Chapter 12
Twelve
Getting your period right after a day of crying is so validating. I knew I wasn’t a weak little bitch.
—Mable to Cody
Mable
I woke up cocooned in a blanket, toasty warm, with the arms and legs of what felt like Hercules wrapped around me.
I didn’t automatically pull away, mostly because I felt like I was in heaven.
I’d never felt so safe and protected in my life.
“Are you awake yet?” a sleep-roughened voice asked.
I yawned huge, my head tilting back as I did.
“I guess so,” I murmured and opened my eyes.
It was light out, but you could barely tell due to the blackout curtains that were blocking most of the daylight.
There was enough light for me to see the color of butterscotch, though.
“Hey.” I cleared my throat, hoping to cause some of the sleepiness to clear from my morning voice. Birdee always liked to point out that I sounded like I smoked thirty packs of cigarettes in my sleep. “Um, how did I get here?”
He grunted out a sound that sounded amused. “You don’t remember anything you did or said last night?”
That had my belly dropping.
The only time I got like this was when…
“Did I take some Benadryl last night?”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
This was bad.
Bad, bad, bad.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
I thought about that answer for a long moment, my eyes on his, and eventually said, “Leaving work.”
He sighed. “Long story short, you went to eat at Hopps with Cody. Then y’all got to talking, and the anger at your father and sister started coming out.
So you decided that a few drinks was the answer.
You arrived at the bar where the bartender, Shade, decided to serve you a tequila with lime on the rim.
Though he went out of his way to hide that he did it.
Your lips started to swell, which clued you in on what he’d done.
Cody went to the store next door and forced some Benadryl into you. ”
“Fuck,” I murmured. “And how did I get here, with you?”
“You told Cody that you would be fine on your own. Cody and I made the executive decision that you wouldn’t be. So, you came home with me since Cody had to help her dad plow the streets.”
“The storm,” I mumbled. “Was it bad?”
“I have no clue if two feet of snow in one night is bad. But everything is shut down. Even Bunyan’s,” he muttered, unwrapping his arms and legs from around me.
I tried to block out how upset I was at the feeling of loss, but choked it down to focus on more practical matters.
The urge to pee was upon me.
I started to unroll myself, unsure just how I’d become so entangled in the sheets.
I finally freed myself from the sheet when I stood up and stretched.
When I felt bare air on my behind, I hastily tugged my t-shirt back down and gasped. “I’m so sorry.”
I had no clue what I’d done last night to warrant being completely changed into just a t-shirt—his t-shirt that smelled phenomenally good—but I knew that I’d done something.
Hopefully I didn’t try to sleep in the bathtub again…
“For what?” he asked from the other side of the bed, hand propping up his head.
“I don’t know what I did last night to warrant a change of clothes but…”
“You made snow angels in the snow,” he said. “You were soaked by the time I got you inside. You changed into one of my shirts on your own, and I ran a load of laundry with your wet clothes.”
“Oh.” I paused. “That’s not too bad.”
Not bad at all.
Definitely very tame for me and Benadryl Mable.
“Though, that was after you dove face first into the snow and told me you should probably just stay there overnight.”
I winced. “I swear I’m not this bad during my sober hours.”
He jerked his head toward the bathroom. “Bathroom’s through there.”
I took the hint and scurried to the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind me.
When I got the door firmly closed, I took a look around at the space.
The walls were made of pine, stained clear so you could see all the beautiful markings.
The floor was a darker brown, as was the ceiling. The sink was copper, with a massive faucet that matched.
But the shower area was what held me hostage.
It was…nice.
So very nice.
It was a huge walk-in, floor-to-ceiling white tile with a tub in the very corner that was calling my name.
“Hey, Romeo?”
“Yeah?” His voice sounded from the other side of the door. Close but not like he had his ear pressed to the door close.
“Can I take a bath?”
“Sure,” he called out. “I think there’s soap in there. Stuff underneath the sink that you can pour in to make bubbles and shit.”
I walked into the shower area, leaving the huge glass door wide open behind me, and started filling it up with the perfect temperature of water.
I went back to the vanity, spotting a purple kid’s toothbrush next to a boring blue adult one.
“Ummm,” I called over the gurgle of water behind me. “Do you have any toothbrushes I could use?”
“The purple one next to mine is the one you used last night.”
I picked it up and got down to business, brushing and washing my face, while I waited for the bath to fill.
When I was done, I went in search of the bubbles he was talking about, and came up with another kid product.
Did he have kids?
Shit.
I’d just invaded the man’s house, and he’d have had to explain me to them when I was most heavily not at my best.
“Um, Romeo?”
“Yeah?” This time he was even closer, like he moved toward the door.
“Do you have kids?”
“Nope,” he answered. “The stuff in that bathroom is left over from my sister’s kids when they came to stay over Thanksgiving.”
“Oh,” I breathed a sigh of relief. “I was hoping that I didn’t make you sleep with a stranger while you had a kid in the house.”
He chuckled. “No. But do you mind if I come in? I want to brush my teeth and use the bathroom before I head outside and clear the area for Brawny to get out and pee.”
Brawny!
I’d forgotten all about him.
What a horrible dog mom I was.
“Oh, let me hop into the bath really quick.”
He grunted something I didn’t hear because I was making a mad dash for the bathtub with my kids’ bubbles that supposedly smelled like green apple.
I hopped inside, groaning at the feel of the water, and dumped way too much bubble bath.
Luckily, the bubbles formed quickly, because the bathroom door creaked open and Romeo said, “Ready?”
“Y-yes,” I stuttered.
He came farther into the room fully clothed, this time in the flannel that I’d seen him wear the first day that I’d seen him over a black Henley.
He had everything on but his boots and socks.
Yum.
“Is flannel your thing?” I wondered aloud.
His eyes flicked to me, sitting up in the tub with my knees up to my chest blocking everything the bubbles didn’t cover and said, “Being warm is my thing. I don’t think I’ve woken up and not been freezing since the weather shifted months ago.”
My lips twitched. “Where are you from again?”
“Texas,” he answered as he moved to the sink and started to brush his teeth. “The coldest we get is around thirty degrees.”
I burst out laughing. “You poor man. That’s a good day here.”
“I’m coming to find that out,” he said as he loaded way too much toothpaste onto the boring blue toothbrush and started to brush his teeth.
He stood up with his mouth closed as he did it, not allowing the foam to come out of his mouth until he was done.
“I’m a mouth foamer,” I murmured as I watched him.
He turned to me with a towel in his hand, but the way his brow was quirked told me he didn’t understand.
“There are usually two types of people,” I said. “Ones that brush their teeth and allow all the foam to drip down their face, and ones that keep it all inside until the end where they spit it out.”
He snorted. “That makes a mess.”
“It does,” I agreed, smiling sheepishly. “But as long as you’re bent over the sink, it doesn’t get all over you.”
He tossed the towel onto the vanity instead of hanging it back up and leaned his hips against the counter as he watched me.
“So last night you said a few things I want to make sure you remember in the light of day, sober.”
I winced.
“Nothing bad,” he promised.
“What is it?” I asked hesitantly.
“You made a promise.”
My brows rose. “I did?”
“You promised me that you would cut your parents off.”
I winced. “I already planned on doing that.”
“I know,” he said. “But I want to make sure you really do plan on following through. After what you told me last night…”
I rested my chin on top of my raised knees for a long second before I admitted, “Does changing my beneficiary on my will count as being serious?”
“Somewhat,” he admitted. “Just make sure it’s ironclad, because I have a feeling if Birdee’s still alive, she’s going to make sure she gets her ‘due.’”
I sighed. “There’s no way. It’s ironclad. Cody and I have a friend that fled Sawtooth the moment she turned eighteen. Became a shark of a lawyer and moved to Portland to go into practice. She was the one that made the will for me. There’ll be no breaking it.”
“Good,” he said as he pushed off the bathroom vanity.
“And while you’re working with her, maybe you’ll work on booting those losers from your home.
” He gave me a pointed look. “I’ll take Brawny out.
You take your time. I have to go visit with the horses after and make sure they have enough food and water.
” He looked outside where all you could see was white.
“An alert went out about fifteen minutes ago saying that what we got last night was only the beginning.”
I sighed. “That’s what I’d been hearing. I hoped that maybe it’d skip over us, though.”
He shook his head. “Doesn’t look good, Mable. Doesn’t look good.”
He left without another word, heading outside.
My luck held out, because the window that I could see out of overlooked what I now realized was the barn.
Romeo and Brawny walked outside, Romeo bundled up in his Carhartt again. Brawny bounded next to him in what I now realized were little dog boots that protected his feet.
My heart melted a little bit.
He cared about Brawny.
I watched the two of them head over to open the barn and close themselves inside.
I got to washing my body, and helped myself to Romeo’s razor and soap.
By the time I was done, I was a pruny mess.
But it was the best damn bath I’d had since I left home.
That was one of the only things that I missed.
Standing up, I stretched my hands up high over my head, then bent almost in half to reach the towel hanging on the towel rack across from me.
Only after I’d slipped it around myself did I step out of the bathtub and onto the cold tiled floor of the shower.