Chapter 3
That stupid box was still outside, mocking me, left to the wilds of Whinterlan. Maybe, if I was lucky, a squirrel would make off with it.
I meant to let it sit there and rot but I couldn’t bring myself to let the impending snow storm take it, or the stupid squirrels.
Bringing it inside, I left it by the door.
So there it sits as I work on the house, taking down things from the walls, going over pictures and their frames, packing up the family albums, family heirlooms. There that stupid box sits, right by my boots, mocking me.
I refused to open it, not after that… madness with Elm.
Maybe I’d have a peek inside after I’d moved. Or… I could use it for kindling if I run out of firewood. I was getting a little low as we speak.
No matter how much I tried to tell myself I didn’t give a fig, there my gaze went, right back to it.
Packing up Mom’s favorite vase, I set it in a box labeled living room, bubble wrapped to death, and there my gaze went back to that stupid cube of cardboard.
Would my new place have a space for this vase, I wondered, or would it end up stuffed in a closet because my bed is in the living room and my roommate who can afford more rent gets the room with the door?
The idea of my introverted ass sharing space with a stranger, no door, nothing, made me cringe. I could do it if I had to but, man…
A muffled thunk sounded off outside.
Jolted from my thoughts, I shot up and my gaze darted around. What the heck was that?
Having a peek out the front window, then the side one, spying nothing, I shrugged it off to snow falling, turned the record I had playing over to the other side, and kept sorting.
Keep.
Toss because I’ll have no use for it and nowhere to keep it.
Dad’s favorite chores coat hung by the door, right next to Mom’s thicker coat she used when we chopped wood.
I couldn’t get rid of those. I’ll wear them, I decided.
The record finished, and I could claim to packing four boxes. The coats remained on their pegs on the wall by the door.
A longer, loud thunk, followed by a crack, caught my attention. Fully.
The back.
Running to the kitchen, I peered out the window. It was starting to come down out there.
Through the snowfall, starting to thicken as I’d been expecting, I made out a lone figure.
For a moment, if only briefly, I’d thought, insane as it sounds, what is Dad doing out in that?
But he wasn’t here, chopping wood out back.
Throwing the back door open, I stomped out onto the back porch in my owlbear slippers, favorite broken in jeans, and faded AFI hoodie without thought. “Hey! What do you think you’re-”
The axe came down, crack, splitting another bit of wood. Gathering some of the wood he’d already split up, Cy disappeared around the side of the house. “‘Nough wood inside?” he asked as he rounded the corner to grab another bundle and walk it over to the wood pile.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” My arms folded and my eyebrows shot up. A slippered foot began to tap-tap impatiently. Was he crazy?
Cy paused long enough to snark, “What look like I do? Not make the snowmans.”
At least if he was making a stupid snowman, I could growl at him and not feel a little guilty about it. I mean, the guy was chopping wood for me and putting it away. Why, I had no damn clue, but here we are.
“You know what I mean,” I huffed at him as he passed.
“What you mean?” he quipped as he tossed me a look like he had no clue and would like me to fill him in— total BS— which he proved was bologna by adding a sarcastic wink.
“Are you high?!” I shouted after him.
“Cy say no to the drugs! You? Shout at Cy like Pru on the funny stuff!” he shouted right back from the wood pile.
My face reddened and my gaze darted around, worried for an audience. There was none, of course.
“Why are you here?” I called out, less a shout and more a confused inquiry.
“Chop the wood. What look like?” he called back in the same tone, mocking me.
Shaking my head, I huffed and puffed and that was about it. I looked like an angry cartoon bull as my breath left little white clouds with every put out exhalation.
“It looks like you’re crazy and running around with an axe,” I muttered petulantly. I felt like I was in Bizarro World. Why was he here?!
“Least not out here with feet stuffed in fluffed animals,” he shot back. His hearing was insane.
Eyes narrowing on the side of the house he’d disappeared around, I wiggled my sock covered feet in my totally cool and not stuffed fluffed, whatever, animals I’d shoved my feet in, adorable plushness. “Fuck off,” I grumbled in my slipper friends’ defense.
A loud, raucous laugh issued from the vicinity of the wood pile. Of course he heard that.
“Grumpy,” he laughingly croaked out.
Whatever. That’s rich coming from Captain Grump.
A knock at the front door had me frowning, popping back inside, closing the back door shut behind me, to quietly make my way to the door.
If it was Elm, come to explain himself, he’d best be coming back later. I didn’t have it in me to go another round on that merry go round right now.
Cautiously having a peek through the peep hole, I scowled when the empty front porch was all that was there to greet me.
Slipping my front door open, I popped my head out to peer around outside.
An overdone tsking behind me had me screaming, slamming my front door shut and whirling around to watch Cy as he made himself right at home, traipsing right into my living room and dumping a bundle of wood next to the wood stove.
“Can I fucking help you?” I snapped.
Cy paused as he stacked wood neatly in the wood bin. “Give min-nut to think ‘bout it.”
“I’ll give you two, one to scramble for the door while I grab the shotgun, two to get in your overcompensator and get lost before you have a chance to figure out if I’m as good a shot as my daddy claimed,” I growled.
Instead of getting mad or huffy or puffing up in a flair of dramatics, he smiled, just as he had over by my car not so very long ago.
In my head I felt like I was back over by my car again, our bodies close, his scent so thick in the air I felt like I was drowning in it, our mouths closing in for a kiss.
But he was still across the room, hadn’t moved an inch, that sexy smile on his face, blue eyes flashing as he eyed me.
Rumbling something at me in his weird growl-speaking whatever that was, was the thing that snapped me out of it.
“You know I don’t understand your grumble rumblings.” My hand lifted and I waved it off.
Cy’s chest began to rumble as his head cocked. His gaze sharpened as he watched my exposed skin prickle and a shiver wracked my frame.
“I’m cold,” I lied. Lifting my chin, I gave a loud sniff. “Don’t look at me like that.”
“No look like what?” Cy rumbled again, longer, louder than the last.
Swallowing thickly as heat began to pool low in my belly, my mouth suddenly felt so dry I scrambled towards the kitchen for a glass of water. “You know what I mean!”
Leaning over the faucet, gulping water faster than the faucet could fill my cup, I shouted, “Thanks for the wood! Let yourself out!”
I knew the moment he was in the kitchen. I felt him, sensed him before I heard him.
Choking on the gulp of water I’d just taken, I whirled around, the half filled glass clutched in my hand, water still running.
Cy moved in, calm as you please, until he was right before me.
Reaching over, my lips parted and my mouth fell open in a stunned gape.
Instead of leaning in to kiss me, like I’d stupidly expected, he leaned over, turned off the water, then plucked the glass from my hand as I stood there still as a gape mouthed statue, and set the glass on the counter beside the sink.
There he went, giving me that look again. He was so close and he smelled so damn good… I just wanted to- This wasn’t normal, was it?
“What’s wrong with me?” I muttered absently to myself.
Cy’s arms came around me to settle behind me loosely. I jumped, so deep in my head it startled me. There he went with that chest rattling rumbling again.
Holy frick, I couldn’t think when he did that.
My hand lifted and then fell on his chest.
My intention was to push him away but instead I found my hand curling into his shirt as if I meant to drag him closer at any moment.
Cy’s gaze followed mine, scanning my hand on his person, then my face. That sexy little half smile he’d been sporting widened until the fool was sporting a shit eating grin.
“It’s not funny,” I muttered, glaring at my hand. I should want to move it but I didn’t. I didn’t move it and I didn’t want to, to be perfectly honest.
I liked his warmth, the way he felt. If anything, what I really wanted to do was lean into him more and curl up in his arms.
“What not funny?” His voice was low, soft. I felt it like a caress. He leaned in closer, bringing more of his scent with him.
“You’re not,” I grumbled with a frown, even as he smoothed a hand up my back, pressed, and brought me closer to him.
“Not try to be funny,” he murmured, his voice all low and deep and- That was his hand sliding down, right into my back pocket of my jeans. The letter! He did not!
“Oh- No, you don’t!” I snapped, jerking out of his arms to hastily retreat across to the other side of the kitchen.
Cy didn’t fight me, staying near the sink as I rushed to put some distance between us.
Reaching into my back pocket, feeling that tell-tale crinkle, I ripped it out of the back pocket of my jeans with a snarl.
He muttered with a shrug of his shoulders, “No care you with Elm. Want-” right as I burst out with, “You- You sleazy asshole! I can’t believe you’d stoop this low!”
Cy paused, whatever he was going to say, mid sentence, and slowly closed his mouth.
“What do you mean, you don’t care I was with Elm?” My face reddened and I growled, “What did he do, run home and tell you?!”
“What mean Cy stoop low?” he muttered, finally looking more like the grumbly ass I’d grown up with.