Chapter 5
LOLA
Ihalf expect him to push me forward, out into the rain, and lock the door behind me. With all the secretive, close your eyes stuff, it would make sense.
My journalistic instincts are sparking right now, telling me that there’s something here. Something about this guy that says he’s not really a mountain man, after all. There’s something too refined about him, too clean-cut. It’s somewhere beneath the thick, rugged beard, but it’s definitely there.
“All right,” he says after we retreat back inside his cabin. I sink down into an armchair, trying not to make it obvious how badly my ankle is hurting. The throb starts at the bottom of my heel and pulses up to my knee, nearly taking my breath away.
“All right,” I repeat because he trails off after that, his gaze fixed through one of the front windows.
“I’m going to go get your drone,” he says, then turns and walks out the front door and into the rain. I blink after him, shocked at his sudden absence. He just said it and disappeared.
Then I think about how slick that roof was, even without pouring rain, and I stand up through the pain, moving toward the door, not even sure what I plan to do.
He could slip and go catapulting off the roof with a single wrong move.
Then what do I do? Try to find him? Scramble down the side of the mountain in the dark, in the pouring rain, to look for his body?
I’ve worked myself up enough that I’ve already managed to take a few staggering steps toward the door when it swings open again, letting in a cool, misted breeze from outside.
The man reappears, his gray T-shirt soaked and clinging to him, the scent of outside hanging over him like an expensive cologne.
He’s dripping wet, breathing hard, and holds my drone in his right hand. With his other, he reaches up and runs his fingers through his sopping hair, flicking a few water droplets back against the door.
It’s practically obscene. Like something out of an underwear commercial. And I can’t take my eyes off him, my heart pounding in my throat, a little spark of heat forming between my legs.
No, no, no. What the hell is happening to me? Less than five minutes ago, I was terrified he was going to trap me in his basement and wear my skin. And now… what? I’m drooling over him simply because he’s hot?
I remind myself of the halo effect. Pretty privilege. It’s just statistically likely, behaviorally likely, that I would feel this way about him. He could still be a murderer. In fact, the way he lives — so privately, out here in the woods — means there’s definitely something wrong with him.
And being handsome might make him more likely to be a murderer.
“Oh,” I say, because during all this thinking, I haven’t been able to slow my momentum toward the door, which means I’ve basically just given him a chest bump. He blinks down at me, his eyes dark, water droplets still running off his face.
While looking at him, I accidentally shift some weight onto my injured foot. A ripple of pain shoots from the bottom of my heel and up into my hip.
“Are you okay?” he asks, his voice gruff, his eyes darting down for the briefest moment to my lips. It sends a full-body shudder through me, in a very good way.
I open my mouth to answer him, but I do something horribly mortifying instead. The stars in my eyes grow bigger, twirling like a kaleidoscope, and I pass out, slumping forward against his broad, warm chest.
If I were a little more dramatic, I might question whether I’d died at some point once I come to. The scene before me is romantic, too heavenly to really be taking place on planet earth.
I’m swaddled and propped on a very comfortable leather couch. A fireplace in the center of the room flickers merrily. A dog sits at my side, her head resting on the cushion beside me as she watches me with wide, brown eyes.
And the man sits across from me, his back against the other couch, my drone on the coffee table in front of him. He’s on the floor, has changed into dry clothes, and he’s using what looks like a set of tiny tools to explore the drone’s mechanical innards.
Or electrical innards. I have no idea what I’m talking about.
Surprised by the lack of pain, I try to wiggle my toes and find my ankle is completely immobile.
“You have a sprain.”
I startle at the sound of his voice and glance over at him. It feels somehow intimate to see his socked feet under the table.
“I… how would you know that?”
He shrugs. “Sprains aren’t that hard to diagnose. Would be easier with an X-ray.” At the look I must be giving him, he adds, “And I studied biology in college.”
I look between him and the drone on the table. “Really, is that where you learned to do surgery on robots?”
“It’s not a robot. It’s…” He pauses, considers me, then the most gorgeous, slanted half-smile graces his face, and I actually feel giddy at the sight of it. “Oh — ha, okay. A joke.”
Silence settles, and I can’t stop myself from trying to figure him out. He went to med school. He lives in what is basically an underground bunker and knows how to open up a drone and dig around inside.
Although he could actually be breaking it.
Anyone with a screwdriver can open up something like that.
But it doesn’t look like that’s the case here.
It looks like he’s replacing something inside the thing, his fingers moving with the deft certainty of someone who knows what they’re holding, where it goes.
My gaze strays to the fire, and I swallow, digging my fists into the cushions below me to sit up.
This is, without a doubt, the strangest situation I’ve ever been in.
And my history of watching horror movies and listening to crime podcasts means I can’t stop thinking that he just might murder me still.
I don’t think so, though. And usually, my intuition is pretty solid.
So, if he’s not a murderer, there has to be some other reason he’s living out in the middle of nowhere like this.
I’m distracted from my thoughts by the dog to my left, who wiggles and looks like she can barely contain herself. When I reach out to pet her, she wiggles harder, and I laugh, eyes rising in time to catch the man’s gaze.
“You have to invite her up,” he says, eyes on me, flitting to my lap, “but you shouldn’t…”
It’s too late. “Up,” I say, patting my lap, and the massive dog doesn’t waste any time in situating herself on me, her head on my chest, her body stretching down to my knees. She’s impossibly warm and heavy, and it feels very cozy with the rain pouring outside.
“…because of your ankle.”
I laugh, petting the dog’s soft ears, and look over at him. “What’s her name?”
“How do you know she’s a girl?”
“I can just tell,” I say, though it occurs to me for the first time that she could be a boy dog. I just don’t think so. She’s giving off girl vibes.
He pauses, considering me. “Her name is Cheesecake.”
That makes me laugh; it’s the perfect name for a dog. “What’s your name? Lemon Meringue?”
The warmth in the room seems to fizzle out, and even from here I can see tension climb back into his shoulders, his entire body going rigid. So, he doesn’t like questions about himself, and he didn’t want me looking around in his place.
This time, the quiet is a bit oppressive, and I shift uncomfortably in it. I don’t think he’s going to kill me, but this awkward silence might.
He breaks it by asking, “You were camping?”
I nod, a flush working its way over my face as I glance out the window, see the rain still battering against the ground. “Yeah, and all my stuff is probably ruined by now.”
He says nothing, just lets out a low hum, and I turn back to Cheesecake, who prompts me for more pets. Her mass is oddly comforting, like a heated, weighted blanket.
“This place isn’t going to flood, right?”
At this, he lets out an amused-sounding huff. “No. It’s not going to flood. This house was designed and constructed by the best eco-engineer in the western hemisphere.”
“Wow, she must be pretty smart.”
“How do you know it’s a woman?”
I shrug again, smiling at Cheesecake’s dopey face as I pet her. “Like I said, I can tell.”
And, of course, in accordance with my absolute shit luck, this is the moment that the laptop he has on the table flickers to life, the video of me coming up on the screen.
It shows me fiddling with the drone for a moment, then waving as it zooms up into the sky, demonstrating how small I am among the trees.
“Oh, God,” I mutter, pulling my hands away from Cheesecake so I can cover my face with them. Maybe as an influencer I should be more comfortable seeing myself on the screen, but being perceived by him while I watch it is making me feel squirmy. “Please, do not make me watch this.”
“You really were just camping,” he mutters, his eyes skirting over to me, then back to the video as I retrieve the drone and start singing under my breath, the footage muffled against my shirt, swinging slightly as I walk.
“Why bring a drone with you, though? Are you some sort of hiking influencer?”
I let out a disbelieving breath, “No. I mean, I am some kind of influencer. Right now, I’m trying to make a video to win a sponsorship, but I normally stick to the concrete jungle. Not really the outdoorsy type.”
If he finds it odd that I hiked through the woods to get here, despite not being the outdoorsy type, he doesn’t mention it.
“Doesn’t look like my place is in the video,” he says, hitting the space bar to restart it and looking almost sheepish. “So you can keep it.”
I don’t understand him. Just because his place isn’t in the video doesn’t mean I couldn’t lead people back here.
Obviously, I won’t do that, but his cagey attitude doesn’t pair well with the waves of… what? Kindness? Something warm and considerate, like affection, pouring off him.
It’s obvious to me that I shouldn’t ask any more questions, but it’s like I can’t help myself. I did spend four years in journalism school, after all.
I clear my throat. “So, if you’re hiding out here and you don’t want anyone to know, how did you get people to build this place? You know, after the eco-engineer designed it? Surely you didn’t do it on your own.”
If it were a rudimentary log cabin, I might believe it. Especially after seeing the way that shirt hugged him, the muscles apparent under his unassuming form.
But this is not a rudimentary cabin. I’m sure it requires all sorts of careful design features, considerations for the earth roof and underground construction.
The sound of his tinkering halts, and it draws my gaze to him. Before he can say anything, I suck in a breath, my eyes going a little wide as I read his expression. “No way, wait — did you, like, blindfold them? Fly them out here without them knowing their location, then fly them back home?”
His expression shifts, and I know instantly that I’ve gone too far. He clears his throat and starts to get to his feet. “Your drone is going to be fine. There’s water on the table there for you. Try not to get on your feet if you don’t have to. I’ll help you back to your car in the morning.”
With that, he turns and walks away, and Cheesecake leaves me — albeit somewhat reluctantly — to follow him, so I’m alone with nothing but the dying fire, myself, and my thoughts.