Chapter 15
Robbie wiped sweat out of his eyes, blinking against the sting.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d sweat like that.
No, that wasn’t true. The last time the sweat had run off of him in steady rivulets, Robbie had been working the grill in a country club kitchen where the air conditioning had broken in July.
Under normal circumstances, they would have closed, but the club had an outdoor wedding booked for four hundred guests that was to take place in a giant tent set up on the practice green against the backdrop of the course’s lake.
And so he’d stood over the grill on a nearly one-hundred-degree day in a kitchen that was almost certainly twenty degrees hotter despite the fans.
He drank ice water out of a plastic quart container by what felt like the gallons and didn’t pee once the entire shift, which he’d been too busy to be alarmed by, but which had shocked the hell out of him after the fact.
When the wedding was over and the guests departed, when the kitchen was cleaned and reset for the next day, he had strode out the back door, past the dishwashers having a smoke on the steps, stripping down as he went until he scaled the fence for the country club swimming pool and jumped in wearing nothing but his boxer briefs.
I dare them to fire me, he’d thought as he floated on his back, feeling more weightless than he should have from the heat of his body in the cool water.
They hadn’t fired him, of course, because he’d been joined by the entire dining room and kitchen staff for that late-night dip.
None of them mentioned it, and neither had management.
No doubt the amount of money the club had made on a plated dinner and open bar for four hundred had justified a little light skinny-dipping, as one of the bartenders had called it.
Robbie woke to Nadja’s warm heft in his arms. She slept deeply, her mouth making little puffing sounds on her exhales, and he’d laid there for a moment, smelling her hair, before mentally warning himself away.
She wouldn’t want him sniffing her hair when she was awake, so he wasn’t about to do it when she was asleep.
He felt feverish and restless. He’d woken up feeling feverish for days now, but the restlessness was new.
His limbs felt tense and primed, like he needed to move or they would do it for him.
Maybe that was a good sign. Maybe the change would come soon. He would shift, and Nadja wouldn’t be held hostage by her own compassion.
He indulged himself with one last sniff of her shampoo before slipping his arm slowly out from beneath her neck and scooting away. She shrugged in her sleep and pulled the blanket up over her nose.
Adorable. That’s what she was. And yet that word didn’t remotely do her justice.
He didn’t bother dressing since JJ had said that the whole point was to embrace every animal thing about himself, but he did grab a pair of athletic shorts to drape over the porch railing.
The air was cool and damp against his skin with the morning mist that hung low today and clung like a hangover.
He’d run miles, stopping halfway around the lake to jump in and float, feeling like a character in an Arthurian legend, existing in the mist and waiting for something magical to happen.
Which, he supposed, was true enough. He tried not to think too much about the shift, but he knew that the fact that, in a few days, his body would transform into something entirely different was nothing if not magic.
But now, hot again from running and clothed in the athletic shorts, he found himself making his way to the mess hall. JJ had mentioned that there were always the makings of sandwiches in the kitchen, and Robbie couldn’t remember any food ever sounding as good as a sandwich did just then.
As he spread mayo onto four pieces of bread and mustard on another four, three sandwiches for him and one for Nadja, he thought about how normally at this time of day—noon, according to the old round clock hanging over the sink—he would be recording or editing a new chapter for Romantically Roberto.
His phone was gone, and there wasn’t any service anyway.
He could try to log onto the ancient desktop that JJ had shown him in the closet office, but Robbie was the kind of millennial that relied upon the security of his fruitful device remembering his passwords for him.
That was true for phone numbers, too, unfortunately. Nadja said she had called Magda to tell her what had happened. Robbie had to trust that she would tell Callum.
He assembled the sandwiches, plotting the next chapter of the story in his head. His followers would just have to wait another week to find out if Benjamin rescued Lady Honora from the brothel or railed her up against a wall in the blue room and then got her out.
To be honest, he was excited to find out himself, as he wrote and recorded these stories one chapter at a time. It was fulfilling work in more ways than one.
But now, his work was to make Nadja the best sandwich he could.
As he’d shown with the sardines and mustard, he was not a picky eater.
He’d never had the luxury. Growing up, he ate the food he was given.
Choosiness was for people not living check to check.
And while he’d worked in top-notch kitchens and cooked under renowned chefs, while he appreciated culinary artistry and innovation, he also could appreciate the simplicity of blue box mac and cheese with dinosaur nuggies.
But Nadja deserved the best. Someone who always gave the best of themselves—which he could already tell she did—deserved someone to give them the best in return.
There were a lot of things Robbie couldn’t do, especially not stranded out here, but one thing he could do was make a damned good sandwich.
He wrapped the sandwiches in foil before stacking them carefully in his hands and making his way back to the cabin, his skin sticky from the dried sweat that had glazed him before.
The cabin was quiet when he entered, and he needed to not reek more than he needed to eat, so he put the sandwiches in the fridge and went to shower.
A cloud of steam followed him out as he crossed the small hallway and entered the bedroom with a towel tied around his waist. He hadn’t knocked because he’d expected to find the room empty, Nadja off doing… something. But she was there, still huddled under the blankets.
He crossed to the bedside in two steps, gripping the knot of the towel tightly in a fist, and leaning over her, watching her chest rise and fall. She jolted awake.
“You’re dripping on me,” she said groggily. “What are you doing?”
“Making sure you were breathing,” he said, stepping back and running a hand over the short bristles of his hair. “It’s twelve thirty. I’ve been gone since eight.”
“I didn’t sleep well last night,” she mumbled, closing her eyes again.
Robbie was a light sleeper. He would have known if she’d been restless.
She hadn’t moved much at all the night before.
She’d been mostly still, pressed against him tightly, her breathing deep and even, and most definitely asleep.
But he wasn’t about to fight her. If she wanted to stay in bed all day, that was her business.
He supposed even mental health practitioners deserved mental health days. Maybe they did more than anyone else.
He took his clothes to the bathroom to dress, wiggling as his jeans dragged against his damp skin. Her eyes were closed when he went back to the bedroom.
“I have sandwiches,” he said. “I made sandwiches.”
That clarification mattered to him. There had been a primal satisfaction in layering the toppings himself rather than bringing her someone else’s handiwork.
“Not hungry,” she mumbled into the blanket.
There was a part of him, the part that felt called to take care of her, to take care of everyone, that urged him to pull back the blanket and tell her to get her ass to the kitchen for some food, that she could go back to bed with a full stomach.
But he resisted, stepping quietly out of the room and closing the door with care after him. That wasn’t his place.
He ate his three sandwiches in silence at the kitchen table, balling the foil before tossing it overhead into the trash can. With the afternoon ahead of him and nothing to do, he decided to go back to the mess hall. There was a stubborn grease stain on the floor that was just begging for attention.
She’s fine. She’s sleeping in. She’s had an exhausting few days. There’s nothing wrong with her. Hoofbeats usually mean horses, not zebras. She’s fine.
Repeating that litany was the only thing that enabled Robbie to close the door to the cabin behind him and walk away. It shouldn’t have been difficult. He hardly knew her. This was all a ruse—and for his sake, for that matter. And yet it felt impossible all the same.
He felt like running again. His heart pounded in his chest with every step he took away from the cabin.
But running would take him miles away, the thought of which quite literally turned his stomach, the sandwiches threatening a reappearance.
With his hands on his hips, his breath coming in short bursts as if he had just run, Robbie looked around.
The mess hall was close, and in addition to tackling the grease stain, he’d made plans with Rose to do inventory of the pantry, walk-in, and reach-in.
It was a four-minute walk from the cabin—two if he ran—and he could be back in a blink if she needed him.
Which, of course, she wouldn’t.
But just in case, he thought. Just in case.
He ignored the sense of wrongness, the alarm bells ringing in his head, telling himself it was just his anxiety.
After all, anxiety was what had brought him to Nadja’s office in the first place.
Anxiety was what had started them down this path.
Anxiety was her business, but she’d done enough for him.
Far more than she had to. He’d deal with himself.
And so, feeling as if he was pulling his tongue off of a frozen pole, he walked away from the cabin, telling himself that she was fine, that she was just tired, that she was catching up on sleep after a busy week. Things that didn’t feel remotely true.