“I’m a dumbass.” He caught her by surprise, sweeping her into his arms again. “You can’t walk there on your own. Let me help you.”
She should probably protest and assert her independence…but she didn’t feel like it. It was freaking scary out here in the dark. Maybe in the morning she’d be all independent and fiery again. “If you think I’m letting you watch me pee, you’re mistaken. I’m not that kind of girl,” she said, her hands on his chest.
His laughter rumbled under her palms. “I have no intention of watching you pee, but it’s good to know you don’t have any weird fetishes. I’ll drop you off and come back once we’re both done. Just stay here and wait for me.”
“Okay.”
He set her down and headed back the way he came. She glowered at the forest floor before forcing herself to take care of business. Once she finished, she moved as far away as her gimpy leg would let her and braced herself against a tree. This was so not how she’d envisioned this week going, thank you very much.
She was supposed to have fun and let loose with some men she’d never see again. Cross items off her list, and move on to the next one when she was finished. The thought of moving on from Tyler didn’t fill her with joy as it previously did, though.
Instead, it felt…wrong. Just wrong.
What if screwing him didn’t get him out of her system? What if it only let him worm in even deeper, and he never let go? What if she was never free? Even now, as she panicked over how strong of a hold he had over her…she wanted more. Wanted him.
He was like a drug, and she needed another hit.
She leaned against a tree and waited for him to come back. She felt ridiculous standing in the middle of the woods hugging a roll of toilet paper to her chest. And oh so vulnerable, too. What if a bear came at her? How would she protect herself? Throw a roll of toilet paper at it? Yeah. Because that would help.
The mental image of her pelting a bear in the nose with a roll of Charmin made her snort. A twig snapped behind her, and she jumped. She licked her lips. “Tyler?” she croaked, half expecting a gigantic beast to come out from the darkness instead of the man who plagued her thoughts nonstop. “Is that you?”
“Yeah.” He appeared from the shadows, and she wanted to fling herself at him and thank him for being there. But she didn’t. She’d already crossed too many lines. She wouldn’t cross another. She couldn’t allow any more contact that wasn’t strictly sexual. It wasn’t on her list. “Hold out your hands for me.”
“Um…okay.”
She adjusted the toilet paper and held her hands out. He squirted hand sanitizer on her hands and did the same to his. As they cleaned up, she watched him watch her. “How’s your back feeling?” he asked.
“A lot better than my ankle and my pride.” She rubbed her hands together some more, even though the sanitizer was dry. “Thanks for taking care of me.”
“It’s ingrained in me.” He lifted a shoulder. “Scrapes like that should be cleaned out right away to stave off infection. You can never be too safe.”
“Well, you did your doctoral duty.” She swiped a stray hair out of her face. “I haven’t succumbed to malaria or typhoid or hay fever yet.”
He laughed, his eyes lighting up. He needed to do that more often. What would he be like it he didn’t carry the weight of the world on his shoulders? She kind of wanted to find out. “Hay fever? Seriously?”
“Sure. Why not?” She rubbed her hands together, trying to warm them up and failing. “God. It’s not supposed to be this cold in June, is it?”
“At night? Yeah.” He tucked the sanitizer into his pocket, grabbed her hands, and blew his hot breath on them. His lips touched her wrist, placing a fleeting kiss over her pulse, and he looked up at her. “Better?”
“Y-Yes,” she said, her voice wobbling. She was scorching hot now, thanks to him. “What do we now?”
He didn’t drop her hands, but kept them pressed in between his. “Now you need to eat while I set a fire to keep you warm. Then you sleep.”
“And you?”
He lifted a shoulder. “I’m not worried about me.”
Typical. “I am.”
“Well, don’t be,” he said, bending down and sweeping her into his arms. “I’m not the injured one.”
“I’m not so sure about that.” She looked up into his bright-green eyes, wishing she could see the man behind the actions. He shouldn’t be so hard to read. “I think your injuries are just hidden better than mine.”
Where the heck had that come from? Since when did she care?
He averted his eyes and stared straight forward. His jaw worked, and his fingers flexed on her. “What makes you think I have injuries? I don’t.”
“We all do. It’s just a matter of what kind, and how deep they cut.”
He stared out into the woods, not moving a muscle. “Are you going all investigative journalist on me? Trying to figure me out?”
She fell silent, not sure if she should continue in this getting-to-know-you type of vein. It would only make walking away from him harder in the end. But there was so much she wanted to know about him. So much she needed to figure out still. Maybe, for one night, she could forget about everything else and just…be with him.
When he lowered her onto the sleeping bag, she slid inside it and met his eyes. “Maybe. I won’t lie, I want to know more about what makes you tick.”
“I don’t know why. I’m pretty simple to figure out.” He squatted at her feet, his eyes on her. “But go ahead. Ask me something if you want. I’ll answer.”
She swallowed hard, but didn’t drop her gaze. “What’s new with your life? Anything exciting going on?”
“That’s all you’ve got?” He blinked at her, the mockery clear in his voice. “I thought for sure you’d ask me something about my dark and stormy past to prove that your theory that I’m broken is correct.”
She shook her head. “I think we talked about the past enough, don’t you?”
“I suppose we have.” He cleared his throat. “I got a job in Portland. Now that I’ve been offered the position as chief, I’ll stay there for, well, maybe forever…if I can stand the domesticity of living in the good ol’ USA. I’ll still go overseas every once in a while, but I’ll be here more than there, if that makes sense.”
She pictured her favorite show, Grey’s Anatomy. If she were completely honest with herself, she’d admit she watched it because it reminded her of Tyler. But she didn’t like being honest with herself when it came to Tyler. It was too real. “Wow, that’s great. You must work crazy hours, huh? Like Dr. McDreamy and Meredith Grey, on Grey’s?”
“Yeah, it’s even worse than you see on TV.” His fingers flexed on his knees. “But we don’t have sex in the on-call rooms. We just snore, drool, and sleep.”
She bit down on her lip. Without even trying, she could totally picture him stripping some hot nurse’s scrubs off, and she kind of wanted to stab her eyes out. “My hours aren’t quite so hectic as all that.”
He averted his eyes. “Do you…date much?”
“Not really.” More like, hardly ever. None of the men she met interested her. Not like him. She bit her tongue. “Just here and there. Like I said, not much going on in the love department for me.”
He flexed his jaw. “I’m not going to lie. I like that answer, for selfish reasons. I don’t like sharing what’s mine.”
“I’m not yours.” She laughed. “I haven’t seen you in years.”
“I know that all too well.” He glanced down at the forest floor, his shoulders tense. “I hear you have a new roommate now that Kady’s with Colt?”
“Yeah. She’s awful.” She hesitated. “I don’t know why I followed Kady out here in the first place, besides out of habit, but it’s time to live alone. To have my own place. I already told my roommate I was leaving once I get back.”
She declined to mention the fact that she was moving to Maine, but it didn’t matter anyway. It didn’t change a thing between the
m at all.
“Is this the first time you’ll be alone?”
“Yeah.” She glanced away, her cheeks heating. “At first I didn’t want to live by myself because it made me miss my parents too much. I got used to having Kady around, so we moved in together out of college, too. But now…”
“She’s getting married.”
“Yeah.” She lifted a hand and let it fall back to her lap. “And I’m stuck with the roommate from hell. She hasn’t paid her portion of the electric bill in three months. And she took my favorite nail polish, and denied it.”
He leaned closer and closed his fingers over hers, squeezing. “She sounds like pure evil.”
“She really is,” she said, laughing. “It’s time for me to go it alone, for once. I didn’t think I would be, but I’m excited.”
His eyes latched onto hers, understanding shining from within their green depths. “I definitely get that, more than you’d think. It’s why I left the States. I needed to be on my own. Have no one waiting on me…needing me…you know? Be free.”
“I know.” She met his eyes and held her breath. “I get it.”
And she totally did.
He held her gaze, neither one of them moving for a while. “Good.”