AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He just kept smiling at her, as if she deserved an unlimited amount of his smiles. “Don’t apologize for being yourself,” he said.
Nicole shrugged, not sure how to respond to that, and watched the fire flicker in the grate, enjoying Brendan’s quiet company despite herself.
CHAPTER10
BRENDAN
It took until the next morning for the power to return and they needed supplies in case it happened again, which according to Nicole was more than likely. More candles, more matches, and more instant ramen.
Brendan had thought he was starting to get the hang of the whole country-living thing after a week. He was coming to grips with the machinery, the new early morning schedule, and a whole world of different priorities — he hadn’t thought about emails for days. They seemed like a part of a different life. But now, sitting in the passenger’s seat of Nicole’s ancient truck, he was giving himself an internal smack across the head because it was obvious he was still thinking like he was in a city.
Nicole had made a list as long as her arm of things they needed to get in Silver Ridge, and was throwing every jerrican she could find into the back of her truck to fill up with gasoline.
“Are we preparing for the apocalypse?” he’d joked, coming out to meet her. “I thought we were just getting a few supplies?”
“Thisisjust a few supplies. If we get back and we’ve forgotten something, I’m just going to be in a bad mood for the rest of the day — so trust me, you want me to be overplanning.”
“We can just go back if we forget something,” he’d said, not really seeing what the big deal was. They weren’t preparing for war. But Nicole had given him one of those deadpan looks of hers, eyebrow raised just enough to shatter anyone’s confidence.
“Brendan, the nearest town is Silver Ridge…”
“Yes?”
“It’s a forty-five-minute drive away.”
“Oh. Well… yeah, that makes more sense now.”
“Did you even look up where this place was before you bought it, or was it like throwing a dart at a map or something?”
“Or something.”
She’d shaken her head at him and climbed in the truck, seemingly baffled as always at his existence.
But the drive had been pleasant so far, even cozy. After all that rain, the air was fresh and there was enough sunshine out to take some of the chill out of the air. They had their windows down as the truck rattled along the old road for mile after mile and they even had radio reception, with the local radio station set low, crooning out various country and blues songs from the tinny speakers. Brendan had never really listened to that sort of music before, really only playing rock playlists on his phone when he went running, something with a beat for him to run to. But if he was going to learn torelax, then he should probably listen to more of this stuff. Though he wasn’t going to start asking Nicole for the names of the songs and give her more ammunition to make fun of him.
Nicole kept sliding her eyes across at him, stealing glances every now and then. Brendan pretended not to notice at first, but when it happened for the fifth time he decided to mention it before Nicole exploded.
“Are you worried I’m going to keel over dead or something?” he asked, turning his head at just the right moment to catch her in the act. She looked back at him, doe-eyed and innocent, but the pink flaring on her cheeks betrayed her. Brendan bit back a smirk.
“No,” she said firmly, turning her gaze back to the road.
“Uh-huh.”
“I was… just thinking.”
“Oh, really?” he asked sweetly, watching her cheeks grow redder by the second. “About what?”
“About the fact that you need new boots.”
New boots?He looked down at his feet at what he had thought was a perfectly fine pair of boots, ones that he’d only just bought before he made the move here.
“What’s wrong with my boots?”
Nicole looked at him like she was looking at a slightly dim child.
“What?” he said.
“You’re going to break an ankle in those things.”
