Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Moore
What the hell was he supposed to do now?
Colleen sounded like she was hacking up a lung so big, it would rise up on four hooves and run off into the woods.
Her shoulders were slumped, her bare feet turning different shades of purple and blue.
As the cabin warmed, her hair had started to dry, the normal soft waves a mess of kinked-up curls that lay flat against her neck.
Dark circles were forming under her eyes and she had a hollow look, bleak and exhausted.
It scared him.
All of this did.
Who knew that getting her out of the truck and saving her from drowning would be only the beginning?
“Listen,” he said tenderly, pulling her closer, happy every time she shivered in his arms, “you need to just be here. Let me warm you up some more.”
“Okay.”
“Colleen.”
When she looked up at him, tears filled her eyes. A piece of him broke a little.
“Oh, honey,” he said, pulling her closer as sobs broke loose, his chest wet, her face buried in his neck.
“I–I–it hurts, Moore! I hurt and I tingle and it’s driving me crazy and I nearly drowned and I can’t breathe and my lungs feel like someone’s carving a marble statue out of them and flinging the pieces up my windpipe and Sandwich is alooooooooone.”
Plaintive and soulful, her last sentence made him laugh.
“It’s not funny!” Deserving to be smacked, he took her blow with equanimity.
“Colleen. Come on. We’ve just gone through a near-death experience.
We’re trapped in someone’s cabin with rum and peanut butter for sustenance.
You sound like you’re gestating gerbils in your throat and giving birth to them via coughing, you have to pee but can’t even walk to the bathroom, and you’re worried about a cat?
A pampered cat who lives a few hundred feet away from your parents? ”
“Y-yes!”
Rubbing her arm, he was struck by the softness of her skin. It hadn’t gone unnoticed by him that when they lay on the bed, the side of her breast rested against his chest, the skin silky and seductive.
No. Not seductive. Colleen wasn’t acting out of passion.
She was mostly naked with him because she was a nurse following a life-saving protocol.
No matter how much he wanted this to be about more than that, it wasn’t. Colleen had nineteen years to have made a move. If she hadn’t done it by now, she wasn’t about to start while they were trapped in a blizzard and she was worried about having a heart attack.
The part of him that was attracted to her was an asshole.
Now was not the time.
And yet… he couldn’t help it. She was soft and vulnerable. Funny and raw. Commanding and endearing. They both had plenty of safety skills to get them through the basics.
If she’d stayed unconscious, he’d have just tried to warm her up by the fire.
Not cut off her clothes and lie naked together.
Sniffling in his arms, she cried and he let her, because he couldn’t do anything but just be there for her. Frankly, having her sob like this was wonderful. It meant she was alive. Could breathe. Blood was flowing enough for her to be alert.
And she let him hold her.
Their friendship had always held a hard edge; they shared so many hours together, yet stayed at arm’s length from each other. It wasn’t just a friendship via shared connection with Luke. It was more than that.
Hard to describe.
Something had always been missing, though. Never able to put his finger on it, Moore had felt the space, nonetheless.
Now, though, that space was gone. They were deeply connected in the present in a way he’d never felt with her before. Maybe it was trauma bonding. Maybe it was shared fear. Maybe it was just compassion.
But as Colleen Luview cried in his arms, he felt stronger. Filled with purpose.
Needed.
Maybe that’s what it was. Colleen had never needed him before. In this moment, she needed him, and it felt so good.
“I feel so strange,” she let out, the words coming in a rush. “Like we’re in a time warp.”
“A what?”
“Time warp. Time doesn’t exist here. No phone. No way out. All we can do is ride this storm and emerge sometime tomorrow. We’ll have to be found, Moore.”
“Shhhhh. Worry about that later. Not now.”
“That’s what I mean. My brain is scrambled. It keeps wanting to act, but we don’t have the tools to act. Can’t call. Can’t flag down a road crew. I can’t go to work and help with accident victims–I am an accident victim!” Her voice went shrill.
“You’re fine.”
“And the truck! Dad’s truck is totaled and it’s all my fault. It’ll have to be towed, and insurance paperwork will bury us, and there will be a deductible and...”
Pulling away, he crouched down on the floor, inhaling sharply as the cold air hit his skin. Looking up, he locked eyes with her.
“Go to the bathroom.”
“What?”
“Bathroom. Now. Then come back and drink your warm water. I’ll spike it with a little rum.”
“Why are you ordering me around like this?”
“Because you’re cluttering your mind with worries you cannot do a thing about. Not one damn thing. So instead of borrowing trouble, take care of your needs.”
Her eyes flared at those last words.
“You take care of everyone else first, Colleen. Always have. Let me take care of you, for once.” For a split second, he felt the impulse in him.
The impulse to kiss her. To take the comfort up a notch.
To meet his needs, too.
But no.
No.
That would be crossing a line he could never uncross.
And breaking a vow Colleen didn’t know existed.
One corner of her mouth twisted up.
“Peeing is how I let you take care of me?” The serious moment was shattered by her sarcasm.
“I… guess?”
“You are so weird.”
“But I am remarkably consistent.”
“Okay, then,” she said, laughing, using his shoulder as a fixed point to lift off from. “Here I go.”
Taking one step at a time, it was clear she didn’t need help, but Moore stood anyhow, ready to jump in if she fell.
She didn’t.
Slumping on the bed, he lay back on it, fingers threaded in his hair, pulling lightly.
“What the hell, Mottin?” he muttered to himself. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The memory of his freshman year of high school hit him like a freight train, every scent, sight, and sound rushing through the years until he was there again. His eyes may have been staring at the unpainted wood ceiling of the cabin here in Wolfeboro, but his mind was back in Luview.
Nineteen years ago.
First day of the school year and he’d gone back with Luke to his house, same as most other school days since kindergarten. First day of high school had been surreal after being gone most of the summer, so slipping into the familiar and riding dirt bikes with Luke was an enormous relief.
Until he’d gone to grab a soda from the Luview’s garage fridge and ran into Colleen, pumping up her own bike tire.
“Hey,” he’d said as she gaped at him, her eyes going wide, eyebrows high with shock.
“Hey. Are you–a friend of Luke’s?”
“Hah. Very funny.”
“Omigod! MOORE?” she’d screamed, so loud that Luke and their mother had come running into the garage, their black lab Hyacinth on their heels, barking like crazy. A good girl who lived another five years, she’d been their always-companion in the woods.
Instantly self-conscious, Moore had looked around. “Are you pranking me?”
“You–you don’t look like Moore! You got tall! And your hair?”
For years, Moore had worn his hair in a shaggy surfer cut, curling over his ears and covering his collar. But while he’d been gone for the summer in Wolfeboro, of all places, growing four inches and adding twenty pounds of muscle, he’d decided to go with a short, sleek haircut.
Over that summer, his uncle had said, “If you’re going to work in the family business, you need to look the part.” Now fourteen, he would be allowed to work at the jewelry shop, and he was eager to slip into this new version of himself.
Taller, older, more sophisticated.
Plus, the haircut might get him more girls.
Or even a girl.
Deanna Luview had laughed so hard. “He’s Moore, silly! Your bonus brother, same as ever.”
Colleen had flinched at the words bonus brother, her cheeks turning a hot shade of scarlet.
“Shut up,” Luke told Colleen. “Quit making fun of Moore.”
“Thanks, dude.”
“That’s my job.”
The two had wandered back to Luke’s room to kill a few more zombies in a game, chugging soda, Colleen long forgotten.
Hours later, deep in the woods, Hyacinth sniffing out a chipmunk’s nest, Luke had given him enough glances for Moore to ask, “What?”
“What what?”
“What the hell, Luke? Spit it out.”
“Don’t–you know. Don’t ever date Colleen.”
“WHAT?”
Moore’s shout scared a bunch of starlings out of a tree, the shade from the enormous cloud of them turning the moment malevolent.
“You heard me.”
“Why would I want to date Colleen? Ewww.”
“I dunno. I just–”
“What’s next, man? Tell me I can’t date your dog? Because that’s some true love there.”
Luke had snorted. “If you start dating Hyacinth, you’ve got bigger problems than I ever imagined.”
“No worries. Hyacinth is way too cool. Out of my league. I can’t even get a human girl interested in me.”
“You swear, though. Right?”
“Swear what?”
“Not to date Colleen.”
“Um, sure. You swear not to date my sister?”
“Vanessa is ten years older than us and a lesbian, Moore.”
“But do you swear?” He’d hooked his pinkie and thrust it at Luke, who laughed.
“What are we? Six-year-old girls?”
“Just go with it,” Moore said, earning disdain from Luke.
“I swear.”
“Good. Because I’m about as likely to date Colleen as you are to date Vanessa.”
“Odds are really, really different there, Moore.”
“Can we be done with this conversation? We’ve covered taboos I didn’t know I’d ever talk about with you.”
“Pfft. You watch more than enough internet porn that–”
The conversation had ended with a wrestling match that took them into poison ivy, forcing them home for Tecnu baths.
All these years, he’d taken Luke’s words to heart, even when it had been so hard.
Even when he’d almost kissed Colleen when he was seventeen.