Page 10 of Roads Behind Us
He shrugged, and his crutches lifted off the floor for a second. “Okay then. Just a little warnin’, though, in case you don’t know: don’t leave food outside. Don’t leave it in your truck either. Not even a package of trail mix. When you have trash you need to get rid of, bring it up to the house. We don’t have bear-proof cans out here yet. They can smell that shit from miles away, and right now, they’re looking for anything they can find to eat before it’s time for ’em to bed down for winter. We’ve got electric fences in some places, but they don’t reach the more remote corners of the property.”
Oh shit. What the fuck? Now I’m totally gonna sleep soundly, alone, out here in the middle of the forest with bears circling my cabin like hungry sharks in the sea.
Fear must’ve shown on my face because the side of Bax’s mouth tipped up a little. “Scared? Still think you wanna stay out here alone?”
“Absolutely I do,” I said, trying to assure him and to reassure myself I could handle a harmless grizzly. I knew there had to be construction equipment close by, and I’d packed a bunch of my own tools behind my seat in my truck. If I had to, I could nail-gun the fucker in the ass to scare him off.
Good plan.
Bax cleared his throat again. “What’d you say?”
“What?”
“You said somethin’.”
I shook my head, and Bax watched as my hair fell over my shoulder. “No I didn’t.”
He laughed under his breath. “Okay, you didn’t.”
“I just said that. Anyway, guess I better get your gimpy ass back up to your TV. Reruns are callin’.”
“Yup. Guess so.”
Chapter Four
Bax
Sweetie drove me back to the house and dropped me off, and as I watched her drive away, my attraction to her slapped me across the face. It surprised me that I didn’t have a black eye after all the reality knockouts I’d had lately.
I’d thought admitting to myself that I was attracted to anyone would feel weird. I hadn’t really felt it since Candy, or I thought I hadn’t, but now, fuzzy memories of the night I’d met Sweetie flashed in my head, her piercing green eyes, sexy smile, and big attitude like a wake-up call I didn’t ask for.
There was no denying I’d felt a pull to her when she parked in front of my house tonight and stepped out of her Chevy in tight jeans and an oversized sweatshirt.
I wanted her.
That in itself was some kind of revelation. That I could want something again, other than time to move backward. Athena got older and more independent every second of every day, and Candy and the baby became hazier and further away with every breath I took. I was afraid that soon I wouldn’t be able to remember them at all.
But Sweetie was sexy in a different way than Candy had been. Candy was my first and only love. I knew her body because we’d grown up learning each other together. And she was the mother of my kid. To me, Candy’s body had been a holy shrine. Even fourteen years later, I was still in awe of what it had been capable of.
Until it betrayed us all.
Sweetie tempted me in a completely different way, a more seductive way. Vaguely, I remembered feeling something similar when I first met her up in Sheridan, but grief had me trapped in its heavy haze back then. The gin had a pretty good hold on me that night too.
Seeing Sweetie again wasn’t the first sign that the haze had passed, but until tonight, I hadn’t wanted to admit it was true. What an odd thing, to know I’d been holding onto pain just because it was familiar. It kept me company. How messed up was that?
And what did it mean that I’d finally let some of it go?
Sweetie’s much smaller size made me feel protective of her. Maybe it was just the possibility of grizzly bears “circling her cabin like hungry sharks in the sea.” She seemed not to realize she’d said it out loud. It was cute, and hilarious, to hear the thoughts she meant to keep to herself, and it fought against the hard-ass persona she tried so hard to project.
But it was clear she didn’t want or need my protection. Or my company, which made it really inconvenient that, in some fucked-up way, her movements and the way her body seemed to ground her with every step she took only made me want her more.
Her confidence was sexy.
Her deep, dark brown hair and the way it fell down her back had my hands itching to touch, to caress and wrap around my fist. Her pink lips and the habit she had of rolling them together when she was thinking about what she wanted to say had me imagining how good it’d feel to slip my cock between them, for her to suck and roll those soft lips over my hardness.
I’d never had that particular urge with someone I didn’t even know. It felt a little dark, but exciting. And different.
As I hobbled through my kitchen to the living room, not even bothering to turn off lights as I went, I thought, different’s good.
