Nevermore Bookstore: Chapter 18

It took hours for the panic attack to fade.

Fox had done everything in his power to fight it. Biofeedback. Grueling physical labor. Reading. Meditation. Rubbing one out because the memory of being inside Cady wouldn’t leave him the fuck alone. Hunting. Cleaning and recalibrating all his weapons and gear.

The war was over, but here he was…sweating and shaking. Standing in the bottom of a pit dug years ago with no handholds to climb out of.

Finally, he’d done what his ex-wife, Jenny, had often screamed at him to do, and jumped in the lake.

That did the trick.

He felt some type of way about scrubbing Cady off his skin, but it had to be done.

The sight of her, tucked away in her aunt’s ancient bed, where he’d carried her after, proving, once and for all, that he was strong enough to.

The vibrations of anxiety had thrummed through him even then, but he’d allowed himself to hope that the enormity of what they’d just done—of what he felt for her—would be enough to withstand the onslaught of mind-melting, ball-shriveling, soul-shrieking dread that captured and imprisoned him.

With no hope for escape.

Until he was nothing but an animal with no hope of escape. A creature not of dominant lust, but of pure, adrenaline-fueled panic.

She’d wanted to talk after. Had so many questions. Questions he’d promised to answer in the morning as he brushed her eyelids closed with the last kisses his lips would take from her.

He’d made it two hours watching her sleep before the flashbacks and waking nightmares drove his sweating, trembling body out into the night and back to his mountain. A place he never should have left to begin with.

After bathing, Fox swam until his skin turned an alarming shade of iridescent blue and the bone shivers had begun.

Hypothermia stage one.

Maybe he should just float here, wait until his heart became as frozen and heavy as it felt, weighing his body down until he sank like a stone. His breathing would slow so he could no longer be tormented by the scent of her. He’d forget the anguish of knowing what it was like to be inside her as confusion set in. He’d give his despair over to the sleep that would come for him.

And just not wake up.

What if someone comes back for her?

The thought peeled his eyes open and sent him toward the shore with long, sure strokes.

Shivering out of the water, he made his naked way toward the base camp tent to snatch a heavy blanket he’d left warming on the stones by the fire.

Cady would be safe.

Fox’s antipathy for the man aside, the sheriff was someone with a commitment to his job, and he cared for Cady.

It’d been weeks since a break-in, and, Fox had to admit, when it came to petty crimes such as this one, the likelihood of another was slim to none. He couldn’t stop lying to himself about how much she needed him. How much he was enjoying being needed. How much having a purpose had meant. And, for a moment, he’d allowed himself to imagine that he could be a part of her world and not live in it.

What a fucking dumb ass. What did he think he was going to do, sleep on her porch like a dog? On her busted-ass roof?

At least that was taken care of. He’d seen to it. It was the one thing he’d done right.

That and leaving. She was young and beautiful, kind and unique… She’d easily move on.

It was time he did the same, though every mile between them was another weight around his heart.

A branch snapped in the distance. Disturbed birds took to the sky, warning him with their percussive wing beats to get ready or get lost.

A predator approached.

Crouching low, Fox retrieved his knife from its sheath in the belt he kept looped in the pants that’d almost dried by the fire.

“Mother of—” The words burst from the north, along a tree line where evergreens crowded ash and elms with the final stubborn fall leaves shivering on their empty branches.

Was he hallucinating?

“Shitballs.”

No. No, he must be having a cold-induced hallucination. Or some sort of stroke. That couldn’t be—

Cady burst from the trees, a walking stick clutched in her hand as she disentangled some sort of dry weed from her hair and bright, puffy jacket.

“Ugh. Finally!” Breathing as if she’d just summited Everest, she leaned—more like collapsed—against a tree. “Son”—pant—“of a”—gasp—“bitch!” Wheeze.

His first thought: How was it a woman with hair sweat-slicked to her neck and round cheeks flushed red with exertion could look so goddamn tempting?

His second thought: Fucking glad I got out of the freezing lake before she got here and saw me naked.

Followed by: Did she just call me a son of a bitch? Or was it just a general expletive?

And finally: What the fuck is she doing here?

“What the fuck are you doing here?”

The look she leveled at him was so full of scorching condemnation that he almost took a step in retreat.

“What does—it—look like?” she managed, bending at the waist and resting her forehead on her walking stick while digging one hand into a stitch in her side. “I’m dying.”

“Come by the fire.” Instincts kicking in, he almost offered her his blanket, but realized what a mistake that would be. “You need to sit down.”

She shrugged off his hand on her elbow. “You need…to fuck…off.”

His hand dropped to his side, shoulders slumping. “Cady…I did. This is me fucking off. I—”

“Hup.” She hushed the shit out of him by holding up one finger and directing a death glare the heartiest of warlords would be wise to fear. “Listen. I’m going to…kick your ass…just as soon as I’m done exhaling lung tissue…probably.”

He couldn’t help but smirk, despite his freezing heart. And feet. “That right?”

“Yeah.”

“How?” he breathed.

“Oh, I took ass-kicking classes,” she said, finally able to speak in sentences, though her breathing remained labored. “What’s that…Brazilian ground karate?”

“Jiu-jitsu?”

“Yeah. That. I can do a rear-naked choke.” She demonstrated a terrible choke-out.

And here he thought he was too frozen to get a boner.

“It’s not exactly karat— You know what? Doesn’t matter.” He shook himself, hating that she was so adorable, even when quite obviously furious. She was probably the only person in the PNW without hiking gear, and very definitely the only one on the Olympic Peninsula to wear Chuck Taylors up a mountain.

Finally, his brain turned over as if he’d yanked on the cord hard enough. He reached for her, his instinct to check her for injuries. “Tell me what’s wrong. What happened? Are you in trouble?”

She slapped his hands away and continued fighting for breath. “No. You are. Big trouble. Big fucking trouble, Fox.” After sloughing her backpack, she dropped to her knees and yanked it open, diving in for three separate bottles of pills.

He stood there like a dope, watching her pour one of each into her palm.

“You came after me?” His heart shattered into pieces, some of them taking off into the stratosphere, and others sinking into the depths of his personal abyss.

“Yup.”

“Cady. Why would you do that?” He wanted to gesture wildly, but that would mean letting the blanket drop, and a lecture just wasn’t as profound with your dick out. “Let me rephrase. Why the fuck would you do that?”

Ignoring him, she dug into her pack. “Where is my water bottle?”

Stalking to the tent, he grabbed one of his glass growlers he’d dipped in the fresh spring and treated. “Here. I have water. Drink.”

“I don’t need your drink.” She’d found her water bottle. It crinkled in her hand as she gulped her pills down.

She was being obstinate. Angry. He deserved it.

Never in a million years had he thought she might follow him up a mountain to dress him down. He must have hurt her more than he’d thought…

He wished that didn’t feel as good as it did awful. It meant she cared more than he realized.

Shit.

“Cady.” He stood over her, as close as he could get without touching her. “It was reckless and dangerous coming up here. It’s at least three miles down to the road.”

“You don’t have to tell me that. I just climbed that far up this godforsaken mountain.” Again, her facts escaped as accusations. “I need you to come back with me. If we leave now, we can be back to town by dark. It’s three miles downhill, and Cypress Forrester said his sister, Rowan, left one of those Gators or Alke’s in the Salish Meadow to take us back to town. Come on. We’ll talk on the way. Well, I’ll talk. You can stay in your monosyllabic and terse and emotionally constipated comfort zone if you want to.”

“No.”

“What did you just say to me?” Her eyes darkened from cerulean to a stormy sea gray.

“I’m not going back to town. And you shouldn’t have come here.” His voice had hardened against her anger.

“How the hell else am I supposed to talk to you?” she demanded, using her stick to stand after refusing his offer of help. “You won’t pick up your sat phone.”

“I threw it in the river…” he muttered.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He looked at the sky, at the treetops becoming shadows. “Come on,” he said, resigned to a night of utter misery. “Let’s get you by the fire.”

“No!” She again resisted his leading hand. “No, I’m not leaving you here to sleep in a tent in November. You just said there isn’t much time left.” As she stepped forward, some of the fury leaked from her eyes, replaced by pleading. “Please. Come home. We’ll—”

“Townsend Harbor is your home, Cady, not mine.”

Her expression nearly killed him. An amalgamation of hurt, anger, surprise, and regret.

Great, another thing to feature in his nightmares.

“Cady, if you don’t get warm and dry, your sweat will make you colder and possibly give you hypothermia.”

“Don’t be patronizing,” she said, suddenly all spikes and barbs. “You don’t have to mansplain the woods to me, asshole—I’ve lived here longer than you. I know what’s dangerous and what risks I decide to take.” A shiver coursed through her, and she winced as if it’d hurt her bones. “I decided I’m going to sit by the fire. But not because you told me to.” She marched toward the glowing coal bed, and he followed, picking up a log to drive the flames higher.

Jesus, she was more beautiful by firelight. Last time he’d seen her, she was covered in a similar sheen. An afterglow of pleasure that turned her into a living seraph.

The blanket fell open, and he felt the autumn chill on his nuts. He needed to get dressed before something bad happened.

Before something amazing happened.

“Stay here—I’m going to get dressed.”

“Why are you undressed?” She swallowed, pretending not to sneak glances at him from beneath her lashes.

“I just took a bath.” He pointed to the lake.

“You are crazy,” she said, staring at the unfriendly water beneath a sky threatening to bring winter any moment.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you…” he said with the kind of gravitas he could see hit her hard. “Now come on and get warm while I dress, and I’ll take you back to the vehicle.” He shouldn’t, because then he’d want to take her home. Follow her in. Fuck her again.

Dammit. It was a cycle he refused to perpetuate. He would get her home and disappear.

Suddenly he knew that would do him all the way in.

“I’m not leaving until we talk,” she said, blocking his way with her body.

Instead of backing down, he stepped up. “I told you from the start—I’m not the kind of trouble you need.”

She snorted, undeterred by his intimidations. “I know you think you’re some kind of big, strong hermit who’s too broken to love, but you don’t get to decide that for me. I’m sorry, but you can’t just show up and make me…make me care for you and then fuck my brains out and bounce. Who do you think you are?”

“A piece of shit, Cady,” he shot back, injecting his voice with the frustration he felt as he stepped around her and offered her his back. “I’m the kind of man that does that kind of thing. Surprise—I’m an asshole.”

“No, you’re not.”

“You just called me—” Whirling, he stabbed his free hand at her. “Know what? You don’t know the first thing about me, Cadence Bloomquist. You don’t even know my name.”

“Not because I didn’t ask! You keep giving me fakes.” She gestured wildly, and her puffy peach coat made swishing sounds with her movements.

“Then take the hint!”

“This wasn’t a hint!” Her voice rose two octaves from crunchy to pissed as she reached into her pocket and pulled out his note. “It was a fucking cop-out. You got scared and you ran, and then you decided that I shouldn’t chase you.” She carefully unfolded the note that had been obviously read many times it was like a piece of tin foil trying to be reused. “I mean, what—and I cannot stress this enough—the absolute fuck were you thinking? How dare you treat me like that. You call me and seduce with your stupid deep, sexy voice and your brilliant dumb fucking man brain who reads stuff other than novels about various Jacks that kill people in combat boots.”

Her features pinched into something that lanced him all the way through with self-hatred, her eyes large and swimming with emotion. “You quoted fucking Shakespeare, Poe, and Plath to me. And then you come to my house, to my business, and protect me and help me and make yourself an indispensable part of my life until I’m so seduced, I can’t see straight.”

“Cady, that’s not what I meant to—”

She cut off his apology with a violently expansive gesture. “And then? And then you fuck me within an inch of my life, give me three orgasms in less than twenty minutes, and tuck my ass into bed as I’m thinking maybe…” She let that thought trail off. “I wake up to this piece-of-shit note? How could you? Are you some kind of sociopath?”

A sociopath couldn’t hurt this much. “Maybe.”

She rolled her eyes so hard he was worried she’d sprained something. “It’s called hyperbole, look it up.”

“There are days I’m dead inside, Cady. Just waiting for my body to catch up.”

“Oh please, we’ve all been dead inside since the pandemic.” She threw up her hands. “You are one of the most vital men I’ve met. And I know you love it here in the woods with your perfect lake and your tent and the fucking coyotes and deer to keep your damage company. You are capable, Fox. You’re broken, but so is everything else I love. So am I. You just have to want this enough to fight for it.” She gestured between their bodies, and he actively hated the space between them.

“I won’t fight for it.” The words fell like razor blades from his mouth, cutting deeper than he’d even expected.

Her jaw went slack.

The look in her eyes made him want to tear his own out. It wasn’t that he wouldn’t fight to keep her. He couldn’t. He wasn’t just broken—he was ruined. Beyond repair.

“You need to forget about me, Cady. I was cruel to foster something between us. I was selfish and mean, because I knew the whole time, I couldn’t keep you. And I still allowed myself to get close… But Cady, you need to find someone else. Someone who can take you to movies and restaurants and dinner parties at friends’ houses. Someone who can sleep next to you. Someone who is capable of loving you the way you deserve…” His throat closed, as he could say no more on the subject without swallowing a bullet immediately.

For a second, she looked as if he’d slapped her. “Literally? Who would you suggest? You don’t think I’ve looked? The men around here either hoard guns or spooge kombucha. What am I supposed to do with that?”

“There’s Ethan.” He deserved another medal of valor for not puking on the spot.

She pulled a face. “No there isn’t.”

“He likes you. He wants you.”

“We respect each other. That’s different.”

Fox turned away as every awful thing he’d ever witnessed men do to a woman became some sort of morbid, infuriating PowerPoint in his mind. “I’ve seen what’s out there in the world, Cady. You could do worse than a handsome man who would protect and respect you with the security of family money and a good name in the community.”

“Ew, what is this, the 1800s?” She stared at him as if he’d tried to sell her laudanum or some shit.

“I’m just saying.”

“You think he’s so great? You end up with him, then.”

After taking a deep breath, he tried again. “I’ve been through this before, remember? I was married. I saw what a man like me can do to a woman’s life. I know why I’m— Why do you keep making that expression?”

“Because you keep saying stupid stuff with that hole in your face!” she hollered.

“Because you won’t listen!”

“Because why should I? You’re talking nonsense.”

“I’m speaking the truth.”

She’d fully recovered her breath, though her chest heaved for a different reason now, and her eyes and color were no less bright. “Your truth isn’t mine. You don’t get to tell me what my truth is.”

“My truth is that I cannot live in town. And you can’t live like this.” He thrust his hand toward his tent, the one in which he slept with the window unzipped to the mesh.

Her jaw jutted forward. “Watch me.”

Stomping over to the fire, she punched open the tent flap and tossed her bag inside.

“Cady—” He moved to stop her.

“Nope. Nope, you said it’ll be dark soon, and I’m not driving down the mountain in the dark without you, so…” She ducked into the tent, leaving him with a sight of her ass in those tight jeans before the flap fell back over the door.

Silently screaming just about every bad word, Fox considered his options.

Other than this super-insulated blanket, he had an all-weather sleeping bag. The night was chilled, but not freezing, as the temp rarely dropped that low in the PNW, even in the dead of January.

However, she wasn’t a woman used to the hard ground. Or sleeping bags. Or life without her pills to make it bearable.

Maybe he should encourage her to stay. Let her learn how inhospitable and uncomfortable his life could be.

He checked the sunless sky, too aware of his own nakedness. Bad idea. He needed as many layers as possible between him and the woman with whom he’d had the hottest sex of his life.

“Can I at least have my clothes first?” he requested through his teeth.

“It’s your tent. I’m not keeping you from it,” came the salty reply from within.

“Can you hand them to me?”

“It’s too risky and dangerous for li’l old me out there. Probably have to get them yourself.”

“You’re acting like a brat,” he muttered.

“And you’re being a selfish ass. So we’re in great company.”

She was making this harder than it should be. Both figuratively and literally.

His heart threw itself against its cage a few times, trying to drag the rest of him into that tent with her.

She came for me.

What the fuck was he supposed to do with that?

Dammit. He punched the abused flap aside as well, unveiling her prone form resting on her elbows and stretched out on his bedroll. “It’s not so bad in here.” She looked around as if sizing up real estate. “Actually kinda roomy.”

He ducked inside and let his sheer mass take up most of the room. And noticed she suppressed a shudder.

“You’re cold,” he said, wisely leaving out the I told you so.

“You’re cold. I’m dressed.”

His irate sound grated through the gathering evening. “Cady, you’re shaking.”

“Because I’m that mad,” she said through trembling teeth. “Those are the mad shivers. I’ll shiver until we hash this out.”

He ached to hold her. To pull her close and share their heat. To slide against her body and…

“Listen, woman.” He used his commanding soldier voice. “You’re going to climb into that sleeping bag and zip it up until you are either dry or your core temperature rises, and you stop shivering. Got that?”

Squinting at him, she showed no fear, though she chewed the inside of her cheeks as she contemplated her counteroffensive. “Fine.” She grunted, squirmed, and wriggled into his bag, eschewing all help from him. “I’ll sleep over here.”

“Fine. I’ll take you back in the morning.”

“Fine.” She stared at him a moment, her eyes begging him to say something. Anything else.

“Fine.” He turned away from her, not bothering to change into anything but the fur blanket in which he was now ensconced.

“Fine.” She turned to face the opposite wall, sniffing suspiciously.

Don’t cry, he silently begged.

Fine?

Nothing was fine. Nothing would ever be fine again.