Page 83 of Trapped: Until The Darkest Of Night

“What?”

“You shouldn’t try to run away again.”

Her face darkens in the blink of an eye. “I am not planning to,” she whispers.

Oh, yes, you are, sweet Lou!

I reach under her chin and pull her head up so she has to look at me.

“I don’t mean that kind of escape,” I say harshly. Wherever I touch her, my skin burns like fire. Lou’s pupils dilate like I’ve put belladonna in her eyes. I feel like everything inside me sinks into my stomach and explodes in hundreds of salvos of fire. I want to kiss her. Now. Her lips are wet and shiny. Just do it! a voice inside me screams, but I’m frozen, unable to breathe, like I suddenly have cement in my lungs. And the longer Lou looks at me, the more I see her doubts grow. There’s a kind of fear gathering in the blue of her eyes that I’ve never seen.

“You said you wouldn’t touch me like…that…” she whispers breathlessly.

I feel her pulse pounding against my fingertips, it takes me a heartbeat to realize I’m still holding her.

I withdraw my hand in a haze and every finger tingles. For seconds, time seems trapped around us, locked in a vacuum. I return Lou’s shimmering gaze, which is so much more than fear of me.

But what else should she be afraid of?

I mechanically shake my head, unable to find a quick answer.

Lou starts eating again, but her shoulders are hunched.

What’s with you, Lou? I want to shout. Why are you looking at me like you want to kiss me and crawl away from me at the same time?

Her hands grip Grey’s fur and her whole body trembles. Whatever just happened between us scared and upset her.

I retire outside to give her the time she needs.

While Lou showers, I collect salmonberries and rose hips from around the RV without ever taking my eyes off the side door. I’ll be making a fruit wine with the salmonberries in the next few days and we can either eat the rose hips raw or I’ll show Lou how to make jam out of them. I keep thinking back to that moment, Lou’s dilated pupils. That couldn’t have been an act. Not that! I doubt everything else, but there’s no way she can consciously provoke such a physical reaction.

Maybe her feelings for me aren’t an illusion after all. Whereby—maybe pupils dilate even when love is imaginary. Is imagining even the right word?

When my bowls are full, I still haven’t found answers to my questions. I go in and set them on the counter before calling to Lou through the closed folding door that I’ll be waiting for her outside by the drainpipe.

Five minutes later, I’ve opened the flap and put a bucket under the silver pipe when she comes out in jeans and a yellow lacy blouse.

From the intense way she’s holding Grey in her arms and avoiding eye contact, I take it she’s still embarrassed. Or unsure. I pretend not to notice and inspect the hook I used to fasten the flap with exaggerated care.

Lou kneels next to me and sets Grey down on the ground between us. If the putrid stench of highway rest stop bathrooms disgusts her, she doesn’t show it. I’m about to start when Grey grabs my shoelace like it’s a slowworm.

“Hey, little one!” I nudge him in the side to show him who’s in charge, but he doesn’t care. With his ears laid back, he stalks me and sinks his little teeth into the button on my pants pocket. Lou chuckles.

Sighing, I pull him away and growl at him darkly. With a plaintive sound, he jumps to Lou and tucks in his tail.

“We’ve got to start raising him or he’ll think he’s the alpha,” I tell Lou. Not that he’s going to side with her and attack me one day in an attempt to defend her.

“Can we even keep him?” Lou asks, watching Grey, who pretends the little argument between us never happened.

I shrug. “Sure, why not? Wolves behave like dogs when they grow up with humans.”

“Won’t he want to go back one day? He hears the wolves in the woods.” Lou watches the pup and appears deep in thought.

“Of course that can happen. Although it’s questionable if the pack would accept him. Maybe one day, he’ll disappear into the woods and never come back.” I say it nonchalantly, but the prospect of losing Grey sickens my stomach. He’s been a link between Lou and me, and if he were to run off, it would be a bad omen; at least that’s how I see it.

I push the thought away and show Lou which lever to pull to release the gray water. I explain to her again the difference between the capacity of the two tanks.

“Remember to shut the valve when the bucket is three-quarters full. It will take a while for the flow to stop.”

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