Page 60 of Little Bird
That’s something I can control.
“You’re twenty,” I grouse. “What the fuck can you possibly have to think about it in the middle of the night? You don’t have any problems.”
She gives me a long look full of secrets, then shakes her head and turns back toward the pantry. “Being twenty doesn’t mean I don’t have any problems, Gunner. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
And just like that she’s gone, the frank sleepiness of her vanishing into the cookie-scented air around us. She moves quickly back into the pantry like she doesn’t want anything else to do with me, and I follow her without thinking, my soul reaching for the essence of her.
I want to know what she’s hiding from me. Why she called me in the middle of the night when she could have called her mother. What drove her up onto the mountain, and why she won’t tell me when she’s leaving again. I want to know how I can save her from whatever’s got her so scared.
I want to be the one to make her safe again.
I get into the doorway of the pantry to find her looking quickly through the things on the shelf, shuffling them out of the way and then rearranging them, and for a moment I don’t know if she’s actually looking for anything or just searching for a way to avoid me. She clicks her tongue, though, and starts searching on another shelf, and I realize that she actually is looking for something.
“What are you doing?” I ask quietly, not meaning just with the food on the shelves.
She freezes like she knows exactly what I’m asking and has gone into fight or flight, every muscle tensed with the need to get out of there before I force her to tell me what she’s hiding. When she answers, her voice is small, like a child’s. “I’m looking for something.”
I move up behind her and put my hands on her shoulders, too intoxicated by her to keep from touching her. “What are you looking for, Taryn?”
A pause, and I wonder if she’s actually going to tell me. I wonder if the way to get her secrets is just to ask—and if that was always true and I was too stupid to see it.
“I was wondering if you have any toffee chips,” she almost whispers. “I mean, you probably don’t. Just because I want them doesn’t mean you have them. But I was hoping...”
God-all-fucking-mighty, I can’t do this. The tone of her voice, the helpless way she says it, the vulnerability and fucking honesty of the statement, all go straight to my dick, and I grow hard as steel, my length suddenly straining against the zipper of my jeans. My hips rock in response and I have to fight to keep from grabbing her and turning her around to face me. Lifting her up, spreading her legs, and taking her right here against the shelves of the fucking pantry.
I groan deeply, fighting my lust for control of my body, and in that moment, I realize what she’s just asked.
Toffee chips. She’s baking cookies and is looking for toffee chips. She’s already made cinnamon cookies, which are Gabe’s favorite. And now she’s looking for toffee chips.
She’s going to make my favorite cookies next.
If I have the ingredients.
And as fate would have it, I think I do.
I lean into her now, my chest against her back and my hips grinding against her ass as I reach up over her head. I feel around on the top shelf, knowing exactly what’s up here because I catalogued our supplies at the start of winter to see what else we might need. The bracelet I never take off slips to my forearm, and I watch it, noting the one charm attached. I wonder if Taryn sees it.
I wonder if she remembers what it means.
When I find the right bag, I bring it down.
“Actually, I do. They’re left from when you lived here before.”
I place them gently on the shelf in front of her, within reach, and then turn and leave the pantry, my heart too full to allow me to stay, the emotions far too big to be safe in such a small space. And as I walk out, my dick shifting in my pants, I realize she probably felt me against her, hard and wanting and almost desperate with my need.
And I don’t hate the idea that she felt me.
I don’t hate the idea that she knows.
Taryn
It isn’t hard to figure out where he went. I watch him walk through the door in the kitchen and onto the snow-covered porch, then let my eyes travel to the window. It isn’t snowing out there anymore, but the world is still frozen, white with ice and frigid with the wind.
He took a coat, but that isn’t going to be enough.
I root through the cupboards for two thermoses and quickly fill them with coffee, then pause to add cream and brown sugar to one—Gunner’s favorite—and chocolate to the other for me. I put several cookies into a foil packet, stuff it in the pocket of my hoodie, and head for the door, grabbing a coat on my way out. I pause long enough to get my camera, which is hanging on the coat rack, and then open the door.
The snow outside shows me his trail, and I glance down the steps, across the yard, and into the forest. I don’t know the property as well as Gunner and Gabe, obviously, but I can remember the basic layout. And if he’s doing what I think he’s doing, he’s heading for the ridge on the east side of the woods.
