Chapter 9 #2
It’s not. It never gets busy, either. A handful of people turn up for dinner. A few locals take up their usual barstools, but I can handle it by myself, so I leave her to her book.
She might be persisting, but she looks like she’s barely keeping her head above the water.
Mariah corners me in the kitchen in the middle of a slow dinner rush. “When are you going to fill the propane tanks?” she asks.
“What propane tanks?”
“In the camper,” Mariah says. “Lou can’t cook in there.”
“Louisa isn’t my responsibility,” I say. Guilt prickles me even as I say it. I’ve never owned a camper in my life—I bought this one with dirty cash so I could sell it for clean money. I never intended to sleep in it, or for anyone else to. I never thought about propane.
Or water.
Mariah shakes her head. “She’s been scavenging food past the use-by date from the kitchen.”
And garnishes like those cherries. I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Fine, I’ll sort the propane and get Louisa some groceries. Can you make her something for dinner that isn’t about to expire? Whatever she likes.”
Mariah grins now that she’s got her way. “Of course.”
The bar clears out by nine-thirty. Before Mariah heads home, she hands me a couple of red plastic baskets, each filled with a burger and fries. “Sit down with her. Eat.”
“I’m not hungry,” I say, irritated all over again.
“Yes, you are,” Mariah says. She slings her purse over her shoulder and calls out a goodnight to Louisa, who replies without looking up from her book.
Louisa does look up when I slide into the booth across from her. She frowns at the burger baskets.
“Mariah thinks we need to eat,” I explain.
Louisa turns toward the door to thank her, but Mariah’s long gone, so she sinks back into the seat, placing her book cover-down on the table so she can snag a fry.
Don’t live off of maraschino cherries, I want to tell her. We can work out an arrangement to share cooking duties until I can get the propane and water sorted.
Wait—share cooking duties?
What the fuck has gotten into me? I don’t share a cozy domestic life with anyone. Me, sautéing while she chops? Shit no. I don’t want to be anywhere near her when she’s got a knife.
I’ll have to do the chopping.
No, god, what is wrong with me? I have to get my shit together. I push all that domestic nonsense out of my head and pick up my burger.
Beyond the propane and water for the camper, she isn’t my responsibility. But I’ll still get her some groceries so she doesn’t starve or give herself food poisoning.
For some reason, I don’t feel all that much better after making that decision.
We eat in silence. There’s something brittle about her today. I rack my brain for something to say, any possible topic to distract her, but I come up blank. I’m not here to comfort her. I’m not her friend, not her therapist. But why is she struggling today? What changed?
Was it me? I drop the remains of my burger and clear my throat. “About this morning—”
She waves a fry dismissively. “There’s a window in the changing room. I saw you coming down the road.”
Oh. She put on a show. If I had a shred of guilt about watching her, I don’t anymore.
So there’s some other reason for the slumped shoulders and puffy eyes. She wasn’t exactly happy about the money laundering—maybe that’s it? I’m not going to stop, but I don’t like seeing her like this. It’s uncanny.
It probably has nothing to do with me. Her cousin betrayed her, her ex stole from her, and her fuck buddy lost interest. Most of her problems have nothing to do with me, but not all of them.
I don’t want to be the reason she’s wilting. I don’t want her to wilt at all. This whole thing is irritating. It’s none of my business.
So why can’t I get it out of my head? Why am I worried about her?
I tug at the collar of my shirt—it’s too tight. My skin feels too tight. This morning, as I walked down the road, I felt different, and now I’m worried about her. What is wrong with me?
There isn’t anything special about her. Sure, she’s attractive. She’s quick and sharp, and every interaction with her sparks something inside me that burns away the ennui, unlike anything I’ve had with anyone else. I want to know what she’s thinking, what she’s feeling, because I…
My stomach sinks. For some godforsaken reason, I care about her. I want to know what’s wrong because I fucking care. That feeling this morning was about her.
Why else would I be willing to give her the bar back and replace what her ex stole? It’s not about buying her silence when she’s made no threat to expose me. It’s about taking care of her.
Fuck.
FUCK.
I might as well cover my body in honey and walk off into the woods for the bears to eat me. I’m not having feelings for Louisa Gallo.
I freeze. She’s looking at me, her head cocked to the side, brows drawn together. I didn’t say anything—my lips are pressed together tight—but what has the rest of my face been doing?
I’m losing control.
I shove up from the booth, grab my almost-empty basket, and force myself not to sprint to the safety of the kitchen. The lights flicker back on overhead, but I’m already in the middle of the room before they come fully on.
“This is not happening,” I mutter, dropping my basket on the clean counter with a clatter.
There’s an answering hiss from the back corner.
I freeze when I see it—the sharp, hideous face of a creature from hell.
“Louisa!” My voice breaks on the second syllable of her name, but that gets her ass in gear because she flies into the kitchen seconds later.
She comes to a stop behind me, and I chance taking my eyes off the devil-spawn to glance at her.
Her red lips purse for a second, and she rests a hand on her cocked hip. “Oh. It’s just an opossum.”
Something about her lack of concern gets under my skin. “Is it a relation of yours? You’re going to welcome it in? I can see the resemblance, but—”
“Broom’s over there.” She points and starts to turn away. “You can deal with this on your own.”
My blood goes cold and I reach for her arm. “Wait. I’m sorry. Don’t go. I don’t know the first thing about wildlife.”
She twists out of my grip. “Do I look like a forest ranger?”
“No, thank god.” The creature hisses again, and I cringe. “Please, Louisa, help me get rid of it.”
“Are you scared of the wittle possum?” she asks. Her coquettish smile is incredibly unwelcome right now. I don’t need to be turned on and repulsed at the same time.
“Are you not?” I glance at the animal. Thank god it hasn’t budged from the corner. How fast can they move?
“Beg a little more,” she says, voice like dark silk. “I like it.”
Electricity tingles along my spine, settling low. She’s got my strings, yanking my attention away from what might be the lesser threat in the room. Her dark eyes are big and luminous, and my hasty mouth obeys. “Louisa, please.”
“Fine.” She takes a deep breath and squares her shoulders, all business. “Open the back door.”
I keep as much space between myself and the vermin as possible as I edge toward the door. Can they leap? I don’t think so, but how the fuck would I know? Shit like this is why I hate the outdoors.
The opossum resumes hissing with a vengeance as I reach the back door and open it wide.
I turn to find myself face to face with beady black eyes and a mouth full of sharp teeth, wide open in an angry hiss.
My scream is entirely justified, if not dignified.
Louisa pushes past me, holding the animal by the scruff with one oven-mitt-covered hand and by the base of the tail with the other, her pale face scrunched in concentration.
She carefully attempts to set it in the grass, but it may have moved because, at the last moment, she fumbles it, dropping it with a shriek.
The animal freezes, but all Louisa’s bravado has deserted her, and she hops from one foot to the other with a very visible full-body shudder before chucking the oven mitt at it.
The creature rolls over, playing dead as Louisa scampers back to the door.
I pull her inside, slamming the door shut and collapsing against the cool metal.
My heart is pounding, and it takes a few breaths to calm down. “I thought you weren’t scared of a wittle opossum.”
“Doesn’t mean I want to touch it,” she says with another shudder, burying her face in my chest as she makes a sound suspiciously close to a dry heave.
And that’s when I realize I’m holding her tight.
The brush with rabies must have shaken her out of her senses, too.
She stiffens as she notices my arms wrapped around her.
Her fingers fan out over my chest as she lifts her head, smoothing out my shirt before clearing her throat and stepping back. My arms fall away to let her go.
“Ugh,” she says in disgust.
About me or the opossum?
She spins and hurries over to the sink to wash her hands.
My heart is thumping faster again. I feel hot and cold at the same time. I brush my hands over my shirt, fussing over wrinkles that aren’t there, trying to find some semblance of equilibrium.
It’s gone.