Chapter Six #2
the neighbors’ house. The windows in the house were dark of course, and he got the sense of stillness. Deliberately he moved
his gaze forward, and in the eerie red glow saw that the road dead-ended about fifty yards ahead.
“Hey.”
The single word was soft, so soft that if he wanted he could legitimately pretend he hadn’t heard it. It came from the direction
of the dark porch. Maybe she thought he’d seen her, and rural manners had compelled her to greet him. Maybe she didn’t really
want a conversation in the dark early-morning hours. He could keep going . . . but he’d already had this talk with himself,
and look where he was.
He stopped in the middle of the road, turned his head toward the house. Yes, he could make her out, a pale blur barely visible
in the dark protection of the porch.
“Hey,” he said in return.
Sela had stood in her yard for a while, face turned skyward, then returned to the porch with the intention of going back inside
to try to get some sleep. The red sky held her, though, and she remained standing at the screen door just as entranced as
she had been when she first saw the glow. Then she saw Ben. She recognized him almost immediately, though she felt a split
second of alarm at seeing a strange man walking down her road. The smooth, silent way he moved registered with her and with
some astonishment she realized she’d watched him enough that she knew how he walked, could recognize him even in the faint,
eerie red glow.
Her heart began pounding.
She started to shrink back, not say anything. She had no idea why he was walking down the middle of the road in the wee hours,
but one thing she did know about him was that he didn’t like interacting with others. The fact that he’d warned her about
the solar storm was more astonishing than if he hadn’t. At the time she hadn’t fully appreciated what he’d done, but now she
did; however well they survived this crisis, they would have been much worse off without his heads-up. The least she could
do was say thank you.
“Hey,” she said, the one word all she could manage because her heart was beating so hard and she didn’t have the breath to
say more. She doubted he’d be able to hear her, her voice had been so weak.
Then he stopped, looked at her, and repeated her greeting back to her. Her knees went weak, so weak she almost slumped against
the screen door. Her reaction to him was so extreme she felt like a teenager; the realization was enough to strengthen her
spine, her knees, and she barely trembled as she pulled open the screen door and stepped outside so he could see her, perhaps
recognize her. That was as far as her determination carried her, and she sank down on the top step. She crunched her toes,
the wood cool under her bare feet, and waited to see if he’d resume his walk down the road.
She expected him to; she even wanted him to. When, after a pause so long she almost stopped breathing, he turned and walked
across the yard toward her, she sucked in a quick breath of . . . maybe panic, maybe excitement, likely both.
As he got closer she could make out some kind of stick across his back . . . no, a scabbard. A gunstock was protruding from
it. Of course; no sane person would wander these mountains at night without the means of protecting himself from the wildlife.
He slipped the scabbard off over his head and without a word sat down on the step beside her. He kept the weapon at hand,
though, right beside his leg.
She took a deep, silent breath, caught in the moment with crimson magic above her and him beside her. On a cellular level
she realized she’d remember this forever, no matter where life took her or how long she existed. This, now, was ingrained
in her being. Red ribbons danced overhead, fading, then pulsing with power again. The red glow bathed them, making it seem
as if the heat she felt all along her left side came from the lights in the sky instead of from him. He wasn’t actually touching
her but he was so close there seemed to be a mild magnetic field between them, lifting the fine hairs on her arm.
Sela tilted her head and looked upward, permanently giving up the self-fiction that she was uncomfortable with him for any
reason other than the power of her own reaction. She felt almost painfully alive at his nearness, her skin heated and ultrasensitive,
her nipples pinched and aching. This was pure physical chemistry, lust on the most basic level. Likely it was one-sided, because
he’d never looked at her with even faint interest. Her experience in dealing with something like this was basically zero,
because she’d never reacted so intensely to any other man; this was outside both her experience and her comfort zone.
After about thirty seconds he still hadn’t said anything. She wanted to bombard him with questions—Had he been in the military?
Why had he moved here? Had he ever been married? Did he have children?—but held them all back. She might be ridiculously turned
on by his nearness, but instinct told her that the best way to make him retreat was to push. Normally he avoided personal
contact. Just the fact that he hadn’t ignored her, that he was actually sitting beside her, was enough for now. She settled
for murmuring, “Thanks for the warning. It made a difference.”
She was still looking up, but by the movement beside her she could tell he turned his head toward her for a brief glance,
before he, too, gazed upward. “You’re welcome,” he finally muttered, as if he’d had to cast around for the appropriate response.
Wow, at this rate in a year they might manage a real conversation. She wanted to laugh, but she was exasperated with herself,
too, because she wasn’t much better than he was. The unfolding crisis was a safe subject, though, so maybe she should stick
to that.
“I keep thinking of things I should have done,” she admitted. There, that hadn’t been agonizing; she hadn’t even really thought
about what she’d say, the words had just come out.
“Such as?”
She realized she wanted his evaluation of what they’d done, his advice on what else they could do or improve on. She wanted
to know if she’d done the right thing, if she should now concentrate on something else. She wanted to hear his voice, deep
and slightly rough, and so masculine it gave her the shivers, wanted to keep him talking even if he didn’t think she’d done
the right things. Learning what not to do was important, too.
“We concentrated on food, mostly, canning as much as we could. I bought things that will keep, like canned meats, peanut butter,
dried beans. I think we’ll be okay there, though we’ll have to cut back, and be careful not to waste anything. I have extra
fuel for the generator, wood for the fireplaces, candles and oil lamps, prescription refills and first-aid supplies—but I
almost forgot about water for flushing and taking a bath, so we don’t have much on hand,” she confessed. “Right now I have
plenty of bottled water, but it won’t last long. After it’s gone I can handle water for drinking by boiling it, but I should
have gotten a rain barrel for the rest. Making trips to and from the creek is going to get old fast. I’ve been trying to think
what I already have that I could put under the downspouts to catch the rain, and the best I can come up with is some big plastic
storage containers.” She made herself stop talking, give him a chance to weigh in.
When he spoke, it wasn’t about her preparations. “We?”
He’d asked a semi-personal question. She was so startled that she blinked. “My aunt Carol and her granddaughter, Olivia. They
live together just up the road. The yellow two-story. You’ve seen Carol in the store, the one with the pink streak in her
hair. She was elected valley leader at tonight’s meeting.”
He grunted an acknowledgment. Maybe he’d already known she and Carol were related, but likely not, because she called Carol
by her name without the “Aunt” attached to the front. “You should consolidate, move in with her.”
“An elderly friend already has, and taken the spare bedroom. If things get desperate I will, but—I like being alone.”
He made another sound, this one not quite a grunt. She suspected he understood wanting to be alone.
Finally a light breeze began stirring through the night. It felt wonderful on her overheated skin and she sighed in relief.
“Anyway, dipping buckets of water out of plastic containers will be easier than hiking to the creek and back every day.” She
didn’t specify which creek, because it didn’t matter; the valley was veined with creeks.
“That’ll work,” he commented.
He hadn’t exactly praised the idea, but she was nevertheless pleased. She was thinking, she was identifying problems and coming
up with solutions. In the coming weeks she’d be doing a lot of that, and could only pray the solutions would work.
The breeze picked up, and a faint chill ran over her bare arms. After the heat they’d been having it felt nice to actually
be chilled, but soon the moving air on her bare feet was too cold and she pulled her legs up and tugged the legs of her pajama
bottoms down to cover her toes. Her movement made her arm brush against his; the skin to skin contact, slight as it was, almost
took her breath. He was so hot she felt almost singed where she touched him. She went motionless, still touching him because
in that second she was incapable of moving away, and all she could do was wait to see if he moved away.
He didn’t. Neither did he increase the pressure, or move closer himself, but he didn’t move away. It was as if he hadn’t noticed
something that, though small, had rocked her so off-balance. Tilting his head back, he watched the red aurora that was flooding
the sky and with admiration said quietly, “This is something.”
The change of subject was welcome, even though it brought home to her how insignificant the moment was to him. She was overthinking . . .
well, everything, rather than simply living in the moment. Realizing that gave her the inner composure she needed to pull