Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Farley
I’d never been kissed like that in my entire life.
Ollie had been a perfectly adequate kisser—competent, practiced, the kind of technique you’d expect from someone who approached relationships with the same methodical precision he applied to his skincare routine. Pleasant. Something you might describe to a friend as comfortable.
This was not comfortable.
This was Samuel Bennett’s mouth against mine, hot, demanding, and tasting faintly of the kombucha we’d shared in Charlottesville.
His fingers threaded through my hair, tilting my head to a better angle, and the small desperate sound he made when I kissed him back.
My hands gripped his coat like I might drown if I let go.
When we finally broke apart, both of us were breathing like we’d run a marathon.
“Inside,” he growled. “My cabin. Now.”
I should have said no. I should have reminded him about the blizzard, about Gladys’s warnings, about the grocery bags that needed to be unloaded before everything frozen became everything thawed.
Instead, I kissed him again.
We stumbled out of the Range Rover, Samuel’s hand finding mine as we half-walked, half-ran toward his front door. Purrsephone was still watching from the window, her mismatched eyes tracking our progress with an expression of supreme satisfaction.
“Keys,” Samuel muttered against my mouth, fumbling in his coat pocket. “Keys, keys—where are my—”
“Pocket,” I managed.
“Right.”
The key missed the lock twice before finding its target. The door swung open, and we tumbled inside, still kissing, still clinging to each other like teenagers who’d just discovered what hormones were for—
And then I stepped on something.
Something small and soft that made a squishing sound.
I looked down.
A mouse. A very dead mouse, its tiny body slightly flattened under my boot.
“Oh my God,” Samuel said.
“It’s fine,” I blurted, because surely one dead mouse wasn’t enough to derail the most spectacular kiss of my life. “It’s just—”
“There’s another one.”
I followed his pointing finger. On the kitchen floor, approximately ten feet from where we stood, lay a second mouse.
This one was arranged with almost artistic precision, its tail curled delicately around its body like it was taking a peaceful nap.
Except for the part where it was extremely, definitively dead.
“And,” Samuel’s voice had gone slightly hysterical, “is that a third one?”
It was indeed. The corpse was deposited directly in front of the fireplace, as if it were an offering to some ancient rodent-slaying deity.
Samuel screamed.
Not a manly shout of surprise. Not a dignified exclamation of alarm. A full-throated, horror-movie-victim scream that probably echoed all the way down the mountain to Shifflett’s General Store.
Then, he launched himself onto the couch as if the floor had suddenly turned to lava.
“Get away from them!” he yelled at me. “They could have—I don’t know—diseases! Plague! They could have the plague!”
“I don’t think mice in Virginia carry the plague.”
“You don’t know that! Are you a mouse scientist? Are you a plague doctor?”
“I’m fairly certain plague doctors aren’t—” I broke off as I noticed a movement in my peripheral vision. Purrsephone was sitting in the hallway, watching us with an expression of profound pride. Her tail swished slowly back and forth.
“You,” I said to the cat. “You did this.”
She meowed. The sound was unmistakably smug.
“She’s laughing at us,” Samuel said from his perch on the couch cushions. “That demon cat is actively laughing at our misfortune.”
“She probably thinks she’s being helpful. Cats bring prey to show affection.”
“Then I am feeling extremely ungrateful right now!” Samuel pulled his feet up even higher, like the mice might somehow reanimate and climb the furniture. “Please tell me you’re going to deal with this. Please tell me you have some hidden mouse-disposal expertise I don’t know about.”
I looked at the mouse I’d stepped on, still slightly adhered to the bottom of my boot.
“I grew up in Connecticut,” I said weakly. “We had a cleaning service.”
“So that’s a no on the mouse-disposal expertise.”
“That’s a definitive no.”
We stared at each other—Samuel crouched on the couch like a very fashionable gargoyle, me standing frozen by the door with mouse residue on my shoe. The romantic momentum of three minutes ago had been thoroughly, comprehensively murdered.
By mice. Dead ones.
“This is not how I imagined this going,” Samuel said.
“You imagined this?”
“I imagined this going in several extremely explicit ways, none of which involved rodent carcasses.”
Despite everything—the mice, the absurdity, the fact that I was still standing in a doorway like an idiot—I laughed. It burst out of me, surprising us both, and then Samuel was laughing too, helpless, slightly hysterical laughter that happens when reality becomes too ridiculous to process.
“Okay,” I said, once I’d caught my breath. “Okay. We’re going to handle this like adults.”
“Adults who are clearly not equipped to handle this.”
“Adults who are going to figure it out, anyway.” I spotted a box of tissues on the coffee table and grabbed a generous handful. “Do you have a plastic bag? Something we can put them in?”
“Under the kitchen sink. But you have to go get it because I’m not getting off this couch.”
“Noted.”
I retrieved the plastic bag, trying not to look too closely at the kitchen mouse as I passed it. Armed with tissues and disposal apparatus, I approached the first body.
“Wait,” Samuel called from the couch. “Are you seriously going to pick it up with your bare hands?”
“I have tissues.”
“That’s not—that’s like—do you not have any concern for your personal safety?”
“I thought we established that Virginia mice don’t carry the plague.”
“You established that! I remain unconvinced!”
I picked up the mouse, anyway. It was lighter than I expected, barely more than a handful of fluff and tiny bones. A month ago, this would have sent me into a spiral of germaphobic panic. A month ago, I would have called someone—anyone—to handle this for me.
But a month ago, I’d been a different person. A person who let Ollie order for him at restaurants because it was easier than having preferences. Someone who’d built his entire identity around being agreeable, accommodating, easy.
That person probably wouldn’t have kissed a soap opera star in a driveway, either.
I deposited the first mouse into the plastic bag and moved to the kitchen for the second. Purrsephone followed me, winding between my legs in a way that was either affectionate or a deliberate attempt to trip me.
“You’re a menace,” I told her.
She purred.
“She’s not sorry,” Samuel observed from his couch sanctuary. “Not even a little.”
“She’s a cat. Remorse isn’t in their emotional vocabulary.”
Mouse number two went into the bag. I moved to the fireplace for number three, and as I crouched down to collect the final offering, I found myself thinking about endings.
Not the mice—though they had certainly met theirs. No, I was thinking about the end of my relationship with Ollie.
It died not in a single dramatic moment, but in a thousand small betrayals I’d been too blind to see. The late nights he’d claimed were work meetings, and the phone calls he’d taken in other rooms. The way he’d stopped looking at me—really looking—months before I’d walked in on him with Roger.
I’d been mourning something that had already been dead. I just hadn’t known it yet.
And now here I was, standing in Samuel Bennett’s cabin with a bag full of deceased rodents, thinking about how easy it would be to fall into something new. Samuel was gorgeous. He was funny. He kissed like he meant it, like I was the only person in the world worth kissing.
It would be so simple to let this happen. A holiday fling with a famous actor—something bright and temporary to burn away the memory of Ollie’s betrayal. We had three weeks left. Three weeks of proximity, attraction, and the type of chemistry I’d never felt with anyone before.
But this didn’t feel like a fling.
This felt like the beginning of something. And beginnings terrified me more than endings ever could.
I tied off the plastic bag and stood up, my knees protesting from the crouch. “Done. All the mice have been collected.”
Samuel cautiously lowered one foot to the floor, then the other. “Are you sure she didn’t hide any more somewhere? Under the bed? In the closet?”
“I suppose we could search the entire cabin, but I think three was the extent of her murder spree.”
“Murder spree.” He shuddered dramatically. “That cat is a serial killer.”
“She’s a hunter. It’s instinct.”
“Instinct to traumatize us?”
I grinned. “I’m going to take these outside. And then we should probably get the groceries from the car.”
“Right. The groceries.” Something shifted in Samuel’s expression—uncertainty flickering across his features. “And then...?”
I knew what he was asking. And I knew what he wanted the answer to be.
I wanted it too. That was the worst part.
“Let’s deal with the groceries first,” I said, and pretended I didn’t see the flicker of disappointment in his eyes.
Unloading the Range Rover took longer than it should have.
Not because there was so much—we’d been reasonably restrained in Charlottesville, all things considered—but because neither of us seemed to know how to act anymore. The kiss hung between us, unaddressed, a neon elephant in the room that we kept carefully sidestepping.
Samuel made three trips for groceries that could have been carried in two. I reorganized the reusable bags twice, for no discernible reason. We bumped into each other in the doorway and both jumped back like we’d been shocked.
“Sorry,” Samuel said.
“No, my fault.”
“I wasn’t—”
“Neither was—”
We stopped. Stared at each other. And I watched Samuel’s expression shift from awkwardness to something more determined.