Page 87 of The Cabin
I pull the lever and push at the door. He tugs it open and reaches in, takes my hand. Folds my hand into his—my hand is a fragile dove held in the cage of his fingers. Pulls me to my feet. Holds my hand in his against his chest. Rain is cold, driving in sharp splinters on my scalp. The wind is aggressive and hungry, a bully, shoving at me. He turns us, and now the wind is at his back and I’m sheltered in the lee of his body.
“I didn’t fall for the Nadia version of you in the book.” His forefinger touches my cheekbone, ginger, tentative; he traces across my temple, tucking a wet tendril of hair behind my ear. “I fell for you. For the you I’ve gotten to know over coffee in the morning. Over sunsets on the lake. That day we drank champagne and beer and talked all day and you fell asleep beside me.”
I swallow hard. Cold raindrops mingle on my cheek with hot tears. “You don’t know me. You know the me he told you about in the book.”
“You like your bacon crispy, almost burnt. That’s not in there. You always thought you liked your coffee black and sweet, but you’re starting to prefer it just plain black. You like reading biographies. You miss your father and you’re angry at him for abandoning you when you needed him most, and you feel guilty for feeling that way because he didn’t really abandon you. And Adrian dying only reinforces that. You’re angry at the world for taking the men you love away from you. You feel safe with me, and that’s a big deal because you weren’t sure you’d survive after he died, or if you even wanted to. You’ve never said it in so many words, but I think you were suicidal, at some point. I know I was. There was no one around to care if I lived or died, and it felt like it’d be easier and simpler to just…die. But something always stopped me. I don’t know what. And I think you know exactly how that feels. And none of that is in the book.”
It’s all tears, now, and we’re both so wet we might as well have just jumped in the lake.
“My mom gave up,” I whisper. I don’t know if he can even hear me over the wind and rain. “After Dad’s heart attack. She tried. But…she just kind of wasted away. It felt like losing her too, only slower.”
“Is she still alive?”
“Sort of.” I close my eyes. “She had a stroke several years ago. She’s paralyzed on one side, lost a lot of cognitive function. She doesn’t know me, can’t talk, just sits staring out the window, missing Dad.” I ache. “I visit her, and she just sits there, doesn’t even seem like she sees me. I feel like a shitty person and a terrible daughter, but I don’t visit her very often. It hurts, and she’s…”
“You’re alone.”
That breaks me. I sob, shake, and the only thing I can do is nod and let my forehead fall against his chest. Despite the ragged sheets of wind and sharp little pellets of rain, he’s warm, billowing heat, as if he has a furnace inside.
“I’m so lonely,” I whisper. His chest hair is tickly and soft against my cheek. His hand settles hesitantly on my back where my shoulder blades meet. “I have Tess, my best friend. I’m grateful for her. So grateful. She’s done everything for me. I’d be dead, literally, if not for her. But…”
“It’s not the same.”
“He wasn’t just my husband, he was my best friend and…he…he knew me inside out. He knew everything. He saw me, all of me, all there is. And now he’s gone and everyone is gone and I’m so fucking lonely.”
My other hand lifts, curls to nestle against his hot hard chest, and then claws in desperately, the vicious abandon of sorrow and grief and confusion and hurt and betrayal and need and desire and relief and…love, all coiling and braiding, boiling and twining, exploding and bursting and raging.
Nathan bends and scoops me up, cradles me against him with his arm under my knees and the other around my shoulders, and he carries me to his cabin and kicks closed the door—open all this time. He settles on the floor with his back to the easy chair, close to the fire. Reaches out with one long arm and snags a blanket off the couch, wraps it around his shoulders clutching the edges like a cape or cloak and closes his arms around me and now the fire beats in hot waves and his body heat and the blanket all conspire to warm me, and it’s not until I feel warmth that I realize how cold I was, how chilled to the bone.
