Chapter 6
six
. . .
Armin
When the thunder hit, she startled, and then winced.
“It’s okay,” I said, and I reached out a hand to comfort her, then quickly withdrew it. I didn’t want to overstep any boundaries.
Lightning flashed outside, strobing the walls of my bedroom through its lone window. We couldn’t catch a break. I could still go out and chop up the fallen tree in the rain, but if this was going to be another downpour like last night’s, I didn’t know how I was going to get us out of here.
“I’ll go grab the food and painkillers,” I said. “Can’t take ibuprofen on an empty stomach or it’ll tear up your insides.”
She looked doubtful but she nodded.
“And I’ll bring you some warm clothes, throw a few logs on the fire. Some summer this turned out to be.” It was usually about twenty degrees cooler up here than in town anyway, but this day had turned out nearly as frigid as last night. Plus this crazy mid-day storm.
I headed into the kitchen to scrape together a plate of food, not an easy feat with my meager rations up here.
Big disappointment when I opened the fridge.
All I had was some old venison charcuterie from the most recent deer I’d hunted and tanned.
A bit of cheese. An old apricot jam from last season. Damn it. This would have to do for now.
I’d imagined entering the Washington County First Responders Fundraising Gala with Mia on my arm, throwing a sizable check into their coffers, and then taking her out for coffee and pie at the diner afterwards.
I’d tell her a funny story. And she’d laugh, and touch my arm.
I didn’t have any funny stories, of course, but this was a daydream, dang it, and in it I was hilarious, charming, charismatic.
Somebody else, I guess.
Not the kind of man who unwittingly chased a woman out of his home in a deadly thunderstorm.
I should have met her at my place in town, but my head was full of nonsense visions of sitting with her up here, in the cabin I’d built with my own two hands, where I’d always longed to have someone to share the couch by the fireplace.
I refilled her water and grabbed her plate of food, and ran both into her room, set it on the chair next to her. “I’ll grab you some clothes,” I said.
I rifled around in my drawer and found a flannel and an old pair of long johns, probably her best bet for fitting into any of my clothes without them falling off her.
When I turned around, she was struggling to sit up, her eyes squeezed shut in pain.
“Let me help you.” I waited to see if it was okay with her.
When she didn’t protest, I knelt by her to put an arm around her and helped her up to sitting.
I stuffed a few pillows behind her to prop her up, set one on her lap, and rested the plate on top.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “It isn’t much. Some cured venison from last season, and a bit of cheese, and an apricot jam Mrs. Skelly made for us down at the station.
Back when I was a sheriff. I never opened it, so it should still be good. ”
“Thank you,” she said. Her voice sounded small, compared to last night, or even the first time we’d met. She picked up one slice of the venison and one of the cheese, and popped them into her mouth, and I felt a huge sense of relief wash over me. At least she was eating something.
“Ibuprofen is there,” I said, pointing to the other little dish on the chair. “When you’re ready. And here are some clothes to wear.” I draped the pants and shirt over the back of the chair. “I’ll hang yours up near the fire, since we can’t get a break with this weather.”
Big drops started to lash at the windows again.
She eyed the pills and the clothes.
“You really don’t remember me, do you?” I didn’t even want to remind her of it, anymore. It made me seem like a stalker. And wasn’t I? But I felt obligated to come clean on how I knew her.
And she didn’t know me.
She scooped up the jam with a slice of cheese and shoved it into her mouth. She shook her head.
“I carried you out of the fire. Down at the club.”
“That was a fireman,” she said.
“It wasn’t,” I said. “It was a sheriff. Me. Marmot.”
“He had a big handlebar mustache. I remember that much.”
“I shaved,” I said. “After I left the force. It didn’t suit me anymore.”
“You should grow it back,” she said.
I smiled. “I’ll take that under advisement.”
She reached for another slice of venison and grimaced, but pushed through for the food. She was a real trooper.
“Marmot,” she said. “Interesting name.”
I picked up the little dish of ibuprofen and sat on the chair next to her, so I wasn’t staring down on her like a vulture.
“It’s not the name my mom gave me. I had a buddy in the army who couldn’t hear so good when we first met. He’d been in too many explosions the day before, started calling me Marmot, because that’s what he thought I said, and then it stuck.”
“What’s your real name?”
“Armin.”
“Also interesting,” she said. “Never heard it before.”
“My mother was Bosnian.”
“Well, next time you see her, tell her she gave you a great name.”
She’d died shortly after I joined the army, and we’d been estranged well before that. But I didn’t want to ruin the moment with facts, so I kept my mouth shut and nodded.
I reconsidered the ibuprofen. What if she had internal bleeding? It could kill her.
She peeled another slice of venison off the plate and downed it. “This is pretty good,” she said. “Did you make this?”
“I did. With help. Me and one of the old timers down at the VFW did a hunt, and then he showed me all his secrets for curing the meat. And we tanned the hide.”
“Is that what the hydrochloric acid is for? In the living room?”
“Oh, yep. It’s a real mountain man’s interior decor, huh?” My face flushed. Who keeps hide-tanning chemicals in their living room? I was an obvious bachelor, through and through.
“Sure is,” she said. She managed the last bit of jam with the last slice of cheese, and I took the empty plate off her hands. “Sorry we missed your gala.”
“Oh, it’s no problem. I can send ‘em a check and it’ll spend the same whether I go there and eat the little snacks and smile in the pictures or not. There was this diner I wanted to take you to, afterwards, for coffee and pie. Maybe we can do it another time.”
Her eyes darted to the door, and it struck me that Mia wasn’t here of her own volition, that this was a job she was doing. And she’d far overstayed what I’d requested last night.
“Listen, are you going to get in trouble for this? I can call your, um, employer, once we get down the hill, on our way to the hospital.”
She didn’t say anything, didn’t look at me. I realized I was being a fool, applying my own life to her situation. She was injured as all hell, and yet still planning to go back to work as soon as she got out of here.
And then I imagined Harvey touching her, his rough hands groping her soft, bruised body, and it sickened me to my core.
“I, uh, I have a proposition for you.”
“Help me lay down again and I’ll listen to it,” she said.
I jumped up to help her. Her voice was still thin with pain, but a bit of her old sass shined through. I supported her head and neck and lowered her down onto the nest of pillows I’d built for her.
“I want you to stay here, Mia. I’ll pay whatever it costs. Not to…you know, do anything. So you can rest. And recover. I know we got off on the wrong foot last night, but I would never hurt you. I promise. What do you say?”
I was scared to look at her, scared that I’d see nothing but disgust on her face, and my heart throbbed like one big nerve, raw and exposed and entirely in her hands.