Price #3
“Out here,” I explain, “I can protect Hailey. I know the dangers, and I know how to prepare for them, how to fight them. I’ve spent my whole life doing that. But the city is chaos. There’s no order to it. No honor. No hierarchy. It makes no sense to me.”
Another bolt of lightning cuts through the sky over the tree tops. In the bright flash, I catch a dark shape out the window lumbering around in front of the cabin.
Fuck, my pack is out there. I was so fucking turned around when she ran, I left it.
As the thunder shakes the house, Summer hunches over, hands looping behind her neck.
“You okay with storms?” I ask, keeping my eyes on the movement outside, giving her knee a soft squeeze.
“I’m okay so long as I’m not out in them.” She peeks up from her crouched position. “We’ll wait here until it passes, right?”
Daylight has turned into dusk under the storm clouds. “Yeah—” I start, but she cuts me off.
“What the hell is that?” she shrieks, pointing again at the window, only this time, I know it’s not just a spider.
A series of three lightning flashes illuminate the sky, the woods, and the hulking bear rises onto her feet about fifty feet from the front of the cabin, sniffing the air as three smaller versions of her toddle along behind.
Instinct has me pulling Summer against me. Her soft to my hard. Her fear to my protective fury.
I take a deep breath of her. Leaning in to her damp hair, resting my chin on her head, wondering in some way, if this could work.
“It’s a bear,” I say. “Black bear. Not that mean, but not that nice either. Especially because she’s got cubs.”
“Aww, babies?” She pushes up on her knees, trying to get a better look.
“They’re cute, but with them here she’ll be aggressive.” I clear my throat, not sure how to say what I have to say next. “And my pack was out there. I dropped it to catch up with you. I had food and water in there, and my gun. So, I just provided mom and her cubs with a meal.”
Summer hunches into me, and I don’t try to stop her. Somehow, telling her about the past, explaining why I have to put Hailey first, has drained any fight that was left in me. Somehow, it’s made me want her more, not less.
As her body snugs against mine, my traitorous dick responds, and all the reasons I should push her away toddle off like the baby bears into the storm.
Her stomach let’s out a loud growl in the beat of silence and she snorts.
“You need food,” I say, pissed again that I left our supplies outside to be ravaged by a single mom and her triplets.
“I’m okay.”
“What did you have for breakfast?” I clear my throat, looking down to see her cock a half smile, with a sultry lick of her lips and a glance at my lap. “The Black Swan have a continental breakfast buffet for you?”
“I wish. The last thing I had to eat was…” She clicks her teeth together, wiggling her index finger at my lap.
***
There isn’t much food in the storage cabinet, which doesn’t surprise me. Even with a locked metal cabinet, a starving determined bear could take down the door or come through the window and help themselves easily if they caught a good scent.
I find a couple sealed jars of peanut butter. Crunchy, thank God. Some tea bags in a glass jar and four cans of Spaghetti O’s.
Hailey’s favorite.
Summer watches from where I lifted her onto the small countertop to sit as I work wood into the belly of the stove, adding enough oxygen to get it to catch, then working the rusty can opener on the Spaghetti O’s.
The storm is still doing its thing in rumbles and flashes, but until there’s more light outside and enough time for the bears to finish off whatever they discovered in my pack, we’re stuck.
That’s not the only reason I want to keep her here. We’re alone, together, and my only other worry is Hailey, but if she’s with Ted and Wiley, she won’t miss me at all. They’ll have her knee deep in s’mores and grape soda until she passes out.
Within a few minutes, I’ve got the canned noodle concoction bubbling in a cast-iron skillet, the tea pot whistling as I hand Summer the jar of peanut butter and a spoon from the single drawer under the counter.
“That’s your appetizer,” I say as I point toward the little two-seat wood table.
“Not exactly a feast,” I warn as I put the weird meal down on the top and Summer hops down from the counter to take a seat.
The cabin has warmed with the fire, and our damp clothes have nearly dried.
“Sorry. My culinary skills could do with some refinement.”
She laughs, but shakes her head. “Peanut butter straight from the jar? And, it’s crunchy? I’m in heaven.”
Picking up a spoon, she digs into the peanut butter first. Then, the Spaghetti O’s as I pour the hot water into a mug and dangle a tea bag inside.
Every time there’s a flash of lightning, I check outside. I’ve seen the bears twice more, and I can hear them with my trained ears.
What I’m really worried about is that it will soon be dropping dark for real. With those bears around, it’s not safe to try to get back to the Jeep, which means we’re here until morning.
And, there’s only one bed.