Chapter Three #2
“Okay, kid,” he said—as if he were a million years old, and she was but a slip of a girl.
Weird , she thought at first. But oddly, it seemed to work.
It set her at ease in a way she couldn’t quite explain, before he continued.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen. You’re gonna put a hand on my shoulder, right here, so when you drop, you drop into me and not the ceiling of the car. You with me?”
“Yes. Yes, totally, Mr. Jackson—”
“Cripes, don’t call me Mr. Jackson in the middle of all of this.”
“I don’t know what else to call you, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“You call me Jack, and no sorries either. Now, less talking, more acting.”
He beckoned to her as he said it. One big hand, a quick fold in the middle.
And she wanted to obey, she did. But there was just a single slight issue.
“Of course. Right. Okay. Just one thing, though, not to be a bother, but the seat belt. The seat belt is kind of a little bit stuck. And my leg, too, under the dashboard. I mean, if I wiggle I could maybe get it free but…” she babbled, in a manner that seemed even sillier when contrasted with his measured calm.
He leaned in and assessed and took in the problem like something made of stone, all slow and deliberate. Then he cut her off before she could panic and gesture any further. “No, no, no, don’t worry, I got you, I got you. So, new plan,” he said.
“New plan, all right,” she replied, as reasonably as she could.
“We do everything like I said. But then instead of you releasing the seat belt, you’re gonna look at me. You’re gonna look right at me while I handle the rest. That make sense to you?”
No , she wanted to say. No, that makes no sense at all, there’s no way you’re going to be able to do that, and even if you could I don’t think I can look at you the way you inexplicably want, or touch you the way you’ve asked, as you do .
But truthfully, she was so relieved that he wasn’t murdering her, and so excited at the prospect of being out of an upside-down car, that she couldn’t really find it in her to do anything aside from nod.
Even though nodding meant she’d have to touch him.
It meant putting a hand on his bulky shoulder while his eyes locked with hers. Those usually wild blue eyes, just a little haunted looking now. It’s probably just this strange light, she thought as she tentatively inched toward him.
Too tentatively, it seemed.
“Kid, I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise.
I’m not gonna bite. It’s okay to go faster, much faster, in fact you really need to because we’re in trouble here.
So come on now, just imagine I’m someone less scary and go for it,” he said, in a way that suggested he could definitely smell the gasoline she had identified a second ago.
And it helped.
She managed to grab his shoulder, almost confidently.
Then pulled back, startled. Of course she did.
He was hot . He was so hot it almost seemed to burn for a second.
She thought of accidentally putting a hand on a stove, and had to remind herself that this was impossible.
He’s just exerting himself, he just runs that way, he’s a big guy, of course he’s warm , she thought.
Though, god, she could even feel that heat radiating from the arm he slipped around her. Not exactly making a lot of contact, but that didn’t seem to matter. It bloomed out and all over the nape of her neck, her shoulders. She had the urge to ask him if he had a fever of some type.
But before she could, he reached past her to her belt.
Then there was a sound of something ripping, abrupt and scary enough that she wanted to glance back.
She probably would have done, too—if the tension around her waist and across her chest hadn’t immediately gone slack.
It just went, and the second it did she dropped.
She dropped hard, and fast, and would have definitely crunched her head or broken her neck if he hadn’t been ready.
He caught her easily in the scoop of his arm.
Then held her like that, effortlessly, as he went about freeing her leg.
“Look at me,” he said, and she did. She watched strain smother his face briefly.
Saw the muscles on his arm stand out, obvious even through the thick flannel undershirt he had on.
And this time, the sound wasn’t just a thick rip.
It was a grinding shriek.
Did he just , she thought.
But she didn’t have time to consider if he had done something as wild as moving the entire dashboard. Her leg was free—throbbing and ominously sticky feeling—but free. Plus there was the small matter of being in his arms almost completely. He barely had to do a thing to scoop her out, and oh god .
He didn’t stop at setting her on the ground.
He lifted her all the way up, so fast she couldn’t help gripping him. One hand digging into his shoulder, the other somehow flying up to get a fistful of his undershirt. Face immediately heating at the idea of touching him that way.
And she couldn’t even immediately let go once she realized, either. All she could focus on was how tall he was, and how high he had her. She glanced down at the ground that now seemed like a million miles beneath her, and practically experienced vertigo.
Thankfully, however, he didn’t seem to care.
He simply started back toward the cabin, as businesslike as if he’d hoisted up a sack of potatoes.
All the way to his truck, with his face grim and set and his attention on his goal, until finally he got to it.
He slid her into the passenger seat, so nice and easy and gentle that she only then realized the full extent of what had just happened.
She had been lifted and held and carried by a gigantic beast of a man.
But somehow, she’d worried more about touching him than she had about him touching her. She’d thought of embarrassing herself, of seeming like a wet blanket, fawning all over him. Instead of what she would usually think of in this situation:
Someone hurting her.
A man hurting her.
Like Simon Harcourt, squeezing her upper arm so hard it left bruises when she’d said no to a second date.
Or Phillip Wanamaker in high school, slapping the door back in her face.
Or her father. Her father—not physically violent exactly, but enough to make her jump when he yelled at her to get her goddamned head out of the clouds.
Gone now, of course.
But things like that lingered.
She had no idea why they weren’t lingering around him.
She only knew that this was the first time she’d thought of the word threat throughout everything he’d just done—arguing with her, coming to her aid, getting her out of there and putting her in his truck.
And to the point where she didn’t even feel the need to express concerns about going wherever he was about to take her.
For the first time in her life, she knew it would be somewhere safe.