Chapter Eleven

I was up and rebrewing again sometime later when Orion stumbled out of his room, mumbled something I didn't catch, pulled on his coat, and went outside. His hair was still flattened to one side of his head, and he looked annoyingly (adorably) sleep tousled. It wasn't fair. I looked like a reanimated corpse in the morning. He just looked ... attractively rumpled.

He was doing something involving the wood he'd cut the day before, which he'd first unearthed from a pile under a thick tarp, which had in the intervening hours of course been covered over in thick snow, then began moving. I had to dodge to the side of the window so he wouldn't catch me staring. It soon became clear he was shifting wood to the front porch, where he was piling it atop the wood that was already there.

Dear god, how much wood did he think we'd need? At the moment we still had electricity, and the snow couldn't go on that much longer. I didn't think.

I drained the last of my tea and steadied my nerves. Maybe if I helped him with the wood, he'd hear me out on all the other stuff. And in any case, it seemed weird to be overtly not-helping.

Still, it was hard to put the same pair of boots back on and don my thankfully dry hoodie, which did hardly anything to cut the chill in the air. How hadn't I noticed that yesterday? Was it only yesterday? I eyed the snow shovel with disfavor and tramped down the steps, which Orion had apparently leveled off, at least, so they were safer than they had been.

He eyed me with a similar expression to the one I'd used on the snow shovel, though to greater effect. I immediately felt like a nincompoop. But I powered through.

"Thought I'd help," I said, sounding not all that gracious.

His eyes narrowed, and I had to work hard not to shudder in the icy air. "You can just take one of the coats from the closet. Like you did the boots."

Was he being polite? Was he being passive aggressive? Was I overthinking this? He was staring at me as if waiting, so instead of doing the thing I instinctively wanted to do (say No thanks, mate, I'm good ), I shrugged and went all the way back to the house. The distance hadn't seemed far before there were two feet of snow on the ground, but getting from the area behind the detached garage I'd reversed into (which was set out to the front and off to the right) all the way back to the patio was an actual trudge. My heart was beating at a steady clip by the time I'd donned a coat from the back of the rack and returned to the woodpile.

Orion passed me on the way to the cabin, arms massively piled with wood. I didn't think he'd gone that nuts when I was spying on him from inside, but he was probably just trying to get the hell out of the cold and didn't think I was going to be contributing much to the effort. Naturally I decided I needed to prove him wrong and loaded myself up with wood to my chin, then tried to grab another two pieces with my right hand, which resulted in overbalancing me about three steps into the trip.

At least he still had his reflexes. "Sorry," I said as he jumped out of the way of flying firewood.

He waved one hand in a Why are you so worthless? motion and said nothing, just passed me back to the woodpile while I attempted first to gather all the wood I'd sort of Looney Tunes tossed in every direction. Then I just picked up the nearest few, put my head down, and went for the porch.

Again, time went taffy-like. My body still hurt, but moving it was okay at first. No, I couldn't carry the massive amount that Orion could, but what the hell: I was still helping. The careful stack beside the front door was growing, which had to be a good thing. It started snowing again, but only lightly, majestically, and aside from our boots crunching and my own increasingly ragged breaths, there wasn't much to hear, and it wasn't so bad.

But then Orion just kept going. I figured we were good at one pile, but he started a second pile in front of the first. How much freaking wood had he chopped yesterday? (Was it really still only yesterday?) Also, how had I passed out when I could have been ... creepily watching him chop wood? Okay, that sounded way more weird than I meant it. But for real. He was the kind of dude who probably looked incredibly capable while doing feats of strength and endurance.

As a soccer player, he'd been delightful to watch. He'd played midfield, but he might have shifted to forward if he'd stayed on the team. I pushed away that old image of Orion Broderick cutting across the pitch, ball expertly in his control, executing a beautiful pass up to a teammate who'd put it in the goal. He'd been the type of player my dad never liked, as if Orion didn't want the glory; he wanted to be the reliable one who didn't let the ball past his domain, and who could get it back to where other guys could score. My dad hadn't gotten that, had considered it a lack of courage, but I always thought it was kind of admirable all on its own, the willingness to set aside glory for ... whatever it was when you assisted in the glory without claiming it for yourself.

On my eleventy-billionth trip, with arms that were less capable of bearing weight with every step, I tripped and sprawled out face first in the snow, crushing my arm and two pieces of firewood under my body and totally knocking the air out of my lungs.

For a long, terrifying moment I just lay there, mouth open, lips barely above the level of the snow, unable to pull in breath, unable to hear anything but the panicking voice inside my head that thought I would die soon if I didn't manage to breathe.

Then I was hauled up by the jacket, and my body remembered how to do all the basic things as if suddenly the world had rushed in again.

Two quick thuds on my back and Orion was still hanging on to me, holding me upright with one hand around my upper arm, peering into my face with suddenly unveiled concern, and I wasn't ready for it. I wasn't ready to see him look so unguarded, the way he had before he'd realized who I was.

"Slow, deep breaths," he instructed, like he regularly reminded people how to breathe, like this was a normal occurrence in his day.

"Hurts," I gasped, trying to obey his command through the ache in my chest-slash-arm-slash-everything.

"Yeah, for a minute. Just concentrate on not hyperventilating."

Which is not a thing one can concentrate on. Concentrating on not hyperventilating was basically the same as concentrating on hyperventilating except your brain kept going, Stop it, don't, quit it, slower, don't pass out .

But I didn't pass out. Or hyperventilate. And at least some of the burning and panic eased off.

"Fuck," I said, when I could talk. "That was freaky. Haven't had the wind knocked out of me since I was like nine."

"It's unsettling for sure." He studied me, not removing his hand. "I think it's quitting time."

"Ha." To my mingled relief and embarrassment, he kept holding on to me while I caught my breath and stopped shuddering. When he finally let go, he didn't back away, probably thinking I would keel over again. Whatever the reason, it had a very different effect on my overstressed brain, which started chanting Kiss him, kiss him, kiss him like we were in some kind of movie climax and he'd just saved me from going over the edge of a cliff.

I forced myself to look down, at my snow-crusted boots and the imprint of my body, a sort of splat shape. If Orion had fallen in the snow, his imprint would probably be of the Roman god variety.

Abruptly, I wanted to cry. Not for any one specific reason (unless that reason was self-pity, which it might have been), but in general.

"Come on," Orion said, and he touched my back only for a moment, barely perceptible through the coat. "Let's go inside."

Maybe it was this unexpected gentleness that did it. I didn't know. But instead of all my planned speeches, all those well-thought-out things I'd wanted to say to him, I broke a little on his careful tone. Suddenly I was babbling, with no plan and no notion how to stop.

"I didn't mean to ruin everything, I'm sorry, I thought I was helping, and I know how stupid that is now, I get it, I just didn't understand that it would destroy your life, I thought it would make things better, I know I was dumb, but I just wanted to live in a world where it was okay to kiss a guy and I really thought that we did live in that world even though now that seems so, so fucking stupid, and I'm so sorry, I'm really, really sorry, I didn't mean to hurt you, I really didn't mean for it all to go so wrong, but—"

He stepped back. "Stop. I don't want to hear any of this."

I gulped back words, but there were too many; they bubbled up inside me like tears, unstoppable. "But I just want you to understand that I wasn't trying to hurt you—"

"Do you think it matters what you were trying to do? Seriously? Do you think there's something you can say that will make me losing my boyfriend, my career, and my entire life no big deal?"

"No, but—"

"No." He held up a hand. "No. There is literally nothing you can say that I want to hear. And you know what, Des Cleary? I don't owe you a damn thing. I don't owe you another second of my time listening to your bullshit."

"It's not bullshit," I protested, but then he was walking—trudging—away, and I was talking to his back. "Please just listen this one time—"

He didn't turn, he didn't wave a hand, he didn't show that he'd even heard, though of course he had, because there were no other sounds but the soft shush of falling snow.

And okay, this time I cried. I tried to wipe my eyes, but my gloves were covered with snow, which just hurt when it scraped across my skin, adding to the impression that I was worthless and deserved to suffer.

None of it mattered. Orion would never forgive me. And he probably thought I'd taken advantage of his moment of weakness in, you know, again trying to prevent me from dying in his front yard. I hadn't, though. I'd just been all dammed up with things I wanted to say, and then the dam had broken and ... fuck. Now I was very much not dead but crying in his front yard. Messily. Unable to wipe my nose.

At least I was breathing. Right? I had boots and a better coat; maybe it wasn't too late to walk to town after all. Except now the snow was so much deeper. And I was so much more exhausted.

When I started shaking violently from cold and emotions, and the snow started to fall faster, I finally gave in and returned to the cabin. No sign of Orion, so he must have been in his bedroom, which was fine by me. I hung up the coat, took off the boots, and went to huddle over a heater vent until I felt slightly less like an ice statue.

He was right. I knew he was right. I knew I wasn't entitled to anything. But damned if I didn't still desperately want him to understand. I'd gotten over my desire for forgiveness—mostly—but I still wanted him to know I hadn't intended any of it to happen the way it had.

I needed to stop crying around Orion Broderick. I resolved to do so immediately. If he was going to act like I was a monster, fine, but I was going to be the best guest ever. I'd just pretend this was an extreme B and B, and he was a mediocre host I was stuck with for a few days.

Having so resolved, I immediately felt better. Not like a lot better, but better enough to wash my face and sort through my stuff and fold the blankets I'd been using for my nest. Best guest. Unobtrusive. He wouldn't even know I was there.