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If he continued to talk to me and look at me like he was, it was going to be impossible for me to avoid him.
I reached for my cup and took a sip of my drink. When I set it down on the table again, I whispered, “I’m happy we met, too.”
I knew it was a foolish thing to do.
But this guy was wonderful. After all the bad I’d experienced for the better part of the last year, was it really so wrong to want to find a sliver of happiness? And really, what harm would it do to have someone to talk to while I was stuck here?
I didn’t have to think hard about that for too long to come up with an answer. Unfortunately, I knew what the problem was.
I was setting myself up for failure, and I hated to think I’d so willingly put myself in a position to make all the same mistakes again.
Apparently, I wasn’t that worried about it. Because once we finished our dinner and Griffin asked to see my pictures, I didn’t hesitate to show them to him.
NINE
Indy
I was awake long before my eyes opened.
This had become the new norm, and though there had been parts of what I’d been experiencing lately that weren’t all that bad, there was one thing I just couldn’t bring myself to find the silver lining in. Quite frankly, that was mostly because there was no silver lining to be found.
Night after night since I’d gotten stranded at the Blue Spruce Ski Resort, I’d been sleeping horribly. I was in a strange place with people I didn’t know. That alone would have been enough to make it uncomfortable. But once I added in those who seemed to have an endless supply of energy and could stay up later than I could, it just made things worse.
I wasn’t the kind of person who’d walk up and ask people to keep it down, so I spent most of the evening tossing and turning. Plus, it wasn’t exactly comfortable sleeping on a cushioned bench seat near a window without so much as a blanket.
Despite the exhaustion I felt, there was no chance I’d fall back asleep. I’d started hearing the familiar sounds of the morning in the ski lodge, and any attempts to rest would be futile.
It was supposed to snow again today, so I was desperately hoping the access road would open before that happened. My head was pounding, and if I didn’t get a decent night of sleep soon, I was convinced I might have a total breakdown.
With barely any strength in my body, I managed to bring my body to a seated position on the bench, my back against the wall and my feet pressed into the cushion beneath me. I blinked my eyes open, and I couldn’t miss the burning sensation there, along with the feeling of heaviness in my head.
I continued to close my eyes tight before opening them again, until the burning subsided. It was replaced by a weight in my eyelids. Physically speaking, I couldn’t remember the last time I felt this bad.
For a few minutes, I sat there in the corner of the room trying to wake myself up, and in an instant, everything went from bad to worse.
My eyes had drifted to the opposite side of the lodge, where I saw Griffin was standing. He was wide awake, ready to take on the day. How did he have the energy?
His eyes connected with mine. He assessed me for all of two seconds before he frowned. Without hesitating, he began walking in my direction.
I was horrified. I could imagine I looked at least as bad as I felt, which was likely the reason Griffin frowned at me. There was no place for me to run and hide from him now, so I had no choice but to watch as he made his approach.
“Good morning, Indy,” he said as he came to a stop a couple of feet away.
“Morning,” I murmured.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
I blinked my eyes slowly and lifted my gaze to his. “Is it that obvious?”
Griffin sat down on the edge of the cushion right beside my thigh, his eyes roaming over my face. “What’s going on? Are you feeling okay?”
I shook my head. “I’m so tired. I haven’t gotten a good night’s sleep in days, because I’m uncomfortable and constantly waking up when I hear noises from other people in here. I think it’s finally caught up with me, because I’ve never been this exhausted in my life.”
Griffin didn’t immediately respond, but even in my state, I could see there was something happening inside his head. I didn’t have the energy to figure it out, so I left him to his thoughts.
And barely a minute later, he suggested, “Why don’t you come out to my camper and get some rest there?”
My whole body tensed. “What?”
