Chapter 23 #2
“And how is that?” I ask dryly. “There’s nothing there but mutual antagonism and meaningless flirting.” I ripped open my heart and showed Louisa the bloody wounds of my life. Totally normal thing to do. Christ, why did it feel like a balm? Something I'd like to do again and again?
Wanting to fuck her, I can handle. Wanting her to see the darkest corners of my soul? No. Not even a little.
Briar side-eyes me. “So you’re not thinking about staying?”
“God no. I’ll leave at the end of August.” That gives me a month to muster the courage to leave. Surely it won’t take that long. Now that I’ve rejected Louisa, this thing between us should cool. I’ll get bored. Leaving will start to look good. I won’t be tempted to stay through September.
“Can I come with you?”
“I don’t know,” I retort, “wouldn’t you rather tell your lumberjack how you feel?”
“How I feel?” her voice rises in indignation, as if she hadn’t suggested the same thing to me. “I feel like he’s an asshole who deserves to fall in a pile of bear shit.”
“I’m sure he does.”
Briar stares out the window, and I split my concentration between avoiding potholes and trying to figure out how to survive the next few hours. But when we pull into the back of Gallo’s, Briar turns to me with a troubled look on her face.
“It feels like the calm before the storm,” she says, her voice somber.
Vegas. I can tell from the haunted look in her eyes.
“I don’t know,” she continues after a moment, “maybe I’m being paranoid. It felt like someone had been in the RV the other day, but nothing was out of place or missing.”
“Probably Milo. Check your underwear drawer.”
She rolls her eyes. “I know when he’s been in there. This wasn’t that.”
“Could’ve been Gina or Benji returning the cat.”
Her brows furrow, but she nods. “Maybe.”
The troubled look on her face doesn’t fade.
She’s not convinced. “Do you think that guy followed you?” The man chasing her must have been the one who fired those shots.
From everything I’ve seen in the news, no one was hurt, and no one saw the gunman.
At that point in the show, Briar would’ve been in the back.
Cleaning up. Restocking. Easy to corner. I don’t know how she escaped.
She sighs. “If he had followed me, I’d be dead.”
“Comforting thought,” I reply dryly.
She’s not wrong about it feeling like the calm before the storm, though. The air when I climb out of the car feels thick and volatile, just waiting for a spark to set it off.
Louisa is in the bar, getting ready to open. She has a smile for both of us, but the one she gives me is more guarded. Since everything is under control, I go upstairs to shower off the day.
I come back down, and for the second night in a row, Louisa treats me almost exactly like she did when she first returned.
Almost exactly. Her tongue isn’t as sharp, and she’s not actively trying to annoy me, but she’s doing her damnedest to show me she’s just fine.
Which is great. It’s definitely what I want. Although it would be better if I believed her.
I rub at the ache that’s taken hold behind my sternum as I watch her work. She moves among the crowded floor with a smile for everyone. They don’t notice the way her arm shakes with the effort of carrying a tray laden with food and drink, but I do.
She’s also wearing flats, not heels, and from time to time, I catch her stretching her back. What the hell did she do today?
“Hey,” I say, cornering her behind the bar around nine. “It’s winding down. Briar and I can close, if you want to take the evening off.”
Her eyes widen in surprise. “It’s my bar, Clay.”
“Our bar,” I correct.
“But not forever. You’re leaving.”
I am. But it makes that ache in my chest deepen, which irritates me. “You look like you spent the day weighing bodies down with rocks and dropping them into the lake. Do you want the rest of the night off or not?”
“No one ever died from a little workout,” she says with a flirty smile as she pats my chest. “Except the people whose bodies I dropped into the lake, of course. I’m good. I could dispose of another ten bodies easily. But thanks for caring.”
“I don’t,” I say as she walks around me, but she just turns and blows me a kiss.
Infuriating woman. I want to follow her and insist that I don’t care. I want to pin her against a wall and show her all the ways I do care. Instead, I do nothing.
Louisa stays. Briar leaves instead, taking Louisa’s old junker of a car at Louisa’s insistence.
Time crawls by, as stuffy and suffocating as the humid night air, but eventually the bar closes.
Louisa hums to herself as she wipes down the last of the tables. She doesn’t try to talk to me. All the same, I don’t breathe easily until she leaves. Typically, I walk her to the camper. Tonight, like last night, she disappears before I can offer.
It’s late when I finally leave the office.
The apartment is soupy, even with the window open and the old box fan running at full speed.
A cold shower helps, but I lie awake for what feels like hours, and all my thoughts swirl around Louisa.
Every inch of me aches to be near her, but this is for her own good. And mine.
I drift off to sleep.
And jolt awake as a loud boom shakes the entire building, rattling the window and reverberating through my chest.
I bolt up in bed with a gasp. Another flash of lightning illuminates the room.
It’s a thunderstorm. We’ve had a few this summer—it’s nothing.
The sky flickers out the window, thunder rolling and cracking without surcease, sometimes so close I feel it in my bones. It’s not raining yet, but the wind gusts and something outside clatters.
I drop back onto my pillows, but I won’t be able to fall back asleep while it’s storming. It feels way too exposed in this little apartment, despite the one pathetic window.
What will it be like in the camper?
It’s just a little thunderstorm. If it were anything serious, there would be an alert on my phone, and my phone, wherever I’ve left it up here, is silent.
Louisa is fine. She’s probably sleeping through it.
The rain comes all at once, blasting against the roof and the side of the building. Thunder shakes and rattles, so loud I bury my face under my pillow. It still smells like Louisa’s damn cherries and something slightly floral from her shampoo.
Minutes tick by. The storm grows to a howl, like it could tear the bar down.
Unease builds within me. There’s no way this is a garden-variety thunderstorm—so why hasn’t my phone blared an alert?
I toss my pillow aside and get up to look for the stupid thing.
Shit, I think I left it in the office.
The storm is a grinding roar now, debris banging against the building as thunder cracks and crashes. The sound goes on and on, louder and louder like a jet engine.
Louisa.
I throw myself down the stairs and into the dark bar. There’s no time to find the light switch in the dark—if the power is even still on. I smack into the side door and unlock it, but when I push against it, it doesn’t open. The wind is too strong, holding it shut.
“Fuck! Lou, I’m coming!” I race into the bar, through the kitchen, to the back door. It opens, and I run out into the storm.
Rain pelts me in cold sheets, and I’m distantly aware I’m naked. Wind threatens to knock me over. I can barely see through the rain, even with the near-constant lightning, but I run anyway. The ground is sharp, littered with rocks and small branches that I hardly feel.
I leap the gate and land in a puddle. Almost there.
“Lou!”
The wind rips her name from me, the storm louder than my shout.
I swear I hear her calling my name, but it has to be a trick of the wind.
My feet slip in wet grass as I break into the clearing, but I regain my balance and resume running.
Lightning flashes overhead, revealing in stark contrast trees bending in the wind.
I stumble to a stop, my heart in my throat.
The camper lies crushed under a tree. I can barely see it with the rain blowing into my eyes.
Get her out.
I start to move again, one foot in front of the other, quicker. She has to be inside. She’s small, it wouldn’t have squashed her. I can get her out. She’s going to be okay. She has to be okay.
But the closer I get, the more it looks like she won’t be okay. No one would.
“Lou!” What do I do? I can’t pull this fucking tree off. I pound on the side of the camper, straining for any sound that she’s alive, she’s okay. “Lou!”
“Clay!”
Her voice isn’t coming from the camper.
I whirl around and there she is, pushing her rain-soaked hair off her face, a flashlight in one hand as she stares in horror at the camper.
“Lou.” Relief nearly takes me out at the knees, but I push forward until I can wrap my arms around her.
I love you. The words catch in my throat, but the feeling detonates in my chest, impossible to contain.
“The camper—” she starts to say, peering around me, but I cup her face and pull her lips to mine.