Breaking Her No-Dating Rule

by Amalie Berlin

  Weird. She rarely ever got mad at anyone. So rarely she couldn’t remember the last time she’d gotten angry about anything. When someone disappointed her, she usually just got sad, and then moved on.

  No matter that she’d playfully threatened to punch him yesterday, she had never engaged in any sort of violence. But now? She might be able to do something aggressive. Like throw something at him. Pelt him with scrambled eggs.

  Well, she just wouldn’t think about him. Do whatever needed doing. Ignore him.

  Mira probably needed help anyway, and she’d have to sleep at some point...so maybe Ellory wasn’t off the hook anyhow.

  She crawled out from beneath the quilt, stood and shook it out, then carefully folded it before draping over the back of the couch.

  “Not speaking to me today?”

  No. Not speaking to him today. She pretended he was talking to the dog and went about getting her stuff together. She dug a fresh skirt from her bag, and then another... As they weren’t as substantial as yesterday’s barely substantial skirt, she pulled them on over the unflattering long thermal underwear she’d been wearing since yesterday. She hadn’t brought any clothes-drying racks with her, naturally. And there was no hot shower. No sunshine. Because winter sucked, and winter in Colorado sucked even more.

  She pulled on a fresh sweater, yanked from out of her collar the braid she’d worked her long hair into before sleeping, and went to wash up.

  However they’d been cooked, she’d eat the damned eggs. Whatever realizations she might’ve come to last night seemed much harder to follow through with this morning. It took concentrated effort not to wonder where the eggs were sourced—or any of the other ingredients.

  They were probably from chickens full of hormones, just like she’d felt she was since the grave doctor had grumbled into her life: full of hormones.

  Sighing, she grabbed a handful of sprouts from the bin from the third-day ready-to-eats, rinsed them and sat at the table, her back to Anson.

  This would teach her not to prepare ahead of time for these types of situations. With the predictable nature of the power to the lodge, she should have been making and storing granola bars and trail mix, dehydrating fruit—just doing something besides growing sprouts...

  Max came around and rested his chin on her knee, giving her big sad eyes.

  Okay, half of a sandwich for her and half for Max. She pulled the sprouts off his half and handed it to the dog, who took the sandwich and ran off to eat it.

  “He has already eaten.”

  Well, he’d just eat more.

  Ellory took a bite of her sandwich in silence.

  “Did I do something to tick you off?”

  Yes. Probably. She just wasn’t sure what it was.

  Maybe it was the rejection. Or the double kiss and run. Or the couch.

  “I’ll take the couch tonight.” He pulled out the other chair at the table and sat where she couldn’t ignore him as effectively.

  She finished with her current bite before even trying to answer. It’d be the height of irony to be killed by foods that she usually avoided because they were bad for you. “Don’t bother. I’ll find another room.” There, she was even proud that she managed to speak in a completely level and natural-sounding voice.

  Anson gave a low whistle, leaning back in his chair until it tilted on the back legs, and linked his hands behind his head. “You really are mad.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  MAX CAME BACK for more and Anson set himself back upright, snapped his fingers and pointed to the fire, and the dog obediently went to lie down.

  Ellory took a big bite of her terrible sandwich and considered giving the rest to the dog.

  “Did something happen that I’m not aware of?”

  “Probably.”

  “Did I talk in my sleep?”

  “I don’t know, I didn’t spend the whole night watching you sleep,” she snapped, getting more and more worked up as he pumped her for information—obviously not feeling the same courtesy to refrain from badgering her that she extended to him. “I might be struggling with my compulsiveness about my carbon footprint and about what I eat, but I’m not a psychopath, a sociopath, or any other path that I can’t think of right now.”

  “Did you have a bad dream?”

  Not deterred.

  Why was he not deterred? Did people yell at him all the time? Was this how he liked to communicate?! “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I don’t think I slept enough to dream anything of significance.” Ellory pushed the plate away and went to get more sprouts. Eating the sprouts didn’t feel like punishment.

  “The couch is uncomfortable.” He offered another incorrect guess.

  “More comfortable than the ground,” she muttered between fresh, crunchy bites.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I sleep on the ground all the time. So if I can learn to do that, I should be able to sleep on a cushy couch in front of a fire. Well, a fake fire. The hissing sound it makes...and this place smells like gas to me all the time, even though I know the gas can’t be leaking—the fire would burn it up.”

  “So the gas kept you awake?”

  Like he could fix that if she confirmed it bothered her. Ellory thought about doing what he liked to do—go silent and brood or punch things—but talking about the fireplace was better than talking about the real problems. “Yes. And some other stuff.”

  “What stuff?”

  “I really don’t want to talk to you about it. You’ve seen enough bad things about me, and to give you credit you’re handling it better than most normal people would.”

  “I haven’t seen any bad stuff about you,” Anson said softly, shrugging. “You keep saying that I’m normal. The insinuation being you’re not normal.”

  “Yep, that’s the insinuation.” She stopped there, shrugged and shook her head. The only word that came to her was even more negative than usual. Broken. She felt broken, and with no idea how to fix herself. No idea how to learn to be content...

  “Quirky. Free-spirited,” he filled in when she didn’t finish the thought.

  Ellory grunted, stuffed some more sprouts into her mouth and resisted the urge to throw them at him. She might not have anything remotely natural to eat if she gave in to the urge to smash them in his face. “Stop sucking up.”

  “Something must have changed in the night.”

  But somehow, as they talked, she got less irritated with him. Even though she didn’t want to tell him anything. Which was when it became clear. “I came home for a reason, because I have to figure out what is wrong with me and fix it. Instead, I had some kind of compulsive relapse, and I told you about it! I told you more than I’ve told anyone else about it. I haven’t told anyone what’s going on with me. I told Mira that I needed to spend time working on myself, but not why. But I’ve been open and all that with you. I hoped that you would open up to me too. But you didn’t. You won’t even admit that you are upset about anything. I can’t help you if you won’t even talk to me at all.”

  Anson righted the angle of his chair and linked his hands on the table, his eyes staying fixed on her even if she couldn’t read them right now. “What makes you think you can be of any help to me? Or that I need help in the first place?”

  “Please,” she intoned, running a little water into a cup so she could water her sprouts and at least be busy doing something while he gave her the third degree. “I’m on a quest too, even if I’m not currently ‘doing drugs with a shaman in the jungle.’ I can recognize a fellow traveler when I see one. You have the look. You’re searching for something...”

  “The only thing I’m looking for is for the storm to pass so I can actually go out and search for that man.”

  She said the man’s name even if she knew how it made Anson react. “Jude.” Immature of her to say it, but she couldn’t help herself.

  “Yes, Jude.” He bit the name at her, his voice finally rising from the calm, detached doctor voice he�
�d been using on her. “And I will be fine again once I can go out there and find him.”

  “Fine. You’re fine. You’re perfect and great. You punch the wall every time it storms.” She poured the rest of the water into the sink and ate another pinch of sprouts for good measure.

  “Do you feel better?”

  “No, of course I don’t feel better! You can’t make me un-mad at you by basically saying I’m dumb for being concerned about you.” She shook her head, eyes rolling. He was just being obtuse on purpose, she knew he was smarter than this.

  Max stood up in front the fire. Now that voices had been thoroughly raised, he was becoming upset. Ellory watched him rise up to sniff Anson’s face, and when satisfied he was okay come to sniff her. “Down.” She lowered her voice and petted his head then shoved him gently but firmly to the floor.

  When she spoke again, she kept her voice level, for the sake of the dog. “For the record, I’m not mad about the couch, it was a symptom. Not mad about the food. Not the weather. Not the hole in the wall. I’m mad that I shared something with you that I haven’t shared with anyone—even my best friend. I thought that we were bonded or something after yesterday. But I felt lonelier last night than I think I ever have while in the same room with someone. So, yes, I’m not feeling my sunny self. I’m disgruntled and I’m going to find somewhere else to stay. I shouldn’t have invited myself to begin with. I’ll be back for my stuff.”

  She stepped behind the chair she’d been sitting in and scooted it back under the table—keeping things as tidy as she could was the only way to deal with the amount of clutter she traveled with. Then she slung on her coat, dug into her bag for clean socks and her boots, and left barefooted. She’d put her shoes on in the hallway, or somewhere else she couldn’t feel him watching her, glowering at her. Somewhere Max didn’t follow her around, looking worried.

  So he didn’t want to sleep with her. So what? Lots of men didn’t want to sleep her. And he didn’t want to talk about how he felt about Jude or how he’d lost his toes. That was his personal business. Her focusing on his emotional well-being was probably just her using him as an excuse not to focus on her own emotional well-being anyway. And a danger to her Stupid Resolution. The heart of her resolution was about fixing herself...and there was no difference in the level of distraction between dating a man and fixing him.

  She didn’t want to tell him anything about her past, though, which was stranger than anything else. She was like an open book, or she tried to be. People asked her questions, she answered them. She didn’t lie. She didn’t conceal. Not usually. She had flaws and she embraced them or tried to change them, but she didn’t hide them. Until now. Until this problem.

  She hadn’t been lying to Anson when she’d said she wanted to be content, she wanted to be happy. She just didn’t know what exactly was standing in her way.

  All she did know after this morning was that she needed to talk about it. As much as she didn’t want to give her best friend something heavy to carry when she was supposed to be enjoying new love bliss with Sex Machine, she had to tell Mira as much as she knew.

  She could only hope that putting the words together would give her access to the information her conscious mind had trouble getting at.

  *

  Ellory made her way through the circuit of rooms, knocking on doors, checking on staff, and worked her way back to the patient guests’ rooms, with Chelsea’s room her last stop. Mira was there, the two of them in front of the fire, talking in low tones to avoid waking Nate.

  She snagged a chair from the table and as quietly as she could moved it over to where the two women sat, forcing as much chipper as would be appropriate, and making her greetings in whispers, then added to Mira, “Your relief is awake, so you can go off duty and get some rest again. Where’s Jack?”

  “I can stay a little longer.” Mira gave her a long look, no doubt picking up on her fake chipper. “Jack has already gone back up to the suite, you just missed him.”

  “I wasn’t really looking for him,” Ellory admitted, “Just thought you might like to get back to him.” And then she focused on Chelsea. “How are you this morning? Is there anything I can do for you?”

  The small woman shook her head. “I’m hanging tough, as Jude likes to say. Dr. Dupris and I were talking about how we knew we were in love.”

  “Oh.” Another conversation that she couldn’t really participate in, though at least this time it wasn’t because she was being excluded.

  She just didn’t have anything to add. She had never been in love and she’d never claimed to have been in love, but who kept track of that kind of thing? Would Mira put it together? Should she be ashamed of that? Was that something she should admit?

  Now she’d found something else she didn’t want to tell anyone. All this hiding had to stop.

  The other two repeated their tales for her. The way his voice could make her heart flutter, the way her belly flipped when he looked at her, spending the whole weekend in bed together and refusing to even answer the phone and be apart for a minute... Stories full of smiles and epiphanies, details burned into their memories.

  Having shown her the way to tell this particular kind of story, Chelsea fixed her with a hopeful smile, expecting a similar one.

  Ellory could only shrug. “I don’t have a story like that.”

  When both women looked a little sorry for her, she added, “I have sexy stories, but this is probably not the time for those. I also have lots of feel-good stories about weighing malnourished children when they were finally starting to put on weight. I can tell you about the sounds of the rain forest at night and stories about food I stopped asking for details on...because it might involve bugs. They’re good stories, just not the ‘I knew I loved him when’ sort.”

  Mira was a wonderful doctor, she knew just when to push and when to hold the line, and although the smile she gave Ellory said she would get it out of her at some point, she gave her a pass because of the people around.

  Mira tried to change the subject, and Ellory wanted to let her, but she had joined their conversation for a reason and it seemed like as good a moment as any.

  “Mir, I haven’t been entirely honest with you, hiding something...which is probably making it worse.”

  Mira glanced at Chelsea and then looked back at Ellory. “Do you want to go somewhere else to talk?”

  There was a suggestion in her tone, and Ellory realized only then that it might give Chelsea a bad impression. “Chelsea’s already seen some of it,” Ellory murmured, and then looked to see if the woman wanted them to go somewhere else.

  “What did I see?”

  “I apologized for the cocoa,” Ellory said softly, then refocused on Mira. “You know how a few years ago my attempts to...be environmentally responsible got a little...out of control?”

  Mira nodded, a thoughtful frown on her features. She summed it up in one word. “Preservatives?”

  She meant the cocoa. Ellory nodded. “And, well, the sprouts. The clothes washing in the bathtub and drying on racks in my room, never using the lights or...well, the electricity in any way I have control over...”

  “Is that why you wanted to come home?”

  Mira sounded confused, which Ellory couldn’t blame her for. She ran on instinct more than anything else, probably because she had such a hard time identifying what she actually felt at any particular time, let alone being able to explain it.

  “That was the spirit quest.”

  “Right.” She nodded, and like a good friend and doctor she asked questions, gathered information to make a treatment plan. “How long has it been bad?”

  “Mostly since I came back. I didn’t know exactly what I was working on at the time of my spirit quest. I just was looking for...contentment, and an indication of what I was supposed to be doing with my life. The only answer I got was that I needed to go home...so home I came.”

  A knock at the door preceded Anson and Max strolling in, there to check in, no doubt
. Her stomach bottomed out, and she looked everywhere but at his eyes.

  “I just wanted you to know, in case I’ve been extra...eccentric lately.” She focused back on the two women, and Max came to nose at her hand until she petted him. “But we can talk later. I’m sure Dr. Graves wants to...do his rounds.”

  *

  With everyone in a holding pattern until the storm let up and no emergencies currently happening, Anson and Max had nothing to do. Except wonder about Ellory. And why she’d fled upon his arrival. How could she be that mad at him?

  “Actually, if you don’t need me, I have something to discuss with—” Anson didn’t get through the statement before Mira waved him off.

  Time to put an end to this quarrel, whatever it was.

  By the time he got Max out the door, Ellory was nowhere in sight. He hit the stairs on the chance that she’d gone back to do that moving she’d threatened him with.

  How had she gotten so wrapped up in his life—in his mind—in twenty-four hours?

  When he’d lain down last night, it hadn’t been with the intention of hurting her, or making her sleep on the couch. Hell, he hadn’t even meant to sleep so long, just a nap to recharge. But his body had had other ideas.

  He and Max caught up with her and followed a few steps behind, all the way to their shared suite and in behind her. She went for her bags first.

  “Put those down.” Anson gestured to the couch. “We don’t want you going anywhere, Max and I. You want to talk. Let’s talk.”

  “Is this some kind of trick? Don’t think I won’t move just because you make it sound like Max needs me.” She blotted her eyes with her sleeve, turning her face away from him as she did. Crying? What had escalated things to crying level?

  “No trick.” He closed the door behind him and decided to give her a moment to breathe. “Let’s move the mattress in front of the fire, like you wanted.” Physical things were easier to take care of, and the action gave him time to think.

  Moving the couch and furniture out of the way was easy enough. By the time he’d moved to the bed she’d joined him, and together they lugged the unwieldy thing to the cleared spot in front of the fire.