Chapter 28
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MELODY
That was the best sleep I’ve gotten in years.
I’m not actually sure how I’d managed to sleep with Traeger without, well, sleeping with him, but it seemed like both of us had needed the closeness and vulnerability of lying with someone through the night more than anything else, and we’d both drifted off before anything could even start to move towards more.
We’d shifted at some point during the night, and I woke with my head on his chest, one leg thrown over his thigh.
His arm is still wrapped around me, holding me tightly against him even in sleep.
I take the opportunity to study him as he sleeps, and am struck all over again how damn handsome he is.
I study the hard line of his jaw; the small scar above his eyebrow that you have to be very, very close to even notice; the soft curve of his lips as they part slightly.
I remember what they felt like against mine, soft and warm, but demanding and sure, and promising so much more with every touch.
I barely stop myself from leaning in and kissing him again now.
I also barely stop myself from waking him up with a good old fashioned morning blow job, but quickly slide from the bed quietly before I decide to just say fuck it.
I shake myself, forcing all dirty thoughts away…
or at least, to the side. They’re still very much there.
I make my way down the stairs, shivering in the cold of the workshop.
My ankle is mostly fine now, still a little sore and stiff, but I can walk again, so now the only thing keeping us here is the snow.
If I’m being honest, I really don’t mind.
I even kind of wish that the snow would never melt.
Things are becoming so easy here between us, shut away from the world, free from all the expectations and responsibilities waiting for us back home.
I head outside, walking around the small area that Traeger had cleared the day after the snow had stopped.
The plumbing is working fine for the shower, but neither of us want to risk trying to flush the toilet and fucking things up royally.
So, after those first few days of the lovely bucket-in-the-bathroom situation while my ankle healed enough that I could easily go up and down the stairs, we’d carved out a little area outside in the snow to take care of business.
I do my thing, surrounded by walls of white, and then dart back inside.
I hop up on top of the workbench in the middle of the room and bring the walkie up to my mouth.
“Wynn? You awake?” A few seconds later his voice crackles over the line.
“Hey Mel. You holding up ok out there in the cabin in the woods that is definitely not something out of a horror movie?”
“Har har. And it’s more of an apartment over a barn than a cabin, thank you very much. But we’re good. Ankle is sore but not too bad. Are y’all ok?”
“We’re good here too. Trying to make our way back there to get you and the supplies, but scouts are saying snow is still pretty piled up on the roads farther north.”
“Yeah, we’re still pretty much buried out here.”
“Well…maybe that’s not such a bad thing.”
“And what exactly is that supposed to mean? Don’t you miss me, Landry?” I ask with mock indignation.
“Oh you know damn well what it means, couyon.”
My mouth pops open. “I am not!”
“You are,” he says simply, but I can hear the smile in his voice.
“I’m going to smother you with a pillow when I get back.”
He laughs and I smile, kicking my legs back and forth over the edge of the table.
“Look, I’m just saying, maybe this little romance novel-esque snowed in scenario might be just what you needed to get over your little hissy fit.”
“My hissy—Ok you are definitely getting smothered. Maybe even stabbed. Don’t worry, it won’t be fatal, but it’ll hurt like a bitch. It was not a hissy fit. I had very valid reasons to be upset.”
“That’s true, but you know damn well that all that anger and blame was a little misplaced.”
I roll my eyes and pick up a scrap piece of wood from the table, drumming it lightly on my knee.
“You sound just like Jonah, you know that? You’re not allowed to hang out with him when you go to The Cove anymore.”
“Uh huh, you’re telling me that nothing has happened?”
“I…” I bite my lip. “We’re not fighting anymore,” I hedge.
“Ahhhhh sookie sookie now,” he says in a sing-song voice and I can just see him in my mind, grinning and dancing like an idiot.
“Ok I’m going now because I’m cold and you’re an idiot. Mostly the latter part.”
He starts singing for real now. “I’ve been really tryin’ babyyyyyy—"
“GOODBYE.”
I turn the walkie off and shake my head, but laugh.
I hop off the table, clip the walkie onto the waistband of my sweats, and blow into my hands, rubbing them together to ward off the chill.
I grab one of the big spaghetti pots from the workbench and head back out into the cold, filling it to the brim with snow.
Again, the taps are working—and we left one trickling this whole time to keep the pipes from freezing—but there’s no reason to waste the resource when we can just as easily boil the snow.
I jog up the stairs and find Traeger up and making coffee when I come through the door.
I inhale the rich, familiar scent that I never thought I’d smell again.
It’s nostalgia and heartbreak and heaven all wrapped up in one delicious aroma.
There are still three entire bulk-sized boxes of K-Cups in the closet, but I’m already mourning the day when those run out and we’re thrust back into the world where coffee is a rarity. RIP.
“Smells good,” I say when he looks up, that slow, crooked grin spreading across his face and a glint of mischief in his green eyes.
I sit the pot down by the fireplace and cross to the counter that separates the kitchen from the living room.
He slides the mug over and I wrap my hands around it, enjoying the pleasure-pain sensation as the warmth seeps into my chilled skin.
I raise it to my mouth and blow lightly across the surface.
“Sleep ok?” I ask nonchalantly.
He scrubs a hand across his jaw, looking unhappy and my brow furrows.
“Well, I would have, but a large, Melody-shaped octopus seemed to have wrapped itself around me during the night.”
I narrow my eyes and thin my lips, though I’m fighting a smile.
“Oh fuck off.”
“It’s true. I was nearly strangled multiple times. I feared for my life.”
“No one likes you,” I tell him as I take a tentative sip of my coffee.
A long time ago, I would have had it filled with so much creamer and syrup that it really wouldn’t even have resembled coffee anymore, but I’ll take what I can get these days.
At least Uncle Charlie still had sugar, and Traeger already knows exactly how much to add for my liking. It’s all so…domestic. Intimate. Nice.
I barely suppress a moan at the taste, and I continue, “I took a poll of everyone left on Earth and the decision was unanimous.”
“Well that’s just plain mean, Melody,” he says with a grin, leaning his forearms on the counter.
He looks rumpled and sleepy, his hair a mess and his beard thick and scruffy.
He’s in a pair of gray sweatpants and even as I tell them not to, my eyes dart downward.
The counter blocks that particular area and I yank my gaze upward again.
What is wrong with me? He’s got one of those tight black t-shirts of his on with a zip-up hoodie thrown over top, the sleeves pushed back showing off some of his tattoos.
He looks…fuck, he looks sexy. Extremely sexy.
Too sexy. The tiny thread of self-control I’m clinging to is fraying faster and faster by the second. I clear my throat and take another sip.
“I talked to Wynn. Everything is all good back home. Er, at FOS.”
He nods, not saying anything about me calling FOS home, but giving me a knowing smile all the same.
“I have good news,” he says.
“No bad news to go with it?” I ask, quirking a brow.
“For once, only good.” He takes a drink of his own coffee—black. Blech. I would rather be torn apart by Bloodies than drink that—and smiles a very self-satisfied smile. “I got the TV working.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Feel free to bask in my glory. Or worship at my feet. Whatever you prefer.”
I grab a pen off the counter and toss it at him before leaping off the stool and hurrying to the cabinet below the TV.
It houses a small Blue Ray collection—thank God Uncle Charlie hadn’t joined the times and moved to streaming everything—and start perusing the titles.
A familiar popping sound fills the air and I whirl back to him.
He’s waiting in front of the small microwave.
He must have found a few bags of popcorn in one of the cabinets.
I don’t even fight the smile blooming across my face, and grab two cases from the shelf.
I stand and hold them up. “Do we want action—“ I shake the movie in my left hand, “—or comedy?” I shake the one in my right.
“Comedy first, action second,” he says with a shrug. Apparently he has no plans other than to veg out for the next few hours and I am completely on board.
“Good choice.”
Traeger adds another log to the fire before we settle on the mattress, backs pressed against the front of the couch with a bowl of popcorn between us.
“Not as good as the popcorn back at FOS, but not too bad,” he says, shoving a handful into his mouth.
I look at him sidelong, warmth flooding through my stomach.
He’d scoured town after town to find that popcorn machine.
For me. Because I’d said I missed movie theater popcorn.
My chest gives a little twist. I’d nearly forgotten about it in my determination to be angry and hate him lately.
He’d done that for me, for no other reason than to make me happy. Could he…I think maybe he…