Page 35 of Close Quarters

“Yeah,” he said with a shrug. “I guess we can just figure it out. Doesn’t matter.”

That was unlike him…well, the lack of anger was unlike him. Giving up wasn’t too far out of the norm. I’d watched him try to do it when Leon and Mona sat him down over the Riley situation.

“Okay,” I said slowly, pulling on my boots. “Sure.”

I watched him carefully as he waited by the door while I tied my boots. There was a frown on his face, but rather than the ordinarily pissy-looking frown, he looked…thoughtful. It was hard to determine if his shift in demeanor was because he’d had the chance to get his anger out or if getting laid really was the way to take the sting out of his tail. I wasn’t looking forward to fighting him again, but I definitely wouldn’t mind another round of sex when we could stand it.

We stepped out after wiping the blood off, though that wouldn’t hide the cuts or the bruises, and walked quietly side by side toward the Big House. His eyes were locked onto the ground with that same intense, thoughtful look. And I had a hard time deciding if I should get him to talk or leave him to his thoughts. The guy seemed to brood most of the time as it was, and I really hoped he wasn’t feeling guilty about this whole thing…did he feel guilt?

I wasn’t surprised when we entered the dining hall and were met with a lot of stares as we walked to get a plate and food. I couldn’t make out any conversations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a good chunk had shifted to our appearance. Some tried to be less obvious about staring, but others, like Riley, were staring us down.

“I’m feeling a lot less confident about this ‘oh well’ approach you suggested,” I muttered to him as I grabbed potatoes and pork chops and dumped homemade gravy all over both. To balance it out, I added some of the green beans I knew Rip had made sure were cooked in real butter and garlic. “Because everyone is staring us down.”

“Ignore them. It’s what I try to do,” he grumbled and again, I noticed a distinct lack of heat in his voice.

Before I could say anything, a voice that made me stiffen spoke up from behind us. “Well, well, well, what’s this I see?”

I turned, giving Mona a smile that was probably more of a grimace. “Well, hi there, Mona, you’re looking lovely.”

“I always look good,” she said, arching a brow and looking between us. “What, uh, happened to you two?”

“Nothing,” Reno piped up, looking more interested in deciding between corn or the green beans than in the conversation.

“Sure doesn’t look like nothing,” she said. “As a matter of fact, it looks like you two went a round or two with Mike Tyson…or each other.”

“What? No!” I insisted, feeling my face warm. I had expected Leon to approach us. Mona rarely came to the group meals. Leon was there, of course, sitting at the end of a table, intently watching the conversation. “Nothing like that.”

“Are you sure?” she asked, her eyes burrowing into mine since Reno refused to even look up from the food as he made up his mind and got corn.

My insides squirmed uncomfortably from the intensity of her stare. I usually felt like she knew a lot more than she was letting on, including my thoughts. But having her homed in on me so intensely was bringing it to a whole new level of naked discomfort. In fact, I would have preferred to be naked rather than having a stare-down with Mona.

“Elliot,” she said slowly. “What’s going on?”

The entire story was right on the tip of my tongue, but then what? Even if I left out the sex, which probably counted as making up…at least it did in my mind. What then? It still came down to the fact that we’d fought and hard at that. The evidence spoke for itself, and lying would probably get us both into more trouble. That was…except for one thing she’d said after Reno and I sat down together.

“Nothing happened,” I told her, trying to keep my voice and eyes steady. “We decided to have a bit of wrestling and ended up getting a little too rough, is all.”

“Oh really?”

“Yeah, really. I’m sure if our cabin had neighbors, they’d be able to vouch for it.”

“But you don’t have neighbors,” she said, shooting me a smirk. “How convenient.”

“Is it?” I asked, sounding a bit stupid even to my ears.

“Reno?” she asked, ignoring me.

“You heard the man,” he said, getting less gravy than I had. “You wanted us to bond. Well, we tried wrestling. Turns out, we take it too seriously.”

“This is from wrestling?” she asked, gesturing between us.

I was glad I’d already been sweating from everything else as I forced a smile. “Oh yeah. It was…really vigorous.”

As Mona raised a brow, Reno made a choking noise that I swore was him trying to swallow his laughter. She didn’t look like she believed anything we said but wasn’t pushing it. Not that she didn’t know we were lying, but for whatever reason, she wasn’t trying to squeeze the truth out of us or punish us based on the undeniable evidence.

“Well, hopefully, you two learned your lesson. There’s a reason she said not to do any more wrestling,” Leon spoke up, his eyes flitting between Reno and me.

“Please tell me you didn’t break anything in the cabin,” Mona said with a frown.

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