Page 6 of Noel with the Mountain Man
He's quiet for a beat. "No."
"Oh."
"You?"
"Freshly single. As of three weeks ago." I don't know why I'm telling him this. "He said I was 'too much.' Too loud, too optimistic, too... everything."
Kyler's hand stills on my hip. "He's an idiot."
Something warm blooms in my chest. "You don't know me well enough to say that."
"I know enough." His voice drops lower. "You're not too much."
I lift my head to look at him, and that's a mistake. Because his eyes are storm-gray in the dim morning light, and they're fixed on me with an intensity that makes my breath catch. His jaw is shadowed with more than a day's worth of beard. His hair is messy from sleep.
He looks like every bad decision I've ever wanted to make.
"Kyler—"
"We should get up," he says abruptly, and rolls away.
The loss of his warmth is immediate and brutal. I curl into myself as he climbs out of bed, and try not to feel rejected.
He wasn't rejecting you, I tell myself. He was being responsible. Smart. All the things you should be.
He heads downstairs, and I hear him stoking the fire. I take the opportunity to splash some frigid water on my face from the bathroom—the pipes are still working, thank God—and try to get my head on straight.
This is temporary. The storm will pass. The roads will open. I'll go back to my life, and he'll go back to his, and this will just be a weird story I tell at parties.
Except I don't want it to be just a story.
I push the thought away and head downstairs.
Kyler's added more logs to the fire, and the main room is almost cozy now. He's making coffee on the gas stove—apparently the cabin has a backup propane setup—and the smellalone is enough to make me forgive him for the abrupt exit earlier.
"You're a saint," I say, accepting the mug he hands me.
"I'm really not."
There's something in his tone that makes me look up, but his expression is unreadable.
We spend the morning in careful orbit around each other. He reads a book. I attempt to make sense of the paperback thriller I brought, but I keep reading the same paragraph over and over because I'm too aware of him across the room.
The way he frowns when he's concentrating. The way he absently rubs his jaw. The way he looks at me when he thinks I'm not paying attention.
By afternoon, the cabin feels smaller. The air feels thicker.
"I'm going stir-crazy," I announce, setting down my book. "Want to play a game?"
He raises an eyebrow. "What kind of game?"
"I don't know. Twenty questions? Truth or dare?"
"We're not twelve."
"Fine. How about you just tell me something about yourself? Something real."
He closes his book slowly. "Why?"
