I practically run out of the room and up the stairs. What is wrong with me? I glance outside the window, watching the sleet beat down against the glass as I pull my wet sweater over my head and replace it with a fresh one. I grab blankets, a pair of sweatpants and a warm hoodie. What if Stevie hadn’t escaped? What if I hadn’t found her? Anger heats my blood. The guy who left Poppy, was he a friend? Boyfriend? Was he even now trying to find her?
On the one hand, I should probably call the Sheriff or the Alpine Rangers if I think that some inexperienced jack-off is wandering around in this storm. On the other hand, he left an injured woman.
Left her in anger. Outside the storm rages, a mirror to the emotions roiling inside my body. My sanctuary was breached,but the woman downstairs feels like something that was meant to be found.
4
Poppy
My hands tremble as I try to undo the buttons on my shirt. Now that I’m inside and not being carried by the giant farmer I realize how cold I am and how much danger I was actually in.
Hopefully, Matt abandoning me with a sprained ankle in the middle of the woods is the worst thing that is going to happen to me today. I take in my surroundings. When he said ‘cabin’, this is not what I expected.
I’m not quite sure what I expected. Maybe a one-room shack with a rusted woodstove and a tin of beans on a shelf? I’m happy to note there are no jars with body parts, medieval weapons or animal heads lining the walls, but this isn’t anything I’d call a cabin, either. The main room is large and warm, all exposed timber beams and stone that looks like something from Architectural Digest. The fireplace is the size of a small car and the wood fire is blazing and crackling at my back. The furniture is beautiful, real wood, and definitely of higher quality than myIKEA hacks. Matching leather couches the color of dark caramel and a handwoven rug that probably cost more than my rent lend a softness to the room and huge floor-to-ceiling windows that probably offer a spectacular view when it isn’t storming outside. This place looks like a resort, and I’d definitely pay money to stay here with those gorgeous bookshelves built right into the walls and stuffed so full that a few paperbacks have been double-stacked sideways on top of others. There's a kitchen off to the right that has actual counter space, copper-bottomed pots hanging from a rack, and a serious-looking espresso machine.
My fingers fumble on the tiny buttonholes, and I squeeze my hands, trying to make them work. My ankle is throbbing, and it feels like I’m never going to get warm, despite the fire behind me.
I sit there dripping on his very nice rug and swallow back tears. I’m soaked
to the skin and my leggings are now more mud than fabric and I've just been carried through a mountain ice storm by a man I've never met and deposited in what appears to be the coziest and most expensive cabin in the entire San Juan range.
A stranger rescued me, while Matt left me on a rock. I might be in shock. I'm definitely in shock.
Stevie bleated the whole time he carried us, muffled little complaints from inside his jacket. I kept my face pressed against his shoulder because the sleet was horizontal and vicious, and I could feel the steady, solid rhythm of his heartbeat through the layers between us. He moved through the woods like neither the weather nor my weight were a hinderance.
I should not find that as attractive as I do.
He jogs down the stairs, his dark hair glinting auburn under the lights, frowning as he watches me fight with these stupid tiny buttons. As if I needed a UV protection-shirt in mid-April, but obviously I had no idea what I was doing on that hike today.
He crouches in front of me again, setting down the blankets and clothes and I notice his cheeks are windburned.
“Do you want some help?” His voice is low and gentle, and I become suddenly and acutely aware what an utter and total disaster I am.
I am a woman who went hiking unprepared, got left by her situationship, sat in a snowstorm and is now on a stranger's rug, filthy, shivering, and probably giving off a strong aroma of hand sanitizer, wet wool and goat.
I shake my head, not trusting myself to speak. Tears blur my vision, and I yank at the last dumb button that just won’t cooperate.
He sighs and takes hold of my hands with one of his. His fingers are warm. Big. He doesn't squeeze, just holds it, his thumb grazing that sensitive spot on my palm and the contrast between the cold of my skin and the heat of his hand is so stark, I suck in a breath.
"Sorry," he says, not looking up as he gently moves my hands out of the way.
"You didn't hurt me."
"Your hands are frozen."
I look down at them. He's right. They're splotchy red and a little blue around my nail bed. I'd been using them to shield Stevie's face from the sleet and hadn't noticed how bad it had gotten. He stands, walks into the kitchen, and comes back with a dish towel that he wraps around my hands, closing them together inside it. “Can I… um.” He runs his hand through his hair. “Look, you’ve got to get out of those wet clothes. Let me help you.”
I nod, and he lowers himself to the floor, reaching out to undo my shirt. Somehow those big hands manage what I couldn’t, and I shrug it off happy to have the wet fabric away from my skin. “Thanks.”
“Those leggings have to go too.”
“If we’re going to first base, maybe you should tell me your name,” I say and then immediately wish I could bite my tongue. “I didn’t mean that…”
He chuckles. “It’s Gibb.” He reaches for the blanket and drapes it over my shoulders. It’s already warm from the fire and he tucks it around me, before sitting back and untying my boots. For my injured leg, he carefully works the knot loose, making sure not to tug or jostle it. The lace catches and he picks at it with a patience that seems at odds with the contained intensity of everything else about him.
He does it without making a production of it. Like taking care of someone is just a thing he does, not something he thinks about. I remember the way he zipped his coat around me and Stevie before lifting both of us effortlessly into his arms.
I don't know why that gets to me, but it does.