“Contortion not your strong suit?” she jokes between bursts of laughter.
I lift my chin to scowl in her direction, but the top of my head smacks against the roof interior, earning me a few more uncontrollable giggles.
“Fuck this,” I mumble, blindly reaching for the keys while attempting to unfold myself out of the sad excuse of a vehicle.
“I should have got a picture of that. You looked like a full-grown grizzly bear trying to fit through a hollow tree trunk.”
I stare at her as she smiles with her perfect top row of teeth gleaming through the thick-falling snow. The stab in my chest after witnessing her amusement feels weird. I don’t get caught off guard by beautiful women. Usually.
But she’ssomething. I swallow hard, looking away from her and rubbing the side of my neck.
“So, what do we do now?”
My brows furrow. “We?”
She blushes, a light pink creeping across her cheeks. “I mean—what doIdo now? It’s going to be completely dark soon. If my car doesn’t work . . . I don’t even know where I’m at, my phone has no service, I?—”
She’s rambling. I run my hand over the side of my face, realizing the moisture is already beginning to freeze on the tips of my beard. We probably shouldn’t stand out here much longer. I can handle it, but her bottom lip is turning a shade of blue instead of the plump red I noticed when I first helped her off the ground.
“I could chance it,” she sighs. There’s not much confidence behind her words as she tries to conjure the right solution.
“Your fuel line’s fucked up and needs replaced. Could be something else, but that’s my guess. And the roads are just going to keep getting worse, even if you could drive it.”
“Okay.” She draws out the word. “Is there a hotel or something nearby?”
I shake my head.
“Maybe you could take me to the closest?—”
I shake my head again, cutting her off before she gets too attached to the idea of going anywhere at all. It’s not that I want to keep her here. I would have liked nothing more than to be alone all weekend. I don’t like people encroaching on my space, no matter how pretty they might be. I’m just not sure there’s any other possible option.
The thought of her staying at my house with nowhere else to go until the storm lets up makes me shove a hand in my pocket and shift my weight from one leg to the other.
I turn my head to look up the driveway. It’s long, and you can’t see the cabin from here, but I squint toward it anyway.
“No.Hellno,” she scoffs. “I won’t be staying with you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
I shrug a single shoulder, not looking forward to convincing her that it’s her only choice that doesn’t involve dying. Turning my attention back to her, our eyes meet.
“You said you don’t have cell service, right?”
“Probably shouldn’t have admitted that,” she mumbles.
I nod. “And your car’s beat to shit,” I point out.
Her shoulders drop, and she closes her eyes in frustration. “It’s not beat to shit. It’s just out of commission at the moment.”
“Right. Well, I don’t want you to be at my house any more than you want to. But I’m not about to leave you out here to freeze to death.”
She covers her eyes and takes a deep breath.
“What’s it going to be?” I ask.
She finally looks up at me, and after a minute-long staring contest, her teeth begin to chatter, and she nods in reluctant acceptance. I’d let her think over it a little longer if we weren’t standing outside right now, but I’m not in the mood to keep talking while we’re in the middle of a damn blizzard. I pocket her keys and walk toward her car to peer into the back seat.
“Got anything you need to bring with you?”
Soft crunches of snow follow me, and she answers my question while opening the driver’s side door and leaning in to pull a lever. “In the trunk.”
