Chapter 9
Turner
I made her blush, and after two days of in and out of consciousness, I’m feeling a little better. She came looking for me, and it’s strangely a compliment of sorts. Sure, had I overdosed, she would’ve found my forty-eight-hour decaying corpse, but no one has searched for me in years.
She came looking after two days, and it wasn’t because she was struggling to get the fire going or needing help. She was just worried…about me.
And that’s all I can think about as I sit across from her at the table, sharing the shitty chicken parm frozen casserole dinner. I didn’t feel like putting in effort when it came to eating, but I wasn’t going to make her cook, either.
“It’s shit, I know,” I say as she forks a bite of the spaghetti.
She shrugs. “I’ve had worse.”
“Tell me what’s worse. Tell me the worst thing you’ve ever eaten.”
Emersyn cracks a smile. “Um, probably the time I ate at a seafood restaurant and the fish was undercooked.”
“You can eat fish raw,” I reason. “So, it might’ve tasted like shit, but at least it wasn’t going to kill you.”
She narrows her pretty jade eyes at my smirk. “Unless it hadn’t been stored right.”
“Well, glad you survived it.” I chuckle, my body feeling a lot lighter ever since getting some sleep. I know I can’t let my guard down, but I feel okay. No strong desire to murder her in a war-raged blackout.
My head is clear, and hell, I’m sharing my table with an attractive woman—one that I can’t stop fucking staring at. Maybe it’s the fact that we’re snowed in or that I haven’t been around someone in so long, but it feels like more than that. She charges the air around me.
“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever eaten?” She sets her fork down beside the nearly finished meal.
“Uh, I don’t know.” I shift in my chair. “My mom’s meatloaf probably.”
“Oh, that’s just mean,” she laughs, shocking my chest with her light and airy tone. “Your poor mother.”
“At six feet under, I don’t think she’s worried about it now.” I frown, killing my own goddamn good mood. Emersyn falls into silence for a few moments, and I start to hate myself all over again.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she finally says.
I ignore it, hating that phrase but choosing not to let her know that. She’s got no idea of my life. I scrape my fork across the plate. “What about your family?” Maybe if she just talks about herself, we can avoid the subject of me.
“What about them?” She leans her chin against her hand, her brows creased ever so slightly. The gesture is small, but it catches my attention. My cock strains as my mind flashes with her beneath me, making that exact same face as I press into her pussy.
Sleep didn’t fix that issue, apparently.
“Turner?”
“Sorry,” I grunt. “Uh, I just meant for you to tell me about your family. I don’t know.” I force my eyes down to my food, the sight of it instantly draining my arousal.
“Oh, well, my parents are still together after like forty years of marriage. I think they’re annoyed that I still haven’t met the right person yet. Well, I mean, I thought I had. They thought I had, too…” Her voice trails off, and I tip my gaze back to her, hating what I see.
“This must be the ex-boyfriend?” A pang of envy rattles my chest, and I’m reminded of all the ways that I fall short yet again. My body might be strong, but my mind is a fucking bomb waiting to explode—and take her with me.
“Yeah, Adam,” she gives me his name like I give a shit. “I thought we were going to his family’s cabin for him to fix things.”
“Hmm.”
“Yeah, it was a pipe dream,” she scoffs, shaking her head.
“I was stupid for thinking it could be fixed. We’ve been rocky for almost a year, and I was grasping at straws.
It’s been so tumultuous, and then my best friend called me on my way here—just to tell me that he told his brother we’re not going anywhere and it was all for looks. ”
I nod, trying to empathize with something that sounds so…pitiful. “But you broke up with him, yeah?”
She holds my gaze from across the table. “Yeah. I broke up with him, and then ended up here. He told me he was coming to get me—and that he didn’t mean what he told his brother.”
“Ah, so you’ll be good with him then,” I say the words like they’re poisonous.
“No, I don’t think so. I’m getting too old to deal with the bullshit. I just want someone to really commit. I’m tired of the games.”
“Wouldn’t know anything about that.” I drum my fingers on the table and then push back, grabbing our plates.
She follows my lead. “So you don’t date, I take it?”
I smile with my back turned to her. “Hard to date anyone when you live alone in the woods.” And have an addiction to murder.
“There’s a town like an hour or so from here though, right?”
“I never go,” I chuckle, scraping off the remnants of dinner into Gunner’s bowl. I don’t usually feed him leftovers, but I’m sure as shit not going to be eating anymore of this.
“Why don’t you go?”
I hesitate, choosing my answer wisely. “I don’t like crowds. Or people.”
“But you’re letting me stay here.”
I set the dishes down in the sink, angling my body toward her. “I really didn’t let you stay here. I just chose not to let you freeze to death. Let’s not forget how tense our first meeting was.”
Her eyes flash with what I recognize as fear. “Right.”
“Yeah, so don’t get too comfortable,” I snort, turning on the water and beginning to wash the dishes. Guilt throttles me, but I ignore it. Why am I so fucked up?
“Noted.” Emersyn takes it as a joke, laughing. She grabs a towel and dries the dishes as I wash them, putting them up in their places. Once we’re finished, Emersyn escapes to the bedroom, returning with a silver laptop tucked under her arm.
“I don’t have internet,” I say flatly.
She waves me off. “I know, my computer didn’t pick up any Wi-Fi. But I was thinking we could listen to music? You said you haven’t listened in years, right?”
“Uh…” I hesitate, my stomach feeling knotted. “I guess.”
“Cool.” She sets the computer on the table, and I stand a few feet away, borderline nervous as to what the hell she’s going to play.
“What genre do you like?” Emersyn looks up over the top of the computer. “My guess is you’re not in the holiday mood?”
“Uh… I don’t know.” I can’t even think of anything. “Why don’t you just play me your favorite song?”
“Hmm.” She rolls her lips and nods, her attention falling back to the computer.
I watch her as she scrolls, and I start to admire the little things—the way her hair is tucked behind her right ear, the way her lips are pursed as she focuses, and the way she lights up when she finally finds something. It’s…cute.
The sound of a piano fills my ears, and I tense as the tune carries, picking up with a deep male voice. It’s not nearly as miserable as I figured it’d be, and my breaths slow as it fills the cabin.
“Do you like it?” she asks me, her brows raising with an innocent eagerness.
I nod. “Yeah, it’s not bad.”
“I bet you listen to rap or something,” Em tips her head back and laughs.
It’s surreal having her in my kitchen, tapping her purple sock to the beat of the music.
She’s so fucking oblivious to the danger she’s in, and maybe I can pretend like I am, too—just enough to enjoy life for an evening. “So is it rap?”
“Not really. I liked metal, but I haven’t…” Damnit, she’s going to think I’m fucking nuts. “I haven’t heard anything in years.”
She pauses. “You mean, you haven’t listened to music in years? Or just metal?”
“Music,” I answer her, my voice barely audible over the hum of some guy singing about how shitty humankind is.
“How many years?”
I swallow my pride, forcing the honesty. “A decade probably.” I don’t like to miss my old self too much.
She gapes. “Wow. Is that how long you’ve been here?”
“Pretty much.”
“How old are you?” She blurts it out, and I try not to close off. She’s not likely to make it out of here, so who cares if she knows the truth?
“I turn forty-one in January.”
The music fades to silence as she speaks. “So, you’ve been here since you were thirty-one?”
“Yeah, thirty-one or thirty-two, I think,” I say, unable to clarify the timeline in my own head. “Something like that. I don’t keep up with the details.”
Her face twists, morphing into a painful sympathy. “Wow, so you… You’ve been disconnected for that long?”
“I mean, I wouldn’t say I’m stuck in 2013,” I try to laugh at my dishonorable discharge date, but honestly, it fucking hurts to think about the way I used to think I was normal back then.
“I was in college,” she says the words painfully soft.
“Yeah?” I shift to my heels, desperate to change the subject. “What’d you study?”
“I switched my major so many times, I couldn’t tell you. I dropped out when I got a decent job. I was too busy chasing a social life.”
I chuckle, trying to relax. “Like men, you mean?”
“Kind of, I guess. I got married super young, then divorced. All that happened during that time. I was a handful, immature, I think.” Emersyn frowns, and then shakes her head.
“I was the toxic one, that’s for sure. I was working through my own insecurities back then.
I had horrible taste, and I was too clingy. ”
“I was toxic at that age, too,” I admit. “I didn’t slow down until I was in my mid-twenties, but then I started having to do other things to, um…”
“Cope?”
My throat tightens. “Yeah, I guess.” I prepare for more questions—ones that I’m not sure I can answer. However, she doesn’t press. Instead, Emersyn double clicks and starts a new song. I don’t recognize it.
She looks up at me, something in her eyes as she speaks carefully. “Did you ever dance?”
“Uh…” I feel frozen, my heart picking up at the thought of being close to her.
Normally, I would never even consider it, but she’s…
She’s getting to me, and I like the way I feel right now.
Again, maybe I could just let myself enjoy tonight.
“Do you want to dance or something?” I feel like a middle schooler.
She laughs softly, but there’s sadness in her eyes. “I don’t dance. I never really have. No one dances with me.”
“Start it over,” I tell her, my body throbbing with a new kind of anxiety.
She raises her brow, and does as I say, and then steps around the counter. “Okay…”
“Okay,” I say stupidly as I try to discreetly wipe my hands on my jeans. I take hers, and it’s cold in my grip, but her skin is soft against mine.
She steps into me, her other hand on my shoulder, and somehow, I find her waist. My heart fucking throbs in my temple as I hold her close, swaying to music.
Muscle memory kicks in, and I let it lead, zoning out in the sweet scent of shea butter coming from her hair.
I inhale it like it’s oxygen, knowing this could easily be the last time I have a chance to hold someone like this.
She’d never let me this close if she knew.
But I don’t want to let her go.
“What song is this?” I choke out, feeling irrevocably human.
“The Only Thing Left,” she answers me softly. “By Vincent Lima.”
I nod and then hold her tighter, leaning in and resting my cheek against her temple. Closing my eyes, I cling to the moment with her, knowing that when I’m burying her body beneath the snow, I’ll replay this moment over and over again.
And maybe it’ll be enough to finally put this all to an end. It’s always been the plan once Gunner is gone. He’s the only reason I’m still here. Once he’s gone, there’s no reason for me to remain in this realm.
As the song ends, my thoughts still and I expect her pull away—but she doesn’t. The next song starts. It’s not a slow song, and I recognize the pop singer’s voice but not the song itself. Emersyn starts to giggle like a kid and starts dancing…
Like goofy fucking dancing.
I burst into laughter as she sings it to me, dancing and holding onto my hand.
She has a decent voice but no rhythm. Her light brown hair bounces against her shoulders, and the smile on her face exudes so much light and happiness.
She’s fucking beautiful, and she’s in my house, her eyes glistening with amusement mirroring my own.
As it hits the bridge, a deeper, sultrier hum, the air charges, her eyes daring me.
My fingers are still intertwined with hers.
My heart beats unevenly with nerves, and I pull her into my chest, my fingers threading through her soft hair.
My nose brushes hers, but my lips are faster than I expect, driven by a strong desire.
And holy fuck.
She kisses me back, parting to let me devour her mouth entirely. My cock grows rigid against her stomach, and anything I am and or ever was fades to black. All I can think about is her. I sweep my hand down her side, and she stumbles back at my force, letting out a moan as I lift her into the air.
Her ass lands on the butcher block countertop, and she cries out as the new arrangement allows my cock to press right against her clothed center.
An unrecognizable groan erupts from my throat as I grind into her, my tongue still interlaced with hers.
My fingertips brush over the bare skin of her neck, floating down as they rest on her collarbone.
I want to shred her fucking clothes as I grip the back of her head, holding her against me, nipping at her bottom lip. It’s a primal desire, bubbling up and taking control of my entire body. As she rolls her hips against me, I growl in desperation and drop my hand to my jeans.
But then Gunner barks.
And I freeze. He never barks.
Not unless someone is out there.