren’t meant to look pretty.

“Were you in a car accident or something?”

The question was logical. It would’ve been less painful if they’d all happened at once, but the battle scars took years to collect.

“Or something. Please tell me you got some sleep. I don’t know what time it is, but I’m going to feel like an ass if I made you come after me and kept you up.”

Her answer wouldn’t change the way he felt. He wished he would’ve sensed the headache coming on earlier in the day and just stayed home instead of going against her wishes and stopping by her cabin.

“It’s a little after eight. You were out for about twelve hours. And, yes, I did fall asleep at some point. I’m used to long hours being a single mom, but I have my limits.”

“That’s good to hear, both on the sleep and the limits. I know moms are required to have superhero capes and all that, but as someone who’s also looked at that way, I know it’s not true.”

Toby had seen the look in thousands of kids’ eyes over the years. They all wanted to grow up and be like one of the guys out on the ice. Toby thought it was silly, given the damage the game had done to his body. He was sort of happy that he wouldn’t have to see those particular looks anymore with his career coming to an end. The second blackout meant the vacation wasn’t helping like he’d hoped.

“No one looks at me like a superhero. Most people around here are too busy looking down their nose at me. Obviously, that’s nothing you need to worry about. Do you think you’re out of the woods so I can take Caleb home and make sure my house didn’t burn down?”

After hinting about his own background, it was interesting that Meredith didn’t have any questions. She hadn’t even pushed for more information about his injuries. It was a new experience for him. Usually people were more inquisitive.

Pushing around the weakness he still felt, Toby sat up in bed. Meredith finally looked back in his direction. After bringing up the distraction his bare skin was, she’d kept her gaze away from it. Toby thought it would’ve been easier if she just buttoned his shirt back up while he slept, but it was wide open.

“Thanks to you, I am most definitely out of the woods. Go home and take care of yourself. I’d offer to watch Caleb for you while you get some rest, but I have a feeling you won’t take me up on that.”

It felt like the right thing to say, even though no one in their right mind would leave their child in Toby’s care. At least no one had been in dire needs enough to call him in roughly thirty years.

“We’ll be fine. You do have to promise me one thing, though.”

Toby reached out to touch Meredith’s hand not far from his on the bed. If she wanted him to promise something, he figured a simple touch wouldn’t be frowned upon. It wasn’t meant as anything more than a gesture to indicate he was listening and was thankful for what she’d done.

She didn’t react to the touch. Her face remained blank until a small smile appeared. Toby didn’t say anything as he waited for her to spit out the promise. He didn’t want to set himself up by saying something stupid like he’d do anything she asked.

“In order to get Paul out of my house last night without any questions I had to tell him I’d go to the stupid dance with him. I don’t understand why the guy can’t get it through his head that I’m not interested, but I figured it was more important to make sure you were okay than sit around and bicker about whether you’re a killer.”

The admission caught Toby off guard. Meredith didn’t seem like someone who would sacrifice anything for anyone other than her son. Promising to do something she’d made clear she hated was as clear of a sacrifice as Toby could think of. And she did it for him.

He wasn’t stupid enough to read anything into it other than her wanting to help out a neighbor. The idea didn’t mesh with her tough exterior, but it led Toby to believe there were layers to his neighbor she didn’t often let out.

“And you want me to kill the guy so you don’t have to go to the dance?”

Meredith laughed. It had to have been the first time since they met that she let the soft tinkling sound out of her mouth. He got the feeling she didn’t do it often, much like smiling was rare for him. He’d probably smiled more in the twenty-four hours since he’d met her than he had in months.

“If I wanted him dead, I wouldn’t ask for help. Since I’m being forced to go to the dance, I want you to be there. Everyone will be too busy trying to figure out who you are to focus on me.”

“So this isn’t your way of making sure you have a decent dance partner for the evening.”

She wanted to use him as a shield. He saw that easily enough. It wasn’t like she tried to hide it.

“I know it’s a lot to ask given last night. I don’t want to be the cause of you going down again, but if I’m going to be miserable, I prefer sharing the experience.”

Toby scoffed and shook his head. He wasn’t afraid her dance would knock him unconscious. Since he didn’t know what caused the headaches, there was no way he could predict them.

“When and where do I need to be?”

The idea of hanging out with the townsfolk had as much appeal as getting his teeth pulled. An hour or so making a situation less stressful for a pregnant woman seemed like the chivalrous thing to do.