CHAPTER7
Chance
Iwatch Sophia pacing around the corners of the room, holding her phone as high in the air as it will go and teasing me with glimpses up beneath the hem of the shirt I lent her as she tries to get a decent signal. It’s morning, and the shutters are up again, letting in soft gray light and the muffled chattering of the birds. Her face is creased with concern, and I get it, she thinks her friends will be worried about her. Normally I get good signal here, but the storm must have knocked out the mast the phone company put in at the top of the hill, and it could be weeks before they get out here to fix it.
I can still taste her on my tongue, her scent occasionally drifting to my nostrils, driving me wild.
“Nothing,” she says, sounding frustrated. “Any second I’m going to… Damn it!” She huffs, her shoulders slumping as she looks defeated. “That’s it, the battery’s dead.”
She looks over at me with those pleading eyes, and shit, yeah, I feel guilty. But it’s this or let her leave. Let her go back to her friends, probably out of my life, thinking this was nothing more than a holiday fucking fling.
“Are you sure there’s no way to get back to the hotel? I’m really worried. They’ll think you kidnapped me.”
I shake my head. “The road’s washed out, baby.”
And they’d be right.
I have fucking kidnapped her. I’m holding her here against her will, knowing that there’s another route out. Shit, we get storms this time of year, I have to have another way out. The road is hidden from the house, but it leads up over the hill, through the denser trees, and comes out on the main road to the other side of the island. It’s never great but it’s always passable, even in the worst of storms.
Only, she doesn’t know it’s there, and I’m not going to tell her. Because if I told her she’d leave and that’s fucking unacceptable.
“Could you just please go check again?” she asks, and my stomach lurches with guilt. “Just check. Maybe it’s not that bad? Maybe we could walk some of the way and then—”
“Okay, baby,” I say, reaching out and caressing her face. “I’ll check. You stay here and fix us something amazing to eat. No promises though, okay?”
“Thank you. That’s all I’m asking.”
And I can tell you right now, that road is impassable.
Sophia
It’s halfan hour since I watched Chance go trudging down the dirt path in his boots and jeans, shirt flapping around his wide chest in the breeze. The fact he hasn’t come back yet isn’t any cause to believe the road is passable. He said it gets washed out further down, in a dip, and from there on there’s no way we’re getting through until the province finally gets the bulldozers out here and fixes it.
And part of me hopes he’s right.
Part of me wants nothing more than to stay here in this amazing house and cook for us both and listen to the sound of the ocean, and yes, have mind-blowing sex in positions I didn’t know were possible with a literal god of a man on the regular.
But I have responsibilities. Sometime I have to go back to work. People will be worried about where I’ve gone, especially given the circumstances of our departure from the complex last night.
Ugh, I just wish there was some way I could resolve this without having to lose either the life I’ve built or the one I could have with Chance.
A noise at the door makes me almost fall over with fright.
Chance. It has to be him. He’s back.
With a squeal of delight that takes even me by surprise, I break into a run.
I don’t care that I’m only dressed in one of his shirts. He’s seen me in less than this and there’s nobody for miles around. I could go running naked down to the water and it would only be between me and the birds squawking in the trees.
It doesn’t even occur to me how weird it is that he hasn’t just come inside, until I pull the door open and nearly fall over on my ass.
“Sis?”
My eyes are wide, my head shaking back and forth as I try to form a coherent thought. “What are you two doing here?”
Tor and Cyrus look worse than last night’s thunderstorm as they step inside without asking, Tor starting to feel my shoulders as if I’m injured. I shrug away from his touch, starting to glare now, and move to block their path.
“I’m fine. When did you get here?”
“He here?” Cyrus asks on a sniff, glancing around behind me.
“Oh, what are you? My dad?”