Longest Night

by Kara Braden

  His left hand slipped up, fingers combing through her hair, and though she wasn’t precisely comfortable, fighting to balance on his too-thin frame, hip bones digging into her abdomen, she stayed. She didn’t have this closeness in her life—not with anyone—and as much as it would hurt to lose it again, now she wanted to stockpile the memories, to arm herself against the coming loss.

  “I won’t hurt you,” Ian said, his voice a deep, resonant rumble that seemed to sing along her bones.

  She closed her eyes and curled her fingers over his shoulders. The feeling of fingers in her hair was hypnotic. “I know.”

  “I will push you, though never more than you can endure. I promise.”

  She sighed and moved, fighting his arm for a few seconds; he relented and let her go. She rolled onto her back a foot away, kicking to sort out the blankets tangled around her legs, and pressed her hands to her eyes.

  “You’re not here to analyze me.”

  “I’m not analyzing.” Ian twisted up onto his side to face her. His right hand slid across under the blanket to settle possessively on her hip. “I want you with me.”

  She went tense and still, her mind thrown back to the times when a shot rang out from nowhere, echoing through the maze of twisting streets and tall buildings, and all you could do was drop for the nearest cover, never knowing if you were on the right side of the wall to hide from the sniper or if he was somewhere behind her. She wasn’t infantry, but that had been no protection then, and she was equally defenseless now.

  “Always,” he promised.

  Her mind shattered, not into darkness but into a war against itself, a war she could never win, between the side of her that wanted to believe that always meant what she thought it meant—what she hoped it meant—and the other part, the part that found safety in the shadows and solitude.

  She knew better than to hope that this was his awkward way of offering to stay in Canada, but she wanted to cling to that tiny hope anyway, because the alternative was impossible. She couldn’t go to Manhattan, not even with the temptation of Ian to lure her there. She could barely stay in Pinelake for more than a few hours, and she knew every single resident. Even the trip to Little Prairie had strained her self-control, leaving her with two solid nights of nightmares. If a tiny town in the middle of nowhere could put her on edge, Manhattan would leave her catatonic. She’d end up living in his closet like some sort of strange monster, creeping out at night to feed herself, returning to her lair without anyone ever seeing her.

  “Cecily.” Ian snapped out her name like a verbal slap.

  Recognizing the signs of panic growing inside her, she lowered her fisted hands from her eyes and slowly worked her fingers open. Her palms stung from where her nails had dug in, and her chest burned as though she’d stopped breathing.

  She turned to look at Ian, who took the slight movement as an invitation to inch closer. “I can’t—”

  “No, not yet,” he agreed steadily. He deliberately moved his hand from her hip to her heart.

  She caught his hand, clenching tight around long, fine fingers. Her grip must have hurt, but she couldn’t stop herself, and he made no protest. “I can’t,” she repeated.

  “You will, though.” He held his hand steady over her heart, so she could feel warm skin through her T-shirt. He lifted up onto his left elbow to look down into her eyes. “You’re strong, Cecily. Stronger than anyone I know.”

  The kindness stung more than the fear and loneliness did. She closed her eyes, swallowing, her throat painfully tight.

  “Have I given you any reason not to trust me?” he asked.

  She didn’t want to have this conversation, but he wasn’t going to let her escape. She shook her head, hoping to get it over with quickly. Sleep wasn’t painless, but at least it was an old, familiar pain. Even her nightmares would be easier to endure than this.

  “Then trust me now,” he continued relentlessly. “Say you’ll let me help you. Please, Cecily.”

  “Fuck,” she whispered raggedly. She opened her eyes, blinking rapidly for a second. “Why?”

  “Because if you can’t—if you try and you still can’t come back with me—then I’ll stay here with you.”

  Her world tilted as his words left her disoriented, scrambling for balance, because what she’d heard couldn’t possibly be right. Ian loved Manhattan. Every time he mentioned it, his eyes lit up and his voice filled with excitement and life.

  “You hate it here.” She shook her head and rolled over, twisting around to face him. She didn’t dare let herself hope that this wasn’t some huge misunderstanding, because this couldn’t be happening to her.

  “And deep inside, so do you,” he said with a dismissive half shrug. He brushed his fingertips over her jaw and pressed a thumb to the corner of her mouth.

  “But—”

  His thumb swiped over her mouth, pressing gently to silence her. “Tell me that you trust me, Cecily.”

  “Ian…”

  “Say it, Cecily. If you really do trust me, then say so.”

  She closed her eyes and lifted her hand to take his. She pressed her lips to his palm and quietly said, “I trust you.”

  He sighed as though relieved, as though there had been any doubt at all. “Thank you.” He spread his fingers to catch hers, lacing their hands together. He ducked his head to brush his lips over her knuckles, and when he spoke again, his voice was subdued, almost hesitant. “I have to tell you something, but I don’t want you to say anything until you’ve made your decision.”

  Anxiety twisted through her as she tried to anticipate his words and failed miserably. She’d been disoriented since this had all started, and she could still hardly believe he would give up Manhattan, just for her.

  “What decision?”

  “I want to be with you, Cecily.”

  Her heart leaped. “I—”

  “Cecily,” he interrupted. “Please, don’t say anything. You need time to think, and you need to know… You have three choices here.” He squeezed her hand and met her eyes. “We go to Manhattan, together. We stay here, together. Or you tell me to leave.”

  “Fuck. Ian—”

  “Cecily,” he interrupted. “Three choices. One day, when you’re ready, I’ll ask which one you choose. Then, you can tell me—but not until then.”

  She took a shaky breath. “Tell you what?” The obvious answer was which choice she would pick, but he wasn’t one to ever choose the obvious answer.

  “How you feel about me.”

  The anxiety evaporated into a sense of desperate relief. She knew how she felt. She’d been wrestling with that realization for what felt like days now, though she couldn’t say exactly when it had started. “But I know—”

  “Not until then, Cecily,” he interrupted gently, “and you’re not ready now.”

  She folded her arm beneath herself and lay back down on her pillow. Ian mirrored her movement, and they looked into each other’s eyes in the faint glow of reflected firelight. She smiled slightly. “This isn’t how a normal relationship is supposed to work, you know.”

  “I don’t want normal. I want you.”

  From anyone else, that would have been an insult, but she knew him too well to take it as such from him. “And how am I supposed to stand Manhattan for thirty seconds without ‘normal’?”

  He huffed and untangled his fingers so he could brush her hair away from her face. His hand slipped down to the back of her neck, holding her steady for a brief kiss. “You’re not meant to be a tourist, Cecily. Anyone ‘normal’ venturing into my New York would be eaten alive. I want you strong and in control, but you will never, ever be normal.”

  “How is that possibly a compliment?” she asked, trying for indignant, though she ruined it with another smile.

  “I already told you. Normal is boring.”

  Chapter 17
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br />   November 1

  “Do you ever sleep?” Cecily asked, her voice a low, lazy growl. She didn’t open her eyes, but her fingers, resting on Ian’s arm, lifted to slide forward over his wrist.

  “Not much. I spend a lot of time just thinking. Still, I’ve slept more here than I ever did before,” he admitted, studying the subtle changes to Cecily’s face as she awoke fully.

  She laughed quietly, barely more than a huff of air and a smile. “Sleep okay when you did?”

  “Fine.” He wanted to lift his hand to touch her face and smooth down her hair, but he held still. Her fingers moved and shifted aimlessly over his wrist.

  “I didn’t wake you up?” she asked self-consciously. “My nightmares and all…”

  “You had two, but I was able to interrupt them.” He gave in to temptation and moved closer, shifting from his pillow to share hers. “Does it help? Do you feel better today than most mornings?”

  She closed her eyes, considering, and slowly her lips turned up in a smile. “I think so.” She lifted her head enough to briefly kiss his lips. “It’s barely dawn. Want to go back to sleep?”

  “Cecily…”

  Grinning now, she sat up and arched her back, eyes closing as she stretched. He admired the strength of her shoulders and back just as much as her curves, half-seen through her T-shirt. “Waste of time, right.”

  He couldn’t resist reaching out to smooth his hand up her back, careful not to disturb the T-shirt too much. “You know me so well.”

  She pushed back against his hand and lowered her arms, rubbing briefly at her right shoulder. “Coffee? Breakfast?”

  “Mmm.” Ian lay back, twisting to watch as she slipped out from under the blankets, trying not to disturb them too much. She circled around the foot of the bed, pausing for a few seconds to throw another split log on the fire, and then disappeared into the bathroom.

  Sleepily, he looked up at the ceiling, thinking back to last night. Cecily had been restless, waking him every time she moved, and he’d finally given in to the impulse to spend the night watching her instead of sleeping. Observing her, he’d begun to categorize the signs differentiating her dreams and nightmares, and he’d carefully experimented with gentle ways to interrupt the nightmares before they took hold.

  Then he smiled as he realized she hadn’t expressed any concern for his presence during her nightmares. There was no warning that she might hurt him. Knowing she trusted him turned his smile into a grin.

  He listened to the sounds of her morning routine, noting when the toilet flushed and how long the water ran in the sink, distinguishing the hot water tap by the rattling pipes from the water heater. Most of his thoughts, though, were caught up in the hazy, wonderful fog of affection—of love—that consumed him. He’d seen people in this state before, smiling at everything as if their private, personal emotions somehow made the whole world brighter, but only now did he actually understand it.

  Somehow, just knowing that she was in the next room made even this boring, primitive cabin into something wonderful.

  He rolled onto his side to face the bathroom door, thinking that the person he’d been just a month ago would have looked at this future-self in horror. Well, even he had his moments of idiocy.

  She returned to the bedroom and gave him an odd, amused look, full of affection. She’d started toward the closet but diverted to the bed, where she leaned down, weight on her left arm, to give him another soft kiss. “Bathroom’s yours,” she said unnecessarily, breath smelling of toothpaste, freckled skin flushed from a splash of warm water. “I’m going to fry up some eggs.”

  “You could just come back to bed,” he suggested.

  She grinned, the expression lighting up her whole face. “Or I could feed you up to a healthy weight, and then we could both go back to bed.”

  Idly, he considered suggesting breakfast in bed, but she stood back up and walked to the closet, leaving him to silently admire the view. He let his eyes trace down what he could see of her back, over the curve of her ass, down her strong legs. He thought about his past girlfriends who did yoga or Pilates or rotted their brains with mindless jogging on treadmills. Not one of them could possibly compare to Cecily.

  “Have you been to Greece?”

  The apparent non sequitur didn’t even get a strange look. She was accustomed to his habit of skipping the boring parts of conversations. “No. You?” she asked, taking far too many clothes out of the closet: jeans, a T-shirt, a button-down shirt, and a sweater. She draped everything over her arm and went to the dresser.

  “Years ago. Family trip.” He curled around, bringing the pillow with him, so his view of Cecily continued without interruption. “They don’t allow cars on Hydra Island. All travel is by foot or bicycle.”

  She glanced curiously over her shoulder as she found socks, panties, and a bra. “Sounds different.”

  “We could lease a villa there, on the beach. We’d never have to see anything, and you wouldn’t have to put on all that clothing,” he said a bit petulantly.

  She laughed and tossed her clothes on the foot of the bed. She crawled up over the covers to trap him under her weight. “How exactly are we supposed to lease a villa on some primitive Greek island?”

  He freed his arm from the blankets so he could take hold of her hip, hoping to coax her into staying for at least a little while. Coffee sounded appealing, in a distant way, but she belonged here with him, not out in the kitchen. “I have my passport and credit cards. What else do we need?”

  Grinning, she leaned down to kiss his nose, startling him. “Small steps, Ian. Let’s start with coffee,” she said and got back off the bed, to his infinite disappointment.

  ***

  Winter weather at the cabin was nothing if not unpredictable. By the time Cecily had the breakfast dishes washed and a second pot of coffee brewed, the clouds had dissipated, leaving the bright sun to melt through the thin crust of ice and snow. She dried her hands, looking out the kitchen window, and thought absently about all the things she’d normally be doing to prepare for winter. She had to check the snowmobile now, in case something had gone wrong while it sat idle over the summer. She could go look for more deadfall; there was never enough firewood. She could inspect the fuel lines to the generator for any cracking or brittle spots. She could try to catch her second deer.

  Instead, she fixed up two mugs of coffee and carried them into the living room, where Ian was sprawled over the sofa, right arm draped out as though reaching for the fire. In his left hand, he held a paperback. The book didn’t register at first; she had stocked the cabin with every book that caught her eye at various used bookstores, thinking it wise to have years’ worth of winter reading materials on hand. Ian had dived into the collection without waiting for an invitation, so the sight of him reading was nothing new.

  Then she saw the cover art: a giant wolf-man with an ax, a swordswoman in chain mail armor, and a leather-wearing man with two wicked daggers. It was her book, the first in a series she’d started two years ago.

  “You know the target audience for that is age twelve to eighteen, don’t you?” she asked self-consciously.

  “So I gathered.” He rolled onto his side and pressed back against the cushions, making just enough room for her to perch on the edge of the sofa. “I’ve never read much fiction.”

  She handed over the mug with three sugars, having learned not to mix them up. She didn’t know which was worse: accidentally drinking sugar-laced coffee or Ian having a sip of straight black. “Don’t feel obliged to read it.”

  “I never feel obliged to do anything,” he said bluntly, grin flashing to life. He sat up, managing to take off his glasses, curl around her, and press a kiss to the back of her neck, all without spilling a drop of coffee. He settled at her side, pressed close from shoulder to knee, and set her book gently down on the coffee table. He put his glasses on top of it and
rested his mug on his knee. “What about your other book?”

  She hissed in a breath, closing her eyes. She’d known that he would have found those pages by now, but she hadn’t really allowed herself to think about them. “It’s not for children.”

  His fingers pressed gently over her pulse. “At the bottom of the pages…”

  “The X. I won’t…I can’t publish them under my name.” She laughed uncomfortably. “Cecily Knight is too…cheery. It’s not a very pleasant story. God knows I wouldn’t want to read it.”

  “Does it help to write it?”

  She shrugged. She turned the mug and took the handle with her left hand so she could drink without pulling away from his touch. “I don’t know,” she finally admitted. “I haven’t made it far enough. Thirty-something pages is barely the first couple of chapters.”

  “Are you—”

  She shook her head, rising abruptly. “We should go,” she interrupted. “The sooner we get that second deer, the better. Towing the trailer with the snowmobile is a bitch.”

  Ian looked up at her with those too-sharp eyes, and she could almost see his brain analyzing her reaction. For one icy, suffocating moment, she thought he might push to keep her talking. But then he nodded and rose, fixing her with a wicked smile as he asked, “Care to help me change?”

  She laughed, relieved, and pulled him down for a kiss, careful not to spill his coffee. “I’ll help you warm up later. How’s that?”

  “I’ll hold you to it.”

  ***

  When successful, deer hunting was an acceptable pastime, if the alternative was sitting alone in an isolated cabin with terrible Internet speed and several thousand chewed-up paperback books. When unsuccessful, though, deer hunting was cold, boring, and frustrating, even with the distraction that Cecily presented simply by existing. In a rare moment of empathy, Ian recognized that he was close to snapping and tried to look for any distraction, but none of his usual coping mechanisms were available. His mobile was a dead lump of plastic with no signal, his guitar was at the cabin, and his last resort—idiot-baiting—was entirely out of the question, given that she was the only living creature in earshot. There certainly weren’t any deer.