Chapter 3
THREE
Nova
“What the fuck are you doing?”
I’m sweaty.
I’m exhausted.
I’m approximately three milliseconds away from crying—and this time in relief for the first time in twenty-four hours.
But I still manage to react to the man shouting at me with impressive speed, bending down and scooping up the Tupperware container I had commandeered to use as a shovel and lifting it threateningly. “Back off!” I shout, looking up.
And then up.
And then up some more.
The man in front of me is huge.
Like head brushing along the bottom branches of the pine trees that cluster around the road, like he won’t fit in the driver’s seat of my car, like he’ll bang his skull on the tops of doorframes, like he is…huge kind of huge.
My Tupperware won’t do shit to stop him, but I still hold it like I’m going to wield it as a sword anyway.
I am fierce. I am a warrior. I am…
Going to die.
I consider launching the scoop of snow at him, straight into his eyes, a la a bad guy throwing dust in the hero’s in every cheesy action movie I love to watch.
Likely, this man would just swipe it away.
And then murder me worse.
Which—God, if I have nothing else (and I didn’t have much)—then I at least need to maintain my grammar dignity.
Starting with removing the phrase murder me worse from my vernacular.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snaps again.
“Back”—I lift the container higher and—
He plucks it out of my hands, tossing it to the side in a movement that is almost faster than my eyes can track.
“Hey!” I snap.
I need that. I keep my cookies—the ones I had to gainfully consume in order to free up the container for digging—in there. More than that, it’s a good container, and good containers are hard to find.
Or maybe that’s men.
Whatever.
Tupperware is expensive and it still has its matching lid and…it’s mine.
Yes, that’s me going full Gollum.
My precious.
The huge—huge!—man rotates back to face me, hazel eyes snapping with fire. “You’re standing in the middle of the fucking street in the middle of a fucking snowstorm.”
“Wow,” I snap back, sarcasm so rampant I almost surprise myself, “I hadn’t noticed. Thanks for pointing that out.” Sneakers skidding on the ice, I march over to my precious, scooping up the container and cradling it against my chest as I glare at the man and move back to my vehicle.
“I almost hit you with my car,” he grits out.
I set the container on the back seat, consider belting her in just to be safe then decide that’s a step too far. “Clearly you didn’t,” I return as I spin back to face him.
Though, with all that spinning, I don’t miss the skid marks in the road—mine that are almost completely erased, his that are rapidly being filled in with snow…and lead to a large black SUV.
Yeah, getting hit by that would’ve sucked.
And likely resulted in more murdering me worse.
He growls and I jerk my head from the sight of the behemoth of a vehicle to glance back…
And fall into the prettiest hazel eyes I’ve ever seen.
I want to grab my camera, want to take a close-up of those irises, to study all the shades of gold and brown and green, the texture of the peaks and valleys beneath his cornea, the—
He blinks and I lose my focus, dropping abruptly right back into my reality.
Which is going great, considering that my car is buried on the side of the road and I just spent the last half hour digging out my door enough so I can get Steve’s stuff from the back seat.
A muscle flexes in his jaw. “It’s dangerous for you to be out here.”
I sigh, bite back my sarcasm, and push down the last supremely shitty twenty-four hours.
“Look,” I say calmly. “I appreciate your concern—and thank you for not hitting me with your car—but feel free to move on. I’m staying at a house on Forest Bend, and now that my door’s open, I can grab my stuff from the back and hike up there. ”
He freezes, looks me up and then down, and I want to pretend there’s heat in those gorgeous hazel eyes instead of derision. Unfortunately, I would have to pretend really hard for that to be true.
“That’s fucking stupid,” he says.
I blink once.
Then twice.
Expecting him to not actually be calling me stupid.
People didn’t seriously do that to each other’s faces.
They wait until they’re in private and confide it to their best friends, and occasionally their sisters, who they want to be close with, if only their sisters didn’t—
Right.
Not the time.
Eyes stinging, I shake my head and turn away from him. “Well,” I say quietly. “It’s not like I want to stay in my car and freeze to death out here.”
“You have a cell phone?” he asks sharply.
I frown, rotate back to face him. “Yes.”
“Then you stop being stupid,” he snaps. “You call for help. And you”—he leans in, bending at the waist so we’re almost nose to nose—“wait in your car so that said help can come and you don’t get hit by my fucking SUV.”
My frown deepens.
But then my eyes start to sting again.
Because who can I possibly call?
I have no one except for my best friend, Ella, and she’s already done enough in arranging for me to stay in her brother’s house, has already done enough in plenty of other ways over the years, over the last twenty-four hours.
Rescuing me from my shit.
But I’ve had enough of this conversation—such as it is. I’ve had enough getting yelled at, enough scornful words tossed at me, enough disdain dripping in my direction, and I’ve just…had enough.
“Thank you for not hitting me with your car,” I say so politely it’s as frozen as the snow coating my clothes.
I spin back to my open car door and reach for my purse that’s fallen behind the driver’s seat, slinging it over my shoulder.
Then I unbuckle Steve from his doggy seat, coax him to hop back to me, and snag his leash from the floor, intending to clip it on him.
But I don’t get it attached.
Fingers wrap around my arm, tug me out of the car.
“What the fuck are you doing?” he snaps.
“You,” I say, jerking out of his hold, “are going about your business, which will hopefully continue to include not running over helpless people with your SUV. I”—I thump a hand to my chest—“am going to get on with my life.” A beat. “Without you in it.”
“You’re going to walk,” he says disbelievingly.
“That’s none of your business.”
A flick of his eyes down again. “You’re going to walk through the ice and snow in those shoes?” A beat that’s filled with contempt. “And do it loaded down with your shit?”
I glance at my feet. “It’s not like I’m a magical shoe wizard and can snap my fingers so a pair of snow boots appears.” I mean, I have them somewhere in my bags. It’s just…they’re mixed in with things I don’t want to see and—
“Let’s hope you can snap your fingers and make common sense appear.”
My mouth drops open. “Are you fucking kidding me?”
“You’re risking frostbite,” he says instead of answering that. “Do you even know where you’re going?”
“Of course, I do. I just need to go up that road and—” I spin, the flakes of snow in my eyes obscuring my vision. Obscuring almost everything. “It’s right—” I keep turning.
“Forest Bend is”—the man grips my shoulders, turns me the opposite direction—“over there.”
“Right,” I whisper, my outrage fading.
My anger morphing into embarrassment.
He lifts his brows expectantly.
Oh, look at that. My anger makes a reappearance.
I try to step back, to pull out of his hold, but his fingers just tighten.
“Look—”
“Woof!”