I’m convinced nothing I could ever say will get me over the line, so you can imagine my shock when he snatches up a duffle bag that survived the carnage and commences packing.
“We’re doing this? We’re going to Ravenshoe?”
Before he can answer me, a twig snapping in the distance steals my focus. It wasn’t an overly loud snap, but in the quietness of darkened woods, it is most certainly hair-raising.
Just like earlier when JR intuited the fire without smelling the smoke, he drags his eyes over the tree-studded landscape. He’s far more trusting of his intuition than me, and his dedication pays off when a second snap occurs not long after the first.
“It’s probably just a deer,” I murmur when the worry blackening his alluring gaze augments. “Or a bear,” I tack on when the snapping is loud enough for me to hear over the frantic beat of my heart.
I step back from the large window spanning one wall of the cabin. I’m having a hard enough time wrangling one hairy beast into line. I don’t need another one tossed into the mix.
“Come back to the bathroom so I can wash the shampoo out of your hair before it gets in your eyes, then we will sit down and work out where we’ll go from he—”
JR cuts me off by pressing his fingers to my lips. When I remain quiet as wordlessly asked, he slips on a pair of fleecy, soot-ruined pants, stuffs his feet into snow boots, tosses on a thermal shirt and thick winter coat before he fetches the chair out of the bathroom.
Once he has it sitting directly in front of the cabin’s door, he gathers up his gun, then hands it to me.
“Why are you giving that to me? I don’t know how to fire a gun.”
Once his wild hair is contained in a messy man bun and a box of bullets are in his hand, he shifts his focus back to me. I’m stunned with silence when he teaches me how to load and fire his shotgun with a step-by-step tutorial. I’m not solely stunned the chamber can hold three shells—I thought the maximum was one—but I’m also shocked to learn the chamber was empty at the start of his presentation.
Did he remove the bullets after my failed attempts to flee or before? I truly don’t know, but both answers please me in uniquely different ways.
After showing me how to brace the gun on my shoulder before firing, JR heads for the door. I don’t know what shocks me more, my panic that he’s leaving me alone or the sudden decline in my confidence the further he retreats from me.
“Take me with you.”
His grunt is the roughest he’s delivered, but it doesn’t stop another plea spilling from my mouth.
“Please. I don’t want to stay here by myself. I’m scared.”
JR can’t hear the panic in my tone, but my eyes must do a good job of relaying it. They halve his strides, but regretfully, they don’t alter his stance. After a brisk shake of his head, he signs, “You’ll be safe here,” before he disappears through the door.
He is gobbled up by the blizzard not even three seconds later.
By the time JR returns,I’ve worn down the floorboards even more than decades of use and have chewed off all but three of my nails. They’re not even real, yet I gnawed them down to nubs, and I see the situation worsening when I spot a trail of blood left in the wake of JR’s step.
“What happened? Why are you bleeding?”
He snaps away my hands before I can discover the source of the deep scratch-like wounds on his left wrist and right arm before he snatches up my medical bag. The shock that rendered me mute hours ago comes back full force when he stuffs the antique bag full with an assemblage of personal products and food, fixes it to my back, then pulls one of the deer skin rugs off the mattress.
I’m a little lost when he walks me through the cabin’s door instead of bobbing down so I can jump onto his back, but my disappointment doesn’t get the chance to register. I’m too fuming mad about him pushing me headfirst into the mud pile the runoff from his earlier shower caused to let a little bit of disillusionment bombard me.
“What the hell, JR!” I scream at the top of my lungs when he scoops up chunks of mud in his hands so he can get the parts of my body my topple missed.
Within seconds, I’m covered head to toe with mud, and I am the angriest I’ve ever been. I look like a swamp monster, and I smell even worse than that.
When I say that to JR, the moon bounces off his teeth a mere second before he plucks me from the mess with a tug on my arm, tosses me on his back, then races for the heavily treed section of the woodlands.
Images of Bella on Edward’s back inTwilightflash before my eyes. JR isn’t as fast as Edward, obviously, but his ability to weave us through ancient trees without stopping to gather his bearings exposes this section of Cataloochee is as much in his veins as Forks was to the Cullens.
My heart beats as wildly as JR’s when we reach an opening almost an hour later. Even with my stay brief, I recognize the wooden structure in front of us. It’s the first cabin where I woke up dazed and confused.
It no longer looks warm and inviting. How could it with every piece of furniture on the front verandah destroyed beyond repair and the window smashed in? This place has been ransacked, and the heated disappointment it fires through JR’s veins announce it wasn’t done by him.
When JR presses his lips to his fingers for the second time today, I nod without hesitation. A million thoughts are bombarding me, but the damage to the cabin looks fresh enough to suspect the culprits may still be inside.
Worry fills me more than anger when JR places me down onto a stump just outside of the clearing before he sneaks toward the ransacked cabin. I don’t want him to get hurt, but the odds are stacked against him when he leaves his gun in my possession.
