Chapter Twenty-One

I woke up disoriented. Not because I wasn't in Orion's bed, which I'd only spent a single night in my whole life, so obviously I couldn't miss it, but because Scraps wasn't with me.

Oh, shut up, it makes perfect sense.

But something wasn't quite right, and it took me some time to figure out what it was, what the incongruity in my current circumstances meant.

I'd grown up in a city. I'd spent my postcollege life in a city. I was used to the generalized noise of civilization—people's voices and vehicles and the usual soundtrack that went along with high population density—so at first my brain didn't recognize that anything was wrong.

Then I remembered I was at a mountain cabin in the woods with an undercover former pro soccer player who was notable—or was it notorious?—for his total privacy stance.

What the fuck?

I opened my eyes in my couchnest, which now, because I was stuck with the blue Kmart comforter, unfairly smelled like Orion. Who hated me again. But before I could really dial in the self-loathing, I realized something was at the window, along the bottom, and it was moving.

And it was a freaking camera . Clearly being held by someone not tall enough to reach, just waving around, probably shooting a lot of blurry, random photos of my shocked expression, and I imagined them in a sequence: shock, rage, horror, back to rage, my advancing form, bared teeth, and the curtains slamming shut. Except they were curtains, so it would be more of a gentle whisk shut.

At which point I realized that if they could do that in the living room ...

I slammed (really slammed this time) into Orion's room and gently whisked the curtains shut. "We have a problem. Fuck, fuck, fuck."

The kitchen, the only window where someone could stand on the porch and see inside. I crept around the corner—and yeah, the window held humans and camera lenses. "Fuck." Nothing for it.

At least the kitchen had blinds, which seemed like they could close aggressively, except I screwed up the tension so half of them came down first, then I had to pull them up, then more carefully lower them.

Another sequence of photos: me trying to get a regular set of window blinds closed. A flurry of excited shouts: Orion Broderick! Orion, is that your new boyfriend? How long have you known each other?

"What the hell?" Orion stood in the doorway in a pair of sweatpants and nothing else. I sincerely hoped he'd just arrived and no one had yet caught a photo of sexy former footballer Orion standing half-clothed in his kitchen looking tousled and sleepy and—anyway, we'd know soon enough. Anyone with a photo that clickable would post it all over the internet within the hour.

"I don't fucking know." I flicked the light switch. "Power's still out."

He frowned, then looked at his fitness tracker thing. "Cell phone reception is back, though."

Oh shit. Oh god. Oh no. Those messages I'd sent from the bathroom when I was excited, before he realized who I was. When I'd said I thought he was in. Oh fuck me, please don't let this be all my fault. Again.

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly. "There appear to be a bunch of people with cameras outside." In fact, I could hear them, their voices, even though they were clearly all trying to stay quiet except for one of them, who shouted Orion's name.

"Did you tell people you were coming here?" he demanded in a whisper-shout.

"I didn't even know where ‘here' was!" I whisper-shouted back. "I had to con that poor kid at the gas station to tell me where I was going!"

"Yeah, but I didn't have reporters on my front porch before, and now you're here, and so are they! Who the fuck did you tell, Cleary?"

There were tears in my eyes now, but not so many they'd fall, not so many they indicated sadness, just impotent rage tears, whether at him or myself or the people outside, I didn't know. "Who would I tell? My legion of friends and lovers? There's no one, okay? There's no one to tell, and I wouldn't have anyway, but even if I'd wanted to, I couldn't have." I bent down and scooped up Scraps, who was cowering on the floor and shuddering each time a noise outside was too loud.

I trundled her into the living room, where at least there was more space between us and the voices, but it only made me feel more trapped. "How the fuck did they get here?" I said, to Orion, or Scraps, or the empty room.

"Paid someone to plow my driveway, at a guess." He disappeared into his room and returned with a shirt on. "You have to get out of here."

I waved my non-Scraps arm belligerently, which did not express nearly the right amount of freaked-the-fuck-out. "Oh sure, I'll just get on my magic broomstick and fly away."

"No. You'll go out the front door and drive your car." He went into the kitchen. Seconds later there was the sound of moving blinds and then another bunch of shouted questions, bolder this time. When he came back, he looked grim and entirely determined. "Idiot flatlanders all parked along the side, which was considerate. No one's blocking you in, and all of them will probably be stuck here since I don't see any chains." He shook his head in disgust.

"I can't go out there!" The idea of it made me hug Scraps tighter to my chest. "Oh my god."

"Well, you can't stay here," he said ruthlessly. "And you don't want to. I'll probably have to call the sheriff to get them all to go away, and by then someone will know someone who can run your license plate, and they'll know who you are anyway."

"That can't be legal."

He scowled at me. "And yet I didn't invite you, and here you are. Shit happens, Cleary. Get a fucking helmet."

I gulped and gathered myself. "Fuck. Fine. Okay."

It took roughly two minutes for me to gather all my things. Which meant changing into my clothes and picking up my laptop bag. I tugged my hood around my face and considered borrowing a coat, but either I'd get my car running and in a few minutes I'd be sitting in a heated car, or I wouldn't get it running and I'd be back inside.

I was already shivering in anticipation. Or maybe I, like Scraps, was shaking from fear. I didn't like it. I didn't like any of this. Could I go out and tell them all to go away?

"Listen, what if I go out there?" I said. "Like, if I go out and, I don't know, tell them to leave, that we're calling the police. That they're trespassing and they have to go."

"Oh god, you're so innocent. They'd love that." He looked exhausted. "They would get it all on camera, they'd find your worst angle, there would be Auto-Tunes of you playing in coffeehouses and deepfakes in which you described the most fucked-up lewd shit imaginable. Ask me how I know. If you've ever tried to explain the concept of deepfaking voices to your extremely right-wing parents who just got sent a link to an audio clip in which you said you liked fucking donkeys ..."

"Holy shit."

"Yeah." He rolled his eyes. "They were like, ‘This is why we didn't want you to be gay!' Like sex with men leads to donkeys."

I choked on a laugh. "I must have missed that level of gay initiation."

The momentary levity evaporated.

"Time to go," he said briskly, and he scooped up Scraps.

I petted her head and swore I would not cry over leaving the dog. "Take care of yourself, girl. No running into the snow." Shit, shit, no crying, not going out in front of all those cameras crying.

"Here's what we're gonna do," Orion said, his voice dead controlled. "I'm going to open the door, and you're going to barrel through anyone in your way to get to your car. Keep your head down, don't look up, don't look over, don't meet anyone's eyes." He grimaced. "The bad news is that someone has clearly already gone into your car, but the good news is that means you don't have to dig it out; they did a lot of that work for you. Hopefully with their bare hands. If someone gets frostbite out of this, maybe we can still laugh about it."

He did not look like he was going to laugh. I felt like crying all over again. "So I just run for it and leave you here?"

"You think it'll go better if you're also here?" He shook his head. "This is going to suck. A lot. You have no idea how much. It's better if we get you out of here."

"But I feel like I'm leaving you to the sharks. I don't want to ..." I didn't know how to put it.

"I've swam with sharks before. I'll be fine. And I'm the chum they want, so I'll try to distract them. It won't totally work, but it should work well enough to give you time to gun it out of here." He paused. "Don't actually gun it. The roads will still be slippery as fuck, and while they did get a plow through here, so I'll have to make some calls about that later, they also churned it all up into icy mud, so be careful."

There's no way I can do this. But I bit the words back, since what he was planning to do sounded so much fucking worse, and I nodded. "Okay. What if I crash again?"

"Do as much damage as possible to their cars without killing yourself."

Which was a joke. I attempted a smile, but the tears were still threatening. "I'm really sorry. This is probably somehow my fault."

"Yeah, well, we'll handle it. Here." He handed Scraps to me while he put on a coat and zipped it up halfway; then I sort of tucked her in so she could see out but be warm against him.

Kissing distance again, but no kissing this time. I turned before he could see anything on my face. Like longing. Or shame.

"Whatever you do, don't say anything. Just keep going until you get to your car. Lock the doors. Let it warm up first and ignore anyone trying to get your attention. And if they act like they're going to stand in front of the car, just start very slowly rolling, and they'll get out of your way."

"Right, okay."

"I'll try to keep them on the porch."

"Thanks."

After that, when there was nothing else to say, we did it.

It wasn't quite like in the movies, when there's an entire campground of reporters and massive cameras and helicopters overhead. But compared to the number of reporters who'd been there the last time I'd stood in Orion's front yard (nil), there were now way too many. I kept my head down, but there were at least four people on the porch, and others down below.

Stairs, don't slip, well-worn path toward the garage from where we'd gone in and out, no fresh snow. He was right; the driver's side door and back door seemed to have been opened. Whoever had plowed clearly thought my car would need to get out and had pushed the gigantic volume of snow across to the other side, leaving me a clear exit (and also blocking the rest of the cabin's front yard, which at least meant they couldn't pull right up to it).

It only took a second for me to get my car door open, and I immediately hit the locks. The seat had a fair bit of snow on it, probably from whatever jackhole had opened the door, but I sat down anyway and closed myself in.

Two of them had followed me asking questions, but the rushing in my ears dulled every other sound.

Please start, please start, please start, I chanted in my head as I inserted the key.

And fuck yeah, okay, my car was running. Stuttered a bit, but running. Okay. Warm up. Ignore the people outside, who lost interest when I was just sitting there trying to gauge the best way to drive out. There would be enough space between all those parked cars and the wall of snow left by the plow. It was narrow, but I could do it.

I took a deep breath and looked back at the cabin, where Orion stood on the porch, having somehow gotten the intruders off it, one arm supporting Scraps, the other gesturing. I'm so sorry, I thought at him.

Then I turned my eyes forward, released the emergency brake, and very much did not gun my engine as I drove away slowly and carefully.

In my head, my back wheels spun enough to spray all those assholes with mud and muck, but in reality I don't think any of them even noticed when I left.