Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
HIM
Snow plopped down off the top of my shoe as I kicked a boot against the lip of Jules’s front door.
Repeating the process with the other one till I was sure I wasn’t tracking that shit into the house with me.
It was cold as fuck outside but that was no excuse for ruining perfectly good hardwood floors.
See? I had manners when I wanted to. I just didn’t usually want to.
I squinted my eyes and glanced at the dark, nearly-black sky and the snowflakes still falling around me. I’d tried to move the car into the street and didn’t make it more than a few blocks on foot before deciding to turn my ass around.
It wasn’t the best idea to leave the Wagon parked where anyone could see it.
It also wasn’t the best idea to spend another night here.
But shit was snowed in and I didn’t have a shovel—I mean, not that kind of shovel.
Digging body-sized holes wasn’t exactly in the same category as digging yourself out of a blizzard and I had no intention of scratching off what was left of the paint from my car.
Rust was doing a good enough job of that for me.
I peered over at the ice covering the driveway and most of Jules’s front porch.
The rickety railing and the crooked mailbox.
By the looks of it, Nurse Keller didn’t have a hoard of spare tools holed up in her garage or a man in her life who knew how to use ?em.
Chances were she didn’t have a shovel hiding anywhere either.
My eyes bounced from house to house, neighbor to neighbor, snow pile to snow pile.
No one was going out in this anytime soon.
Me included. Thank fuck I’d ordered enough groceries to fill her pantry.
We might have been stuck indoors but at least we wouldn’t starve.
I could go days without sleep but take my food away?
Well, let’s just say there wasn’t much I couldn’t endure with a full belly and a pair of empty balls. And right now I had both.
I shook off my gloves, pushed my way back inside Jules’s front door, and found her waiting for me in the entryway like a mutt that didn’t know if it had been minutes or days since her owner left her behind.
Hint: It sure as fuck hadn’t been days. But looking at Jules’s face, you wouldn’t know that. ?Cause the woman was staring at me as if I’d returned from war instead of the damn driveway.
“You came back,” she whispered, and I stared at her as if she’d grown two heads. Neither of ?em were screwed on right by the way.
I crossed my arms over my chest and cocked an eyebrow. “You got abandonment issues, Nurse Keller?”
Rather than answer me, she shoved a hot cup of coffee into my hands.
I had to uncross my arms to keep from dropping it as she grabbed on to my elbow and guided me over to the living room, where she had some stupid romcom playing on the television screen.
The decorations and tree I’d laid out, and she’d ripped down, gone without a sign they’d ever been there.
I stopped moving when the back of my knees hit the sofa cushion and Jules shoved me onto my ass. And then she was buzzing around me, placing my mug on the table in front of us and yanking my damp hoodie off my head.
She returned a few minutes later with my spare shirt recently laundered and a platter of cookies fresh from the oven.
I swiped up a lopsided circle and glanced down at the imprint my thumb made in the top.
Besides the essentials, I’d ordered those premade sugar cookies that came with the little green trees stamped on the front—couldn’t explain why the red and green food coloring made such a difference but it did—except these ones looked like something out of a bad baking show.
More oval than round, with fork-shaped scrape marks where the red ornaments should have been.
Which told me one of two things: Jules had no experience with prepackaged cookie dough or she’d intentionally taken a knife to the tops and scratched out the designs.
I was playing house with the real-life version of the Grinch who stole Christmas.
Good thing I didn’t give a shit how bad they looked as long as they tasted decent. Anything was better than Jello cups and rotten fruit.
I popped the cookie into my mouth and grinned.
They were just the way I liked ?em. Hot off the pan and a little undercooked in the middle.
Didn’t care if raw eggs were bad for ya.
Lots of things were bad for ya. Pills, alcohol, fucking around with the girl you were pretty certain you were killing in the morning…
I enjoyed them all anyway. Some more than others, it seemed.
Jules quietly lowered herself down beside me on the sofa, scooting over a few inches whenever she thought I was too focused on the tv to notice. Until she was practically curled up on my lap. My arm spread out across the top cushion and her head resting in the crook of my shoulder.
She was passed out before the couple on the screen had decided that the movie didn’t need to be more than an hour and a half long and miraculously worked out all their issues in time for the credits to roll.
Listing off all the useless fucks who still thought putting glasses on a supermodel made her ugly.
It didn’t. It just made her a supermodel with an eye problem.
When Jules’s breathing was a mix of soft snoring and random mumbling that told me she was dreaming, I slipped my arm out from under her head and replaced it with a cushion.
Then I grabbed the fuzzy blanket that I was pretty sure was as decorative as all the pillows and draped it over her before making my way upstairs to the bedroom.
I might not have needed a bed—God knew a couch was a step up from the floor—but I sure as hell was gonna use one if I had the option.