Caleb
“You’renotmyparent, you know…”
The words catch me short. I’m bent double beside the rocking chair, about to clear away Lizzie’s dinner plate. I glance up to find her watching me like a hawk does a mouse who has braved to come too close, all benevolent mercy before she swoops in for the kill. Somehow, the comparison has little tingles of heat zipping up and down my spine. A confident woman is too damn appealing.
“What?” I ask her, entirely lost.
Lizzie shifts onto her side. The rocking chair she’s adopted for a throne sways a little and sets the boards of the open porch creaking.
“The silent treatment,” she says, lifting her blanket up around her shoulders. As she pulls it tight, I notice the nervous white of her knuckles and frown. Perhaps not as confident after all. “I feel like I’m fifteen, again. Getting the disappointed cold shoulder. You ever going to talk to me again?”
I’m shaking my head, finally taking her plate in hand.
“It’s not you. I’m always quiet.”
“Not always.” Her confidence has me pausing again, this time upright with our dinner things neatly stacked. Just what made her so sure? She’d known me for just over a week. Who was she to know my habits with such certainty?
“It’s not you,” I repeat.
Which is only half true. But it’s as close as I can get to pure honesty right now. The rest I’m still trying to figure out.
“Put the plates down.” She’s eyeing the chair I’ve vacated to tidy up. “Sit.”
I just look at her.
“Please?”
The word transforms her face. The cool, predator-sharp look in her eyes melts in the twilight gray. Her lips soften and turn up at either corner until they’re a pretty curving bow. Her head tilts to expose a long and elegant neck as locks of white gold tumble over her shoulder. She glows almost pearlescent in the darkness, barely lit by the lights from indoors.
Her focus on my face seems to heat me from within. My skin, my core, my cheeks. Thankfully it’s nighttime, so she can’t see me blushing.
With the heat comes the realization of the cold. The chilly air is seeping between clothing and skin. So, I retreat back beneath my own blanket. The dishes are going to have to wait.
It’s a moment before Lizzie breaks the quiet.
“If it’s not me you’re angry at—” she begins.
“It’s not.”
“—then would you care to explain to me why your new shade of silence falls perfectly in line with our drive home this afternoon?”
A warmth I don’t trust flares in my chest at her use of the word ‘home’. For a moment, I worry about what that sensation means. How I might be warming to the idea of a woman in my home. This woman.
Instead, I decide it’s her mouth that has my insides flaring. The way her lips morph around the word; making a pretty oval, their central dip a little darker than the rest, a touch of shine as the dampness of her mouth catches the light.
I swallow.
This is the reason I’ve been silent. This, right here. Her. But not her.
“I…”
How to find the words to explain?
I’m not mad at you. Although, you were an idiot who nearly caused a traffic accident and that would have been bad for me, my truck, my insurance company, and everyone else involved. But it isn’t your roadside madness that has me furious enough to spit nails.
It’s fear. Fear for her safety.
Not for my own, not for the condition of my truck, and not for the excessive premium I’m going to be charged on next year’s payment if I cause a four-lane pile-up outside of Gatlinburg. I’d thought nothing of any of it.