Page 12 of Should I Fall
“Where are you from, Stormi?” I ask, again channeling Tour Guide Dash. We’re mostly due for heavy rain and strong winds, so I’m not as worried about lightning unless a thunderstorm pops up. Keeping her busy and talking, though, could ease the strained tension between us. Something I feel desperate to fix, despite all the logical reasons to allow that tension to keep the barrier firmly in place between us.
“Some place I really don’t want to go back to,” she mumbles.
“What’s that?”
“Omaha.”
“City girl then?”
“Not by choice.” Another mumbled answer, as though her words aren’t intended for me.
I concentrate on starting a fire inside the stove with the shreds of fire starter I’ve collected, but I’m having trouble getting the flame to take. At this rate, the storm will be fucking over before I get the fire going.
“Are you from here?” she asks.
“Born and raised.”
“Winnie said you were a smokejumper.”
“I was.” I keep my answer short because I don’t trust myself to stick to the Tour Guide Dash version of that story. Thankfully, the flame finally takes. I throw in another question to redirect the conversation back to Stormi. “Where would you live, if you could live anywhere?”
“I thought some place like this,” she says, and this time I hear a tremble in her voice. “Now, I don’t know.”
“Why not here?”
“Because it’s one thing to joke about being a bear snack. It’s another thing to face the very real possibility ofbeingone.”
I stiffen at the sound of sniffles, feeling like a giant asshole. That make out session was obviously fueled by adrenaline. But now that we’re both down from that high, the real emotions are settling in. And Stormi is…scared.
“Hey,” I say, tossing in a couple of logs into the stove and closing the door. I start toward the bed but think better of it before I make it all the way to her. I stop instead at the table stationed in the center of the tower so I can watch the weather like I’m supposed to be doing. “If it makes you feel any better, that’s not my first encounter with Brutus.”
“It’s not?”
“Not even my third. You’re safe, Stormi. I wasn’t going to let anything happen to you.”
“Just ignore me,” she says, a pitiful laugh mixing with another sniffle. “That’s what everyone else does.”
She doesn’t mean for me to hear the whispered second part, but the words fuel a different type of fire inside me.
I get the distinct sense that Stormi Winters is a helluva woman, and I want to know who the fuck broke her spirit so I can handle them myself. Still, I try to mask the possessive, primal feelings with humor. “You’re kind of hard to ignore in that sunshine colored jacket.”
She sputters a laugh.
“Tell me about your life,” I say, hoping my tone is more encouraging and less off putting for a change.
“Well, until earlier this week, I was a paralegal.”
“What happened earlier this week?”
“My boss demanded I work this weekend whilehevacationed in Panama and I missed out on my sister’s bachelorette weekend. And I told him to go directly to hell. To not pass go or collect his two hundred dollars.”
I’m filled with unexpected pride. I knew she was strong, but I like that it’s with a touch of badass.
“You really said that?”
“Yeah. And some other pretty…colorful things.”
“Good.”
