CHAPTER 9
LIAM

I couldn’t believe she’d actually gotten up to walk on that damn ankle. Was she insane? If she fell and hurt herself in this cabin somehow, we’d be up the creek without a paddle. I didn’t have the equipment necessary to stitch her idiocy up.

I sat on the edge of my bed and sighed. I bought this cabin and moved up here for seclusion. I came here to get away from everything and everyone. I was fucked in the head in ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t begin to explain and solitude was what I needed to try and heal. But now, seclusion was the last thing I was getting.

Instead, I was taking care of a clumsy, stubborn woman. I was responsible for a city girl who didn’t know anything about surviving in the woods. She just cooked food willy-nilly and thought I’d bow down to her graciousness. She had no idea the man she was currently residing with.

However, if she heard me last night, she’d gotten a glimpse into it.

Groaning, I laid my back on the bed. Fuck. If she’d heard me last night, then that meant my screaming woke her up. Surprisingly, though, she hadn’t seemed frightened. Perhaps she had slept through it?

I started counting off the pounds of meat, the frozen vegetables, and the food I had in the pantry. Cooking three meals for both of us was going to take twice as much food as I’d anticipated. I knew I didn’t have enough meat for all of those meals, which made me thankful I’d purchased all that rice. The meals couldn’t be extravagant, but if I cooked exact portions and she didn’t chomp down two massive plates at a time, I thought I could get us by until this snow let up.

Once it did, I could start trying to dig a trail out to that tree to cut it down. Then, it was just a matter of getting my fucking truck to run long enough to get her back into town.

I reached over and turned on the radio to listen to the latest weather report. The signal was coming in fuzzy, which meant any moment now, we’d lose power. I’d have to stoke up a fire to get some light going in the main room so I could ration the gasoline as much as possible. Out here when it was just me, I enjoyed the dark, the gray that blanketed the sky above the cabin. I hand washed dishes and kept the lights off, so the only electricity needed was for my fridge, my deep freezer, and the water heater.

I didn’t have enough gasoline to power the house completely for weeks on end.

Suddenly, I heard a thump. A hiss came from down the hallway and then a whimper. Damn it. Whitney must’ve tried to get up and walk again. Whitney, with her crazy blonde hair and her beautiful blue eyes.

What the hell was she thinking?

Standing up from the bed, I dashed out of my room. I strode down the hallway and found her on the floor, tears threatening to pour down her cheeks while she tried to get up. I could see the frustration on her face as she tried to raise herself up but, before she could try any harder, I had her scooped up into my arms.

“Are you crazy?” I asked.

“No, I’m Whitney,” she said.

Holy hell, she was feisty. In another lifetime, when I was another man, I would’ve adored that about her personality. I would’ve taken one look into her eyes while sinking my fingertips into her hips and I would’ve drained the sassiness right out of her voice with my lips.

But now, with the man I had become, it was nothing but a nuisance. It didn’t take away from how radiant she was, though.

I set her back down on the couch and tucked the blankets around her body. She groaned, laying her head back on the pillows and I watched her blonde hair flutter around the pillowcase. She really was a beautiful woman, with her lightly tanned skin and her cupid’s bow lips. Any man would’ve been lucky to have this woman trapped with him. In another universe, I would’ve already tried to kiss her.

The frustration on her face, however, was evident.

“You need to stay off your ankle,” I said.

“Except for when I have to pee,” she said.

“Do you need help getting to the bathroom?”

“No, it was just a hypothetical statement.”

“I’m not here to barge in on your privacy,” I said.

“Yet you think that’s what I’m doing.”

Her statement shut me up while the fire grew behind her eyes.

“How do you know what to do?” she asked.

“What?”

“With my ankle,” she said. “You just knew what to do. You asked me questions and were focused like a doctor would be. Is that what you did? In the military?”

Her questions were fired in rapid succession and I could tell she’d been sitting on them for a while. I figured this moment would come, when she’d want to know shit about me. I sat on the edge of the couch and propped her ankle up on my lap, studying the swelling of her toes and testing if she could wiggle them. I kept flicking them with my fingers and watching them jump and it wasn’t until I’d tested all five of them that I sighed.

“I used to be a medic, yes,” I said.

“In the Navy.”

“Yes,” I said.

I sighed and sat back into the couch. I could feel the tension in the room diffusing and I started to feel bad. I thought this woman was a high-strung city gal who wanted nothing more than to complicate everyone’s world but all she really wanted was a few answers. Flicking my gaze over to her, I watched her settle in for the first time since this morning and, suddenly, that moment came flooding back to me and I felt like a dick.

“I’m sorry for what happened at breakfast,” I said.

“You should be. I was just trying to do something nice.”

I couldn’t help but snicker at her as I shook my head.

“There it is,” she said. “I figured you had lip movement underneath that beard somewhere.”

I settled my hand onto her shin while my eyes panned over to her. She was a hard woman to stay mad at. I’d give her that. Her dark blue eyes sparkled with mischief, and I started to wonder a little more about her. Instead of being scared of the big, bad, bearded man in the lonely little cabin, she was actually trying to pry me open and learn a little more about me.

Fuck. This woman must’ve lived a hard life for someone like me to not scare her.

“And what about you?” I asked.

“What about me?”

“What did you do with your life at one point?” I asked.

“What makes you think I don’t do something with it now?” she asked.

“Because you haven’t pestered me yet about calling anyone. No friends. No boss. No work.”

I watched her face falter for just a second before she drew in a deep breath.

“I was a lawyer,” she said.

“Did you enjoy it?” I asked.

“I guess if I did then I’d still be doing it, eh?” she raised an eyebrow at me.

I nodded in understanding and quickly backed off. It was interesting, being in the company of a beautiful woman who understood the need to not talk about the personal shit. Most people tried to get me to talk. They told me it was better if I leaned on someone. But being beside someone who understood the value of keeping shit close to one’s chest was refreshing.

She still had to go but I got the feeling it wasn’t going be as shitty as I had originally thought it was going be.

Suddenly, I heard the power whir down. The lights in the kitchen flickered before the roar of the generator started up and I sighed as I got up off the couch. I went over and shut off the lights in the kitchen before I made my way to the fireplace. It was time to start stoking a fire for light so I could conserve the gasoline I had.

After all, two people were now using up the hot water in this place.

I couldn’t help but catch her stare every now and again. As I stacked the kindling and lit a piece of newspaper, I felt her gaze on me, watching my every move while the fire slowly roared to life in the fireplace. I stood up to get some logs, turning my body toward hers just to catch another glimpse of her.

In that moment, a part of me wished I wasn’t as damaged as I was.

Even though I felt my gut lurching toward her, I knew I couldn’t have her. Traitors didn’t deserve the beauty and softness. I should’ve been willing to die instead of doing what I did, so seclusion was the only thing I deserved. I didn’t deserve that beautiful woman lying on my couch. I didn’t deserve her smile or her company. I didn’t deserve the warmth her body could provide or the laughter I’m sure she could bring into my life.

“I worked for a corporate law firm,” she said after a minute.

“Ah.”

“Full of really shitty men,” she said.

“Sounds about right,” I said.

“They wanted me to defend all these people I knew were guilty. Businessmen and corporations practicing unethically.”

“Isn’t that just as unethical?” I asked. “Defending the guilty?”

“They’re only guilty if you can prove it in court. My job was to prove they weren’t guilty.”

“That sounds awful,” I said.

“It was. I’m pretty sure my boss was using the information as blackmail to build whatever empire he was trying to build. You know, gathering secrets from the world’s biggest corporations to lean on them when he needed them.”

“That makes a little more sense,” I said.

“What does?” she asked.

“Why you’re not afraid.”

I turned around to look at her and saw the confusion behind her beautiful blue eyes.

“A six-foot-four jerk with facial hair and a bad attitude picks you up and brings you into his cabin in the middle of the woods and you don’t bat an eye. Figured you must’ve really had some harsh stuff happen in your life.”

I watched her gaze grow somber before she cleared her throat. Suddenly, those dark blue eyes were turned down into her lap and her blonde hair fell in front of her face. I couldn’t see her eyes or clock how she might’ve been feeling but I did see her shoulders heave just for a moment.

What the hell had life done to this vibrant, beautiful woman?

“Maybe you’re just not as intimidating as you think,” she said, grinning.

She turned her face back to me with that little grin running across her cheeks but I could still see the sadness in her eyes. And for a moment, I finally knew what it felt like when other people looked at me.

“Anyway,” she said, sighing. “I quit about a month or so ago. My boss wanted me to defend the head of a pharmaceutical company who was creating a drug that had already killed five or so people in the trial. It was obvious he skimped on health requirements to push the drug to the market. My boss literally told me that I needed to defend a murderer if I wanted to keep my job. Said I couldn’t stay human and be a lawyer. So, I quit.”

The fire roared behind me, taunting my skin with its heat. It whispered to me with its flames licking up the chimney of the cabin and I could hear it whispering the truth that vibrated between us.

She’s stronger than you. Stronger. Stronger than you.

And the flames were right. Her boss breached a line and she was presented with a choice: stick to her morals or cave. It was the same choice I was presented with. I could’ve stuck to my morals and died with dignity, or I could’ve caved.

She stuck to her morals and I caved.

“Liam?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

I suddenly couldn’t be around her anymore. We were no longer on an even footing. She might understand the need to protect secrets but she was also greater than me. Better than me. And I didn’t want my cowardice rubbing off on her.

It was why I was alone. It was why I needed to stay that way.

“Get some rest,” I said as I made my way to the hallway. “I’ll make dinner for us tonight.”

Then, I disappeared down the hallway and made my way back to my room.

She needed to rest and I needed to be alone.