Chapter Seven Jake #3
Both of us laugh happily, and I can feel my shoulders relaxing a little more as Jake pretends to be reluctant as he shows Rosie some love. But I know better now.
Pushing Rosie away so she will settle down to sleep again, Jake looks at me again.
“So, tell me about this fear of snakes . . . the scaled variety.” He smirks at his insinuation.
“I’m surprised you didn’t say the line that I’m a vet, so I should love all animals.
That’s what I usually get from anyone who finds out my fear.
” I roll my eyes to signal the frustration I feel when people react that way.
“It drives me insane. But if you must know, it’s sort of complicated, but when I was growing up, just turned ten, the only child, my parents and I vacationed in a cabin in the woods of Russian River Valley near San Francisco.
They were having marriage problems and thought for some ridiculous reason that it would be a great idea to go lock the three of us in a cabin for five days.
Which of course it wasn’t. All that happened is I sat around listening to them fight and it got worse each day.
Until the last night I was in my room, getting under the covers, and a rattlesnake came out of the cupboard.
I started screaming but they were too busy fighting over a text message from a woman that my mom had just found on my dad’s phone that they weren’t even listening to me freaking out. ”
I can feel my anxiety from that night, the breathlessness and fear that no one was coming pressing down on me.
“Shit, Ash, that would have been terrifying.” Jake puts his arm around my shoulders to comfort me and it feels like something unlocks, a little.
“Yeah. It felt like forever until they heard me and finally came in to deal with it. I just . . . yeah anyway, that’s the reason.”
We sit in silence for a minute, Jake’s arm still warm around me, before he asks, “Are your parents still together?”
“No. Dad left with the woman he was having an affair with after we got back from that trip. Just another man who has walked out on me.” God, I need to stop talking.
Why am I telling him all my deepest, darkest secrets, no matter how nice he’s being?
No one knows this much about me in Abbey Falls except Tiffany, and I trust her to take my secrets to the grave.
I need to change the topic, so I start asking questions about Jake’s family and their plans for Heatherbrae and thankfully we fall into a less emotional chat.
Jake looks intently up to the sky now and I follow his gaze.
“Have you ever looked at the stars, Ash, like really looked? They hold so much wonder and magic.” He takes my right hand and points it to one of the spots through the trees.
“Lay your cheek on your shoulder and look straight up your arm. See that really bright star that feels like it’s blinking brighter than the ones around it?
That’s the North Star. My gramps spent hours teaching us about the stars but he would always start with the North Star. ”
The emotion in his voice is so heavy it makes my heart ache for him.
“I’ve never even thought about that they have names.
To me they are just part of the pretty night sky that I quite often am standing under with an animal.
To me it’s just been a notion of feeling like you aren’t alone in this world.
I don’t think I’ve ever said this out loud to anyone before, but when I was younger I would sit at my bedroom window when I was lonely and look out at the night sky.
It was as clear and bright as this, but I would think to myself that somewhere in the world there was another child out there gazing up at the same stars, looking for a friend. ”
Maybe it’s because I’m tired but the emotions of that time float to the surface and I try to contain them before I let the tears flow.
“Show me more,” I ask Jake as he then points out the Big Dipper we can see through the trees, along with a few other constellations. I’m not sure who’s more comforted, him or me.
I’ve been trying to keep myself from falling asleep, thinking that pulling an all-nighter should be easy enough, but even with the throbbing pain and my anxiety of where I am, I’m struggling to stay awake.
I’m guessing Jake can tell it’s time for us to sleep by the way my eyes keep slowly closing for a few seconds, then opening and closing again, staying shut longer each time.
“Let’s lay down the blanket and wrap you in it. I’ll stoke the fire enough so it will hopefully last until daylight.” His hands are already smoothing out the blanket, which is crumpled around me on the ground from where I had discarded it earlier.
Jake’s plan sounds great in theory, but if I close my eyes, I won’t see any snakes approaching. I shudder involuntarily and try to pass it off as if it’s from the cold. But the other problem is there is only one blanket and I can’t have him sleeping in the dirt. That’s just wrong.
“No, let’s spread it out flat, then there is enough room for us both.
It’s my fault you’re out here, so the least I can do is share your blanket with you.
” I push parts of the blanket so it lies flat and then wriggle my backside to one side to give him some room.
Looking down, I think I have severely underestimated how wide this blanket is.
“Are you sure about that?” Jake notices my uncertainty.
“Yeeeppp.” The P pops as I reluctantly agree, knowing it’s the considerate thing to do, but also sensing this is going to be a long night lying so close to him.
“Okay, I’m just going to put it out there.”
I can’t tell from the look on his face what he’s going to say.
His expression is soft, but there isn’t any hint of his dimple that shows when he’s smiling either.
Oh my God, he has a dimple. I knew that, but it never really hit me until now.
Tiff’s stupid tea leaves. She said one dimple.
Feeling a small shiver running through me and I’m already trying to deny there is any correlation between Jake and the tea leaves.
Tiffany’s words are just that, words . . . surely.
“You’re cold.” His hands are now on my arms, rubbing them up and down.
Little does he know the shiver has nothing to do with the air temperature.
“Which was what I was just about to say. As soon as we drift off to sleep, the fire will keep going until morning but eventually die down, not giving us enough heat, and it’s going to get really cold.
I don’t want you to feel awkward, but I think we will need to share body heat. ”
My heart hits the front of my chest so hard I’m sure it just broke a few ribs.
I can’t do that. I mean, yes, it makes sense, but I’ve just let this man touch me in ways that I will never forget, and I’m now so embarrassed that I can’t look at him.
I begged him to make me come, for God’s sake, and now he wants to cuddle all night after we just agreed to be friends.
“Ash, stop spiraling in that head of yours. It’s just to keep warm, that’s all.”
How the hell can Jake read my mind? And he can pretend it’s just about keeping warm all he likes, but the strained lines on his forehead and the way his hands are shoved nervously into his jeans pockets but still fidgeting as he looks at me are giving away his nerves too.
“So far we just have a swollen ankle. We don’t want to add hypothermia to that list.”
Everything he’s saying makes sense, yet my internal siren is going off, warning me that this is just going to make things more awkward than they already are. If there is one thing I have found out about myself over the last few years, it’s that I can be stubborn when I need to be.
“Thanks, but I’ll be okay. We will worry about that if needed.
” I get myself settled on the blanket and try to take up as little room as possible by lying on my side and keeping my body as straight as I can, with my back angled to him.
But Jake just walks to the fire and throws on a few more logs before coming back to stand in front of me, looking down so he can get his last say.
Crouching beside me, he gently lifts my head and slides his backpack underneath to give me some sort of pillow, then stands up again to his full height, which from my point of view on the ground looks a lot.
“Okay, let’s see how that works out.” And there is that familiar little smirk on his face that I want to call his asshole smirk, but I can’t see anything nasty behind it this time, just more like a know-it-all look.
Which just spikes my determination to survive through the night on my own, no matter how damn cold I get.
Feeling him lie down behind me, he might not be touching me, but I can sense every inch of him. He chuckles slightly as he gets comfortable.
“Good night, Ash. I’m over here if you need me.”
His smug voice makes it sound like he’s such a long way away, when in reality he’s probably less than a foot. How the hell have I gotten myself into this situation?
“Good night,” I mumble, as I now realize I can’t sleep on this side of my body because it’s putting pressure on my ankle.
Begrudgingly, I try to roll over as quietly as possible, hoping he won’t hear me move, but the stupid smirk on his face while his eyes are closed tells me he knows I’m now lying on my other side and looking directly at him.
It’s also going to be a little hard to stop myself from checking out all the little details on his face when I don’t plan on sleeping tonight.
Oh, that’s a good point.
As tired as I am, if I’m not going to sleep, I can keep getting up and stoking the fire so I won’t get cold. Well, I won’t be getting completely up, but I can crawl over to the pile of wood that Jake collected.