A new type of disappointment fills me when I discover the cause of me waking up in a cold bed for the second time the past two days. JR isn’t chopping wood or cooking god knows what on an ancient stove, he’s sleeping on the unvarnished floorboards in front of the fireplace.
With his only source of warmth an almost extinguished fire and a thin sheet-like blanket, he must be freezing. I shivered most of the night, yet I was snuggled under three deer skins, my back was cushioned by a fur-lined material I’m pretending is a woolen underlay, and I had enough alcohol racing through my veins to keep half the continent warm.
Should I be disappointed or relieved to find him sleeping on the floor? I’m not sure which way any of my pendulums are swinging. I am glad he respects me enough not to push past any boundaries I’m not comfortable with, but I’m also wary his decision stems more around believing I rejected him than upstanding morals.
I don’t know what I was thinking last night. Cedric is a cheating dud, and I’d give anything to hurt him as much as he hurt me, but JR doesn’t deserve to be the rebound guy. I don’t even know if he knows what that is. Has he only been out of the loop a couple of days like me? Or is this type of isolation normal for him? From the delicacy of deer meat to the homemade furniture, I’m steering toward the latter.
The thought doesn’t bother me nearly as much as it did only yesterday. The world we live in isn’t all that beautiful anymore. People hurt people just because. There’s no rhyme or reason to their madness, so I understand how this type of existence could be inviting to some people.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think it’s for me, but perhaps I’m not here to consider a new way of life. Maybe I’m here to share my knowledge instead of extending on it.
With my head as confused as my heart, I drink in JR’s features instead of plotting a daring escape. The blizzard doesn’t give me much choice, but I don’t think even a handful of options would change the verdict. His way of thinking isn’t the norm, but no matter which way you look at it, he’s not once physically hurt me. When I think back at our exchanges, I was the one being the bully. I hit him, kicked him, and head-butted him. And for what reason? Because he kept me alive in an impossible situation before mistaking protectiveness as ownership.
It makes me ashamed and has me seeking ways to make it up to him.
The dwindling fire seems like a good place to start.
After flopping my legs off the bed, I stretch out for the stick JR used to wade us through the snow yesterday afternoon from the dining room table, then use it as a brace to stand. It’s a little flimsy, but with the wound in my foot sealed, and the swelling reduced from the cold water JR soaked it with, my hobble to the door doesn’t take nearly as long as I was anticipating.
When I curl my hand around the ancient doorknob, pride swarms me from all sides. I wasn’t lying yesterday when I said I have a low tolerance for pain. A papercut makes me teary-eyed, so to fight through the pain jolting up my leg to help someone makes me feel invincible.
The belief is pulled out from beneath me when I carefully pry open the door so I don’t wake JR. Wind gusts into the cabin so fast, the door and I are sent flying backward. I sail through the air like a leaf on a hot summer’s day, my breezy ride only ending when I crash into a solid surface. It’s hard, hairy, and solely responsible for the budding of my nipples.
Even when my body should be focusing on anything but my libido, it can intuit the difference between the fur of a dead animal and a wild beast of a man in the buff—even more so when JR’s body responds to my almost nakedness in the same manner.
He’s hard, but regretfully, so are his facial features, which forces me to blurt out, “I swear on my nanna’s grave that I wasn’t trying to escape. I was gathering kindling for the fire.”
JR’s heart booms wildly against my chest when he drops his eyes to mine. I’m wide-eyed and open-mouthed, but not even the sharp cut of my jaw from my angled head to peer back at him can hide my puckered nipples from his rapacious gaze. “If I weren’t, would I really try to flee in only a shirt? It’s cold in here, let alone out there.” I nudge my head to the snowy grounds outside, hopeful he’ll buy my act that my puckered nipples are from the below-freezing temperatures. “That’s why I was fetching firewood.”
It feels like minutes pass before his grunt adds to the tension bristling between us, but it isn’t even seconds. When he scoops me into his arms and marches me back to bed, I’m terrified he doesn’t believe me.
My worries are unfounded when he sets me down nowhere close to the restraints that circled my wrist my first twenty-four hours here. After tossing a shirt over his bare chest and tugging on a pair of sweatpants, he heads out the open doorway that makes it seem as if the cabin is a refrigerator.
I grin like a love-sick idiot when his return sees numerous wedges of dry wood being placed onto the dwindling fire. When his eyes stray my way like he’s seeking my approval, I briefly nod while praising, “That’s great. Thank you.”
With it still dark and the icy conditions begging for more coverage for my bare legs, I slip beneath three layers of deer skin before hunkering down low. JR kicked the door closed after a quick intermission outside, but it will take more than chunks of lumber to combat the winds whipping up through the cracks in the floorboards.
“Are you warm down there?” I ask JR through clattering teeth several minutes later, confident the rug he’s resting on isn’t protecting his body from the bitter temperatures. The white breaths parting his lips assure me of this, not to mention the goosebumps prickling almost every inch of his torso. Just like Cedric, JR sleeps shirtless. “Because if you’re not, you can share the bed with me.”
The fact he already isn’t shocks me. I assumed we had shared the bed every night the past five nights. Cedric didn’t care how upset I was. He’d never sleep on the floor. When his mother insulted my Korean heritage last Fourth of July, I made Cedric take me to a hotel.
With his parents living in a popular area of the country, the hotel only had a room with one bed. Since Cedric didn’t stand up for me, I told him he either drives back to his parents’ house or sleeps on the floor. When I came out of the bathroom after taking a long shower with the hope it would calm me down, he was in my bed, snuggled under the blankets, and he wasn’t budging no matter what I said.
With him being far too big and wide for me to move, I ended up sleeping on the couch. I was certain that was the beginning of the end for us, but when he filled my office with dozens of roses, I let another red flag slip by me.
It was stupid of me to do, but what girl doesn’t want to believe they’re someone’s number one? He made his mother apologize, and we moved on with our lives until he stuffed up again without any concern that I told him his last mistake would be his last.
My fiancé didn’t respect me enough to sleep on a plush carpeted floor so my opinions were valued, yet a man I barely know combatted a blizzard to explain himself in a way I could understand.
As I said before, JR’s ideas of protectiveness are warped, but I’ll never admit they’re unwanted. It feels nice to be wanted, so much so, I extend my olive branch so perversely, he’ll have no choice but to accept it. “Please come up. You must be freezing.”
Silence.
My offer is answered with nothing but silence, and it has my stubbornness rearing its ugly head.
“Arrggh!” JR grunts in a rough tone when I toss off the deerskin and bear weight on my foot again like I have the strength to drag him to my half of the cabin.
“If you don’t want me to come to you, then come to me! It’s your bed, so it isn’t like I’m sharing it with you. You’re sharing it with me.” I scoff like he’s being an idiot. “Besides, we’ve showered together multiple times, you had your finger in my vagina only hours ago, and you’ve seen me naked. How much worse could things become in a bed?”
