3. Gavin
GAVIN
“Here, drink this.”
I hand her a glass of whiskey, and she stares down at it for a moment, nonplussed.
“What’s that?”
“Whiskey. I don’t have the good stuff, but it’ll keep you warm enough.”
She lifts the glass to her lips as I sit down opposite her, and my gaze rests on her for longer than it needs to. I'm still trying to get a handle on this woman, and, three days in, I feel like I'm no closer than when I started.
When I stepped out of the shower and saw her there in my home, I knew there was no way in hell I could just turn her around and tell her to leave, even though I tried, I wouldn’t have actually done it.
Send her out into the blizzard? She would have frozen to death.
I might like my solitude, but there’s only so much I’m willing to do to maintain it.
I went to check on her car the morning after she arrived, and it’s dead. Not just stuck in that drift, but completely fried. I moved it off the road so it wouldn’t pose a risk to anyone else passing through, but it looks like she’s going to be sticking around for a while longer.
She sips on her drink, and I can’t help but notice the way her mouth glides along the edge of the glass.
Fuck, it’s been a long time since I’ve had a woman around like this, and it just had to be a smoking-hot one who walked through my door.
She has a puff of curly red-brown hair, green eyes, and light freckles over her shoulders.
I saw them when she pulled on one of my old sweaters to keep warm, hardly having any clothes to her name, and the thought of my clothes so close to her skin has been playing on my mind ever since.
And I know I need to broach the matter of what she is doing here. What was so important that she was willing to drive to a blizzard to get to it, or away from it.
But God knows I have secrets of my own, and I'm not sure I want to open up the conversation to my side of the equation quite yet.
“Thanks for this,” she murmurs, and she glances over at me. “And for everything. I mean, I know you probably came out here because you wanted to be away from people, but...”
I chuckle.
“Is it that obvious?”
She smirks slightly, looking at me over the top of her glass.
“Hmm, yeah,” she replies playfully. “I don’t think you end up in a place like this by accident, you know?”
“Fair point.”
The fire crackles between us, and I can feel her gaze lingering on me, no doubt more questions nagging at her mind.
“How did you end up here, by the way?”
“What do you mean?”
She gestures around the cabin.
“I mean, did you buy this place? Build it yourself?”
“Built it myself.”
“Woah, that’s so cool,” she remarks, her eyebrows shooting upward. “I’ve only ever lived in the city, I can’t even imagine building a place like this. Where did you learn?”
I glance at her, calculating how honest I can be. There are things that I don’t know if I can say to her. She seems jumpy, to say the least. Confused, at times, by my willingness to treat her with basic decency.
And if I know anything, it’s that women most often end up that way because some man has taught them they are not worthy of that, and I don’t want to spook her, considering she’s all but trapped in here with me.
“In prison.”
If she wants to know, I’m not going to lie to her. Her eyebrows raise even higher, practically vanishing into her hairline.
“You… you were in prison?”
I nod.
“Got out about eight years ago,” I reply.
“What were you in for?”
I take another sip of my whiskey.
“Got into a fight I shouldn’t have,” he replies. “Senator’s son. Guy was coked up out of his mind, coming on to some girl at a bar and I took a swing for him. I know I shouldn’t have, but this fucker, trust me, he deserved it.”
“And you went to prison for that?” she replies, her eyes widening.
“Well. Might have been more than just one swing.”
“Oh. Well. Sounds like he deserved it, anyway.”
I grin, cocking an eyebrow.
“Not everyone agrees with me on that.”
She shrugs.
“I get it,” she replies. “Sometimes. I mean, when you’re faced with something crazy, you have to go to lengths you never thought you would.”
I fix my gaze on her, watching her as she watches the fire.
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
She shrugs, but I can see her cheeks darkening, as though we are inching close to something that she might not want to come clean about.
“Maybe I am.”
She takes another drink of her whiskey, and then glances over at me.
“So, you came here to get away from it all? After you got out, I mean?”
“Easier than trying to get a job with that attached to your name.”
She pulls a face.
“Damn, is it really that bad?”
I nod, taking another sip of my whiskey.
“People don’t like hiring when they think you’re a liability.
Easier for them to keep their distance and pretend like they just didn’t like the way you walked or something.
I had saved up a little money, took it, used it to buy all the supplies.
I'd been woodworking in prison, so I knew what I was doing by the time I came out here.”
She rests her chin on her elbow, listening intently, and I realize that this is the most I have spoken to someone in a long-ass time. I clear my throat, looking down into the amber of my drink.
“What about you?” I ask, lifting my chin in her direction, turning the conversation back around on her. “How did you end up here?”
She fiddles with her glass for a moment, like she doesn’t want to respond.
“Uh, it’s… it’s hard to explain.”
I cock an eyebrow.
“Must have been urgent, for you to drive out in this bad weather.”
“It was.”
There it is again, that look in her eye, like there is something she doesn’t want to tell me. I consider pushing for more, but I get the feeling I’d only be met with another brush-off. I sit there in silence, giving her the space to speak if she wants it, and, finally, she does.
“I was getting away from my boyfriend. Well, ex, now, I guess.”
“Oh, yeah?”
She tangles a loose thread around her finger and tugs it off, like she is trying to distract herself.
“I haven’t talked to anyone about this,” she confesses. “I don’t even know how. I just...”
“You don’t have to know,” I assure her, and she hunches her shoulders up to her ears.
“God, I think this is going to come out a total mess.”
“Let it,” I reply. “Sometimes it’s good to get things off your chest.”
She downs the last of the whiskey and inhales deeply, like she is mustering every inch of courage she can. And then, at last, she begins.
“My ex, Ryan, he… we were together for a long time. Nearly six years, actually, since I started college. I was on a scholarship, and his father was the dean, he had this trust fund and everyone loved him and I just thought— God, I don’t know what I thought.
That I would get my scholarship revoked if I didn’t do what he asked?
That everyone would hate me? I don’t know. ”
She forces a slight laugh from between her lips, but I don’t buy it for an instant. It is clear something heavy is weighing on her, and I watch her carefully, giving her a chance to explain herself.
“And it started off alright. I mean, he always had more than me. More money, his own apartment, more friends, stuff like that. And at first, he was kind to me. I think. He would take me out, show me off, and then he asked me to move in with him, and it’s like everything just… changed.”
“Changed how?”
“Like there was nothing I could do that he didn’t know about,” she goes on.
“When we were living together, he expected to know where I was at all times, and with who. And if I didn’t do what he asked, he would get pissed.
Really fucking pissed. Like, punching the wall next to my head kind of pissed.
I should have left then, but I thought I was the problem.
Shit, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to leave while I still had the chance. ”
She forces a smile on to her face, though it’s strained.
“I dropped out of college because he asked me to, and then, I was just stuck in that apartment with him. No job, no friends, barely in touch with my sister anymore. And things started escalating. And the night I left, that was the first time he ever put his hands on me.”
Fury flares through me, though I do my best to contain it. She doesn’t need me flying off the handle right now, when this is clearly so painful for her to recount. And besides, she has been around enough angry men as it is. She doesn’t need another.
“Jesus, Marie,” I mutter. “That’s...”
“It’s like it snapped me out of it,” she continues. “And as soon as he left the apartment, I went to dig out my old car from the parking lot I left it in, I put some stuff in a bag, and I just drove.”
“To your sister?”
“Yeah, she lives in Louisville,” she replies. “I mean, I think she does. It’s not like the two of us have been in touch for a long time.”
She takes another sip of her drink. I can hear the ache in her voice, all the things she has lost stacking up on top of her faster than she can take hold of them.
“Guess I should have known better than to drive under a storm warning, huh?” she laughs, trying to lighten the mood. And, before I can stop myself, I reach out to touch her hand. She jumps slightly, but doesn’t pull back, gazing down at my fingers on hers before she lifts her gaze to mine.
“You did the right thing, Marie,” I tell her, slightly gruffly. “That fucker, he didn’t deserve you. Or any woman. And if he hurt you...”
I notice that she tugs her sleeve down slightly, and I spot, for the first time, a bruise laced around her wrist, like a bracelet. I frown, pushing up the bottom of her sleeve so I can get a better look.
“Did he do this to you?” I demand. She nods, without a word. I rise to my feet, going to grab my first-aid kit to patch her up as best I can. I might not be able to do much when it comes to the emotional side of things, but the physical? I can handle that.
And, as I go, I can feel her watching me. And I wonder just what it is that’s on her mind.
And just how far she has managed to get from that psycho ex of hers.