Chapter 15
Thora felt like she was back on the phone with the whispering voice. Something, or someone, had pulled her into a trance.
She watched the candle’s flame flutter. The way the shadows danced on the Green Man’s face made it seem as if he were talking.
Maybe, if she got closer, she could hear him. Or maybe if she touched him.
She was afraid to touch the knob. She was more afraid of what would happen if she didn’t.
She took one step, the floorboard creaking enough to break the spell.
“Fuck!” she cried. The middle of the night made her brain a stranger to her. Once she reacquainted herself with her own sense,
she could see the truth before her. This was nothing more than a horrendously cruel prank perpetrated by Lee.
At least, that’s what she wanted to believe.
She turned to pound her fist on the door of the Bird Room.
Lee called from inside, “Is everything okay?”
She opened the door to see him sitting upright in the bed they’d shared the night before.
His hair was mussed, and he was rubbing his eyes.
Another time, she would have found him sexy in this rumpled state, but it was obviously an act.
Whatever anger lingered from the childhood prank had grown despite suppressing it, a confused bear cub into a rabid grizzly.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t believe you would do this to me. Mock my pain like this.”
Lee blinked several times. He was a better actor than she might have guessed. “Thora, what are you talking about?”
“Come out into the hallway.”
He swung his legs over the edge of the bed to put on his slippers. She wanted to kick the slippers out from under his feet.
Let the jagged floorboards bite into him. Let him feel a fraction of the pain she felt. Instead, she stepped aside to let
him into the hallway.
The candle flame was no longer dancing. There was no flame at all. The table had been pushed back to its original location.
Had she been sleepwalking? Was it all a bad dream?
She gestured to the end table. “It was in front of the door. The candle was lit, under the doorknob. I swear.”
She touched the tip of the candle. The wax was solid, cold. “Was it some kind of trick?”
“I didn’t do anything. I’ve been asleep.” He fought back a yawn and lost.
She knew what she saw. At Devil’s Cauldron, it could have been a trick of the light. But that candle was lit. It called her
attention. Tears of frustration welled up in her eyes.
“What did you do, Lee? Why?”
“Do you honestly think I lit a candle under that doorknob to prank you?”
She didn’t have an answer.
“Seriously. Do you think I would do that?”
Would the man who baked her his nanny’s cookie recipe try to hurt her? He had hurt her before. “How else can I explain it?”
He pulled her out of the hallway and back into the Bird Room.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” he said.
“Are you messing with me? Are you trying to get me to leave the house so you can buy it?” There went one of her more paranoid
thoughts, spoken aloud. She had to get it all out there, like she did with Mack. She didn’t want to hold back.
Lee’s mouth hung open.
He looked like she actually had forced splinters into his feet instead of accusing him of a mean prank. “Is that what you
think of me?”
“I don’t know.” Hot tears ran down her cheeks. The anxiety of losing this place, of her last memories of George and her childhood,
filled her to bursting.
He stepped toward her, swiping at one with his thumb. “I’m on your side. Whatever is happening here, we are going through
it together. I would never, ever purposely hurt you.”
She cast her gaze downward, embarrassed at her own accusations. She wasn’t thinking clearly.
“But I’m a little hurt,” he said, “that you could think me capable of such cruelty. I know we don’t know each other that well,
but I hope you would know that.”
She sniffled. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry this is happening,” Lee said.
“I’m going back to bed,” she said.
“No,” Lee said, with a surprising firmness.
Thora beheld him honestly. His gaze was not stern at all. It was hard for those eyes to have anger in them, she figured, but there was none. The pain had subsided, too. All that was left was curiosity.
“Are you really going to be able to sleep after seeing a live flame appearing mysteriously in the house?”
Probably not. She would have used her usual tactic. Get lost in a Bryony Brooks novel until she calmed enough to sleep.
He took her silence for a no. “Stay with me. Maybe you can get to know me a little. You’ve never truly known me.”
It was worse than that. She’d barely seen him. He was Cody’s little friend. The lovable loser, squandering his potential.
The frivolous and quirky scribbler at the newspaper who made it possible for her to rule the campus from the gossip column.
It wasn’t entirely her fault; he was a tough nut. Lee idolized George, who was truly impossible to know. Everyone knew his
gentle soul and love of nature, but no one knew what made him withdraw from the world. What did he do with all that time alone,
apart from whittling and writing a New Age parable? Lee seemed to be developing a similar mystique. The lone wolf.
“How do people get to know you?”
Lee took a moment to consider. If Cody knew him well, it was only because of the sheer amount of data collected over the years,
a broad survey instead of a deep one.
“I don’t know if there’s any one way.” He sat down on the bed and patted the space next to him. Thora sat and scooched backward
until her back was against the wall, her legs stretched crossways on the mattress. Lee arranged himself perpendicular to her,
with his back against the headboard and legs folded. The space heater made the room warm enough that he slept only in pajama
pants. She’d probably need to lose the robe, but the pajamas were a little indecent on their own, so she’d sweat it out.
“You’re the gossip columnist,” he continued. “What do you want to know?”
Ball in her court, for sure. His smile was sly, and his hands were clasped behind his head, making it all too easy to admire his broad chest.
Between what Cody had told her and how her own body reacted in his presence, she certainly had questions. “According to Cody,
you’ve never been in a committed relationship. Is that true?”
“It is.”
“I’m going to need more than that.”
“It was a yes-no question.” His grin widened.
She rolled her eyes. “Okay, why have you never been in a long-term relationship?”
“I’m not against it. I’m holding out for the one.”
Thora mistook Cody for the one. Having nothing but unrequited crushes in high school, she was too eager for romance in college.
If love was indeed this scarce to find, she’d gobble it all up while she could. Lee took the idea to the other extreme, apparently,
thinking love was so scarce it wasn’t worth seeking.
“How can you possibly find the one if you don’t date?” she asked.
“I didn’t say anything about not dating.”
He was going to make her work for this. The truth was, she liked it. She was someone who would blab her life story to anyone
who listened. His restraint was sexy.
“You like dating?”
“Dating? That I could take or leave. I like women.” His eyes skated down her body and back up again.
Oh. There were many unspoken words in that last sentence that came through clear as a bell. He liked pleasing women. He liked
fucking women.
Thora couldn’t help herself.
“What do you like to do with women?”
Lee tilted his head down at her. “I’m a gentleman, Lottie.”
Oh, how sexy her nickname sounded in his mouth. “What else do you like to do with women?”
He picked up the notebook he retrieved from the Blue Room after she wrote “draw a picture of me” in it. He held up the page
to her.
“I do love to sketch portraits. That sounds sleazy but I do. I love to study faces, bodies. I love to show people how beautiful
they are.”
Whether it was the warmth of the room or the idea of Lee’s eyes on her with that level of scrutiny, she felt a bead of sweat
run between her breasts.
“I figured you’d draw from memory. But you want me to pose for you?”
“I’ve already drawn you from memory. Of course I want you to pose for me.”
Oh, that was fucking hot, imagining her own face, affectionately rendered, was already in the pages of his notebooks. She
should have been insisting on this level of obsession all along. How lackluster her sensual life had been until now. She’d
never even had sex with the lights on. The flutter she felt reminded her of standing of a cliff’s edge at Devil’s Cauldron
on a hot day. Her eagerness to dive into cool water matched the excitement she felt here, diving into intimacy so brashly,
bravely.
“We’ve got all night,” he added.
If this was all to make her forget the fear and anger she was overwhelmed with minutes ago, when she felt compelled to put
her hand on a burning hot doorknob, it was working.
“Do you have other portraits you can show me?”
“Not on me.”
“How would you pose me?”
“I’d tell you to get comfortable. You don’t have to pose, per se.”
“What if I wanted to pose?”
The question hung between them. She knew she was being bold. It felt like a good time to be bold. Lee had said they would
get through the night together, and she was taking that promise seriously.
“Would you like me to draw your scar?”
Here he was, reminding her that he would never mock her. That he wanted to study her. Maybe this could be a way of showing
him that he’d earned her trust. That she wanted this, wanted him. She nodded.
“You could do something like this,” he said, demonstrating. He tilted his chin to the side and up, threading his thumb and
two fingers into his hair, so that his opened palm was next to his face.
“What do the people you draw wear?”
“Always a smile,” he quipped.
She rolled her eyes again.
“Whatever they want,” he concluded.
In this moment, she had an incredible urge to be naked in front of this man. They had already felt each other’s bodies. They
had kissed more deeply than she’d ever kissed. What would happen if she truly let go?
“Where do you sit?”