3. Reed
Reed
Reed
So last night wasn’t a nightmare. I hoped it was. But even before I open my eyes, the throbbing in my head and my leg tells me otherwise.
I’m really here, sharing Harris’s cabin—sharing Harris’s bed —with one of the Walker girls. Though I suppose she’s one of the Walker women now. I went to the same high school as the older girl— Laura? Laurel? Hell if I remember. We weren’t in the same grade, so she was easy to avoid. This girl, the younger sister, the red-haired one…I haven’t seen her since the day she took a chunk out of my hand. She ought to have been easy to avoid, too—our city isn’t big, but it’s big enough that unless you’ve got the same circles of friends or work, you can go a long time without seeing someone you’d rather not. But my friend circle overlaps with her work circle, so Harris mentions her now and then.
I wish to fuck that he’d mentioned she’d be here at the cabin. Maybe I wouldn’t have left my dad’s lodge last night. I’d have stayed there with his new family and pretended the shit with Karilee never happened.
But, no. I’m no good at pretending. And being snowed in with a Walker girl is better than staying in the same house as my new stepmother.
Marginally better.
From beside me, a curse comes out on a low groan. “Fuuuck. It wasn’t a bad dream?”
Goddammit. Realizing that I wasn’t stuck in a nightmare was my first thought on waking, too. My skull must have been whacked real fucking hard if my brain’s on the same wavelength as a Walker’s.
Not that I’ll say it out loud. I decided last night, I’ll be nice. No matter how the Walker woman provokes me, no matter how much acid drips from her tongue. She opened the door, then took care of me. Grudgingly, but she did. So I’ll get along with her. Even if it kills me.
The way my head feels, it might.
She hisses. “Ouch, you little shit! Get off my tit.”
What the fuck is she accusing me of? All my good intentions fly out the window. “My hands aren’t anywhere near you, woman. I wouldn’t touch Walker tit if you paid me.”
“Aw, you won’t? Golly-gosh darnit. That was item number one on my Christmas list: pay Reed Knowles to tiddle my tits. I guess I’ll go cry pitiful tears in the bathroom.”
It’s too early and too dark to see anything, but her sarcasm is sharp enough to slice steel. She doesn’t wait for my response. The mattress dips as she lurches over my body—I’m on the open side of the bed, while her side is pushed up against the wall, so over me is the only way off. Though she doesn’t touch me, the jostling feels like a boot to my head and my thigh. The throbbing in both ramps up to a ten, hauling in some nausea and vertigo along with it.
The next few minutes aren’t too clear.
There’s more light the next time I open my eyes. She’s built up the fire and is visibly shivering in front of it with a quilted throw wrapped around her shoulders. Beneath the small blanket is a thick red robe that reaches her knees, plaid flannel pajama pants, and fleece-lined socks decorated with snowflakes—rendering her petite form into a shapeless lump of fuzzy Christmas cheer, topped by an explosion of auburn curls that hang halfway down her back.
Yet my mind keeps lingering on the memory of how she appeared last night, all legs and curves and ferocity. My first thought upon seeing an unfamiliar woman in all her poker-wielding fury: Harris, you lucky bastard. But a glance around the cabin told me she was alone. No Harris. A second look at that wild red hair clued me in to her identity.
I’d been admiring a Walker girl.
That realization slammed into me harder than the tree branch. Hours later, lying in bed, I’m still feeling the effects. I’m trying to think about anything but the way she looked, eyes narrowed and wary, her full lips twisted in a snarl, small hands gripping that poker—silently daring the asshole who just stumbled into her cabin to take one wrong step.
What the fuck is wrong with me that I can’t get that image out of my mind? Yet I can’t focus on anything else. Not with the way my head is pounding. Worse than any hangover I’ve ever had. Worse than the shit I caught at the beginning of the pandemic. I don’t think I’m sick with a virus now, but my whole damn body feels a lot like it did then, lethargic and weak, though I only banged my head and my leg.
“You should take these.”
I don’t know when I closed my eyes. But I must have, because I open them to find the Walker girl standing next to the bed, one arm extended toward me.
Sluggishly, I try to understand what she wants me to do. Shake her hand?
She makes an irritated little moue of her lips, no doubt biting back one of her acid comments before settling for, “You groaned. Like you were dying. It disturbed me.”
“I’ll try to keep my dying on the inside,” I mutter, knowing I won’t, because I’d rather disturb her. Especially if makes her do that pouty thing with her mouth. Then I spot the ibuprofen tablets lying in her palm. Either my vision is doubled or that’s too many pills. “Four?”
In response to my blatant suspicion, she rolls her eyes. “I’m not trying to kill you. These are two hundred milligrams each. When I got my wisdom teeth out, they prescribed an eight hundred milligram dose. So I figure this is safe. Unless ibuprofen is bad for a concussion, but I can’t look that up online right now.” She shrugged. “I suppose it’s a risk. Probably small. Depending on how shitty you feel, it might be worth taking.”
A concussion. Right. That’s the reason for the fog around my brain, muffling every thought except for how pretty she is.
No, not pretty. She’s not that. She’s…something else.
And I do feel shitty enough to take the risk. The room spins when I push myself up to sitting. I close my eyes until the world settles.
When I open them again, I freeze in place—staring at the foot of the bed. Not sure what I’m seeing. Some kind of furry orange gremlin.
“What the hell is that thing?” If there is anything. If it’s not some concussion-induced hallucination.
Her eyebrows shoot upward. Her eyes crinkle at the corners and she bites her bottom lip—against a burst of hilarity, I realize, and suddenly I want to see her laugh. Want to hear it.
But that’s the concussion talking. I’ll play nice, but I have zero interest in seeing any Walker happy.
“That,” she says, and there’s a wobble to her voice as if her laughter is still right there on the tip of her tongue, “is the tit tiddler.”
Tit tiddler? Oh fuck.
By the look in her eyes, she’s enjoying how stupid I feel right now. My face grows hot, and I mumble an apology—completely inadequate, but all I can manage. I’m a fucking prick. I know it.
I can’t meet her gaze. Not while embarrassment still flushes my face. Even the tips of my ears are burning. I pretend they aren’t, accept from her the pills and a glass of water, and study the cat as I swallow them.
Though obviously well-fed and clean, it’s the most unfortunate-looking animal I’ve ever seen—a raggedy ginger with a squashed pug nose, whiskers resembling a drooping walrus mustache, and a sullen glower. “Was that thing in the cabin last night?”
Even with a concussion, I couldn’t have missed seeing that .
“He hid under the bed when you barged in.”
The cat doesn’t seem afraid now. Instead he’s staked his claim on her side of the mattress. After, apparently, staking his claim on her chest. The creature’s baleful green gaze follows our movements when she takes back the empty glass.
I continue to eye him warily. “He doesn’t look happy.”
“He never looks happy. Are you up for food?”
Just the thought of chewing intensifies the throbbing in my head. “Maybe not yet.”
“All right.” She leaves my bedside and returns, dragging one of the chairs from under the small dining table. “In case you need to get to the bathroom and aren’t steady on your feet yet. You can use it like a walker—and sit down on the seat if you become dizzy.”
I want to say a crutch won’t be necessary. But the way my head spins now and again, it might be. “That’s…smart.”
“Smart. Hmmm.” She tilts her head, laughter sparking in her eyes again. I’m not sure yet what color they are. The light in this corner of the cabin isn’t good enough. Some medium color. Hazel, I think. Maybe green. But whatever shade, her amusement seems to make her eyes brighten her entire face. “Did that hurt to say?”
“It did.” But I have to admit, “Everything hurts right now.”
“Hence the inner dying.” She chews on the bottom corner of her lip, gaze running over me as if searching for anything else she can do to help, then shakes her head. “Well, let those pills kick in. Maybe you’ll feel better soon.”
After a while, I do feel better. A little. Enough to convince myself that I can make it to the other side of the cabin without the use of the chair.
I do. Barely. I’m so damn shaky that as soon as I close the bathroom door behind me, I spend a good ten minutes sitting on the toilet lid, gearing myself up for the effort it’ll take to stand again and piss. Not to mention the return trip to bed.
This is the most humiliating situation I’ve ever been in. But slightly less humiliating than if Harris found me dead outside his cabin door, since my keys are in my pack. Which is still strapped to the snowmobile.
He’d give me shit for that while standing over my frozen corpse. Then probably carve Here Lieth One Stupid Fucker on my gravestone.
The Walker girl saved me from that final indignity, at least.
I know better than to prod the lump on my head, but I get a look at my thigh when my pants are down. The bruise isn’t too colorful yet. The green and purple are likely coming. The whole area feels tender and hot, and every step hurts like a motherfucker.
But I don’t want to lie in bed all day. So despite the pain, I carefully make my way to one of the armchairs in front of the fire. Seated at the table, the Walker girl watches me with a doubtful expression as I cross the cabin, then purses her lips when I manage the distance without falling flat on my face.
“Want coffee?” She taps the steaming mug in front of her, as if my rattled brain might have forgotten what coffee was. “Or water?”
I hate that she’s still having to look after me. Even if my leg didn’t hurt and my head didn’t spin, I’m so shaky I can’t trust myself to carry a full cup of anything.
“Water sounds good.” So does coffee, but I don’t know if the caffeine will be good for a concussion. And in order to heal, it’s probably better to sleep than to artificially keep myself awake. “Thank— ow, fuck!”
Her cat jumps up onto my legs, with two paws and what seems like most of his weight landing squarely on my bruised thigh. Though I’m seeing stars and this goddamn close to crying, I gently urge him over to the other side of my lap.
The Walker girl arrives with my water, grimacing in something close to sympathy. “He always knows right where it hurts. Want me to move him?”
“He’s all right.” Curled up now like any cat, though still looking as friendly as a rabid bulldog. “What’s his name?”
“Hot Biscuit Slim.”
“Nothing about this cat is slim.”
“And you’re not a reed.”
Fair point, but I’m not called Hot Biscuit Reed, either. “Did you make up that name or is it from something?”
“It’s from something.”
She doesn’t volunteer what it’s from. Though now that I’m thinking about it, I feel like I’ve heard the name before. I study the cat, trying to dig through the throbbing depths of my memory. Maybe something I read a long time ago? Or a cartoon character?
He looks like one. Like the animated version of a perpetually disappointed eighty-year-old man watching a bunch of screaming kids shit on his lawn. Fucking adorable.
The Walker woman is currently wearing the same grumpy expression. Not sure if it’s adorable or terrifying. “He never cuddles on my lap.”
Wordlessly I stroke my hand along his back. A soft purr fills the air.
She glowers at us both before spinning and returning to the table. Outside, the wind has eased up but the snow hasn’t. There’s not much light coming in through the window, so she’s set up a small halogen lantern to illuminate a project she’s got spread out. My gaze remains on her face for a while. The brighter light reveals a faint smattering of freckles that weren’t as visible by firelight. In my bashed-head state, those freckles are fucking mesmerizing. As is the way her upper lip is a bit plumper and poutier than her lower one, which I didn’t notice until I saw her in profile. Now I can’t stop looking.
Although I’m watching her, it’s a long time before I actually see what her hands are doing…which is viciously stabbing cranberries with a needle before shoving them onto a string.
“Are you making something or cooking?”
“Making.” She impales another cranberry. “A garland for the tree.”
“What tree?”
“The one I’ll go out and get as soon as it stops snowing.”
Which doesn’t appear to be any time soon. Which means I’m not leaving any time soon, either.
So I’d probably better learn her name. “Which one are you?”
“Which what?”
“I know you’re a Walker. I don’t know which one you are.”
She briefly pinches her bottom lip between her teeth and that top lip pillows out a little more. “Well,” she says, “it depends who you ask.”
“What?”
“To you ”—she casts her gaze briefly my way, arching her brows before turning back to her garland and skewering a berry through the gut—“I’m the vicious one.”
My face feels hot again, which irritates the hell out of me. I’m not a blushing man. Yet the heat doesn’t recede as she continues. It just sits there, under my skin.
“But to someone else I know, I’m the disappointing and ungrateful one—and the one who will never live up to my full potential. To someone else, I’m the scourge of the earth, a slave to capitalism and enemy to the downtrodden, as well as a traitor to all that’s good and decent.” She slants me another arch look. “Exactly which one of those depends on what day it is.”
The flush in my face has spread all over now and gone beyond irritating, making everything in my field of vision waver like heated air over asphalt in summer. “I just want your name.”
“Ah.” She seems to consider. “No, I don’t think so.”
“What?” My brain’s sluggish, but I think she just refused to tell me her name.
Who does that?
She gives an unconcerned shrug. “I don’t feel like telling you.”
I don’t know what to say in reply. I stare at her, head pounding, leg aching, skin burning. Trying to fathom the sheer stubborn senselessness of being stuck in a one-room cabin with another person and not sharing your name with them.
After a while, the unreasonable woman asks in the most reasonable tone, “You hate us, but you don’t even know our names?”
“I do my best not to think of any Walkers at all.” Especially not while my brain is in a throbbing fucking fog. Though I know she’s not Laurel or Laura. That’s the one I went to school with. Lauren? Lauryn? That’s it. Lauryn. I’m pretty sure. I remember the Y from somewhere. In a yearbook, maybe. Christ, that was a long time ago.
“I suppose you also do your best not to think about how to tear our lives apart?”
“I honestly haven’t fantasized about that in a while.”
She scoffs. “How long is a while? A year and a half ago? Because that’s when you stole my mom’s house out from under her. Remember? She said you were there. You and your dad.”
Angela. That’s her mom. That one, I’m certain of. I’ve seen her name too many times over the course of my life, in continuous lawsuits that all failed and on my business’s social media accounts until I blocked her. And the last time I saw her…
“I wouldn’t say we stole the house out from under her.” But my head’s too fucked to think about how I should say it. “I remember there was some tax trouble.”
“Tax trouble?” She gives a short, disbelieving laugh. “As if your dad’s cronies at the county didn’t cause that trouble by reassessing the property value for far more than it’s worth. Far more than anyone could reasonably pay, dismissing her appeals, then slapping her with a levy. And the man who bought it for nothing just happened to be your dad.”
“Pretty sure it wasn’t for nothing.” Though I can’t recall exactly how much it was.
“Your idea of nothing is a hell of a lot different from mine.” Her glare sears me from across the cabin. “But the money was never the point, was it? She said your father gloated as the papers were signed. That he crowed about how he couldn’t wait to bulldoze it all. How he couldn’t wait to destroy everything my dad once loved.”
My face is hot as fuck. And the heat’s sinking in deeper and deeper. “He did gloat.”
“But you didn’t? Can you honestly say you weren’t thrilled the Walkers were brought so low? Or that you weren’t glad to see the home where my mom and sister lived razed to the ground? Last night you said you’d be happy if another Walker got what was coming to them. So tell me you didn’t enjoy seeing my mom’s house bulldozed.”
“I can’t.” Not after all the shit that woman pulled. “I was even there to watch it happen.”
My brain must be completely scrambled, because it takes the widening of her eyes—as if even she is stunned that I’d admit to something so callous—to realize that maybe I should have held my tongue on that one. That I should have softened it. Especially since I’m at her mercy here. And she’s been taking care of me.
Instead of grabbing up the poker and giving me another whack to the head, though, she merely sets her jaw and returns to stabbing berries.
I watch her, my gaze wandering over that lip, her freckles, then that hair. My mind wanders with it. Absently I rub the crescent scar below my thumb. Remembering the last time I saw this one. Even then, with wild red hair. The recollection is hazy. Mostly a memory of being shocked that she’d bitten me, and of the blood on the white dress shirt that I’d worn to the funeral home. And how my father was shouting at her mother, and her mother was screaming at my father, and her older sister was pulling her away and calling her?—
“Abbie.”
Her head jerks up and she stares at me, eyes wide. And I was right. Hazel.
“That’s what it is. Yeah? Abbie.”
Her jaw clenches. Her chin dips in a small nod.
I suppose she could have pretended I was wrong. Could have strung me along like she’s stringing those berries, while holding onto whatever pleasure it’d given her to deny me in the first place. But I suspect this isn’t a woman in the habit of lying. Or in the habit of saying anything but what she truly believes.
Abbie.
“I guess I’m thinking of you now,” I tell her.
“Don’t,” she says, and returns to her decorations.
Don’t. But I won’t be able to help thinking of her. Won’t be able to help looking at her, either. She’s too… pretty is not the right description. Not when I think of her poker-wielding fury. Not when I think of how her eyes shoot fire. But I can’t think of the right word to describe her.
That’s not like me.
But the throbbing mist around my brain keeps closing in, and thinking hurts too much. Despite sleeping all night, the heat and the fog are dragging me down again.
It’s too much effort to fight them.