She climbed down from the front of the truck, closing the door behind her and nodded gratefully. “Thank you.”
“No problem.”
“I guess I’ll see you around.”
Isaac’s shoulders shifted with the most minuscule movement. “I guess.”
When the seconds ticked by and Isaac didn’t say anything else, just stood by the side of the truck with his hands buried deep inside his pockets, she realized that the conversation was over.
Their day was over.
That was it, and there was nothing else she could do about it.
Olivia’s lips pressed together as she watched Isaac take a deep breath and then a step, climbing into the truck again without looking at her. The engine roared to life and then he was gone.
And Olivia was left standing in the dark.
Figuratively. And literally.
“Well, that’s that then,” she mumbled under her breath, heavy with disappointment.
She wrapped her fingers around the front door key, the hard edges biting into her skin as she stood on the porch a moment longer, pathetically watching the glow of taillights disappear down the driveway.
Growing distant, growing dim.
Olivia hurried to unlock the front door as the cold air slithered over her body, and then she made her way inside.
The reprieve of the house from the biting wind felt like a soothing blanket, a soft mattress to sink into. It wrapped around her instantly, and while she’d only been living there a few nights, she suddenly felt a sense of home like she never had before.
She slumped back against the thick timber door, her shoulder blades hitting the wood with a sting that echoed the pain in her chest, and she lost herself in what had just happened.
Isaac had been angry with her.
So angry.
And he hadn’t even tried to hide it, nor had he covered it with soothing words or any attempt at politeness.
He’d been raw, skinned. Bleeding. Ugly and flawed. Just like the geyser she’d told him about in Yellowstone.
He’d erupted, though this time she wasn’t lost in the beauty of it all. She was sad for something beautiful lost.
Flicking on the lamp as she walked into the living room, she tossed her handbag on the end of the sofa. A soft golden glow filled the room, safe and welcoming and Olivia sighed as she headed for the bathroom.
She was exhausted after the long drive, but more than anything else she desperately wanted to take a shower and wash away the remains of a day she’d rather forget. The lure of hot water and cleanliness was simply too tempting to resist.
Walking slowly down the hallway, Olivia removed her sweater and tossed it onto the end of her bed as she passed the bedroom. In the bathroom she stripped off her shoes and her jeans, balancing on one leg and then the other as she pulled them off and turned on the taps. Her bra and underwear came off next, and as she waited for the water to warm up, she couldn’t help but run things over in her mind.
They had been enjoying each other’s company. Hadn’t they? There had been glances, and accidental touches, and she knew what she saw, what she felt. Hope bloomed in her chest, but then she suddenly remembered the look on Isaac’s face back at the gas station, and she wasn’t sure she knew what was happening at all.
Stepping under the water, she closed her eyes, tipping her head back, heavy warmth gliding down her body. Pure heaven. Nothing compared to a hot shower on a cold night and as far as Olivia was concerned, everything else could just wait until later.
Half an hour passed and Olivia had shaved her legs, rinsed and re-shampooed her hair twice, and then used some apricot scrub on her face. Anything to delay getting out of the shower. She didn’t want the delectable feeling to end. Not just yet, at least.
She suddenly wondered what Isaac was doing.
She wondered if he’d taken a shower too, or if he was eating his dinner all by himself.
Isaac knew what it was like to live alone. He must have enjoyed it otherwise he would have moved away, would have found somewhere to live that wasn’t so quiet.
But he liked the quiet. He’d said so himself.
Olivia eventually turned off the taps and stepped out of the shower, pausing mid-step when she heard a strange noise coming from outside the house.
What was that?
Briar’s Creek was still foreign to her; she wasn’t used to the sounds, surrounded as she was by mountains and the creek out back.
Wildlife was in abundance, much more so than she’d ever seen or heard living in town. But this was different, the sound. It wasn’t the sound of an animal howling. Nor was it the sound of the wind whistling along the slopes and rustling in the trees.
“Hello,” she called out, clutching a clean towel to her dripping, naked body. She dragged the towel roughly through her hair, drying it just enough so that pools of water didn’t soak the bathroom floor, and then she tied the towel tightly around her chest. “Is there somebody there?”
Olivia tiptoed back down the hallway, her heart rate accelerated as she heard the sound again—a kind of scraping, scuffling noise outside on the porch, right by the front door—and she panicked slightly, knowing she was in absolutely no position to protect herself if it was an intruder trying to get inside.
She was all alone, and she was unarmed.
Kyle Mason’s beady green eyes suddenly popped into her mind and she shook the image away instantly. Her flesh was already damp, but the thought of Kyle sneaking around outside the house made her hot and clammy.
Her fingers gripped the towel even tighter. “Hello?”
She hurried across the living room floor, to her handbag that was still sitting on the end of the sofa. Her phone was in there, and she was just about to use it. A few seconds passed of complete silence, and then she heard the sound again.
“Alright, that’s it!” she yelled. “I’m calling the police, right now!”
She rushed to the front window and peeked out through the curtains, where she could just barely see the porch in the darkness. Her phone was clutched between her fingers, and she was just about to dial 911 when the entire porch was suddenly flooded with light, light so bright that Olivia squinted, shielding her face with the hand not holding her phone.
Isaac stood there, motionless, balanced on a paint speckled wooden ladder.
She met his eyes through the grubby window, blue melting into deep, dark brown. She only hesitated for a second before she hurried to the door and flung it open.
“What are you doing?” she asked, gasping with relief and disbelief in the same breath.
Isaac stood stock-still on the ladder, one hand clutching the top rung. “I had a spare bulb in the barn.”
“You, sorry. What?”
Isaac looked away and then back at Olivia. “The bulb was out.”
“You changed the light bulb for me?”
“Yes.”
Olivia stared a moment longer, and then she pulled her lips together to cover her smile. Isaac was such a man of few words, but she got the feeling this was his way of telling her that he forgave her.
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“You’re scared of the dark.”
Her heart hiccupped inside her chest. “Yes, I am.”
“You don’t need to be.” Isaac’s eyes dropped to his hands, a muscle twitching in his jaw. “It’s not dark anymore.”
Olivia wasn’t sure if they were still talking about the light, or if Isaac’s words were a metaphor for something else. Something more.
But either way, she didn’t care. She was pleased to see him, and she was pleased he’d come.
He stepped down off the ladder onto the porch with heavy boots, a shy expression on his face. His hair looked crazy wild with the way the wind was blowing it all around, and Olivia panicked slightly when he looked to make a move toward the porch stairs.
He was going to leave.
And she didn’t want him to leave.
“Stay. Please?”
Isaac’s eyes flared slightly, his muscles instantly tensing. He rocked back and forth on his feet, deliberating. His head screamed no, but apparently his heart was drifting off on a tangent all of its own. He knew he should go. He should leave her alone and let her get on with her life. The life she deserved.
But if he was being completely honest with himself, he didn’t want to. His eyes felt heavy and the skin beneath them was purple with shadows that were tired of pretending. Olivia was offering him something and a sliver of hopefulness bloomed inside him.
“I was just about to warm up some leftover chicken.” Olivia clutched the towel a little tighter to her chest. “Would you like to join me? For dinner.”
Isaac stalled for time, time that never came. Not sure whether he wanted to leap into the unknown and enjoy the free fall on the way down, or save himself a whole lot of pain when he crash-landed without a parachute.
Olivia lifted her eyes to meet his and they were laced with an unknown emotion. And that was the part she wanted to learn more about. That unknown part of him. She didn’t want to see hesitation in Isaac’s eyes. She wanted him to know exactly what she wanted. She wanted him. And she wanted more.
Abruptly, she opened the front door as wide as it would go, and snatched the front of Isaac’s shirt between her fingertips, yanking him roughly into the house with her. “Just get in here, will you.”
Isaac was still wearing the same khakis and the same flannel shirt he’d had on earlier, and Olivia felt goose bumps spread across her skin. The thought that he’d not even bothered to change his clothes before he’d come to change her light bulb made her shiver.
Or maybe that wasn’t it at all.
“Hurry up! It’s freezing!” she said, shaking. “Shut the door behind you. I need to go get dressed.”
Isaac stumbled forward, catching himself as his boots scraped across the doorstep. He did as he was asked, and his gaze wandered around the room, looking anywhere but at Olivia.
He was purposefully keeping his eyes averted, and for some strange reason that made Olivia want him to look at her even more.
“I’ll… uh, I’ll be right back.” She held up one finger before she took off back down the hallway toward the bedroom.
“You’ll ruin it, if you do that,” Isaac called after her.
“Ruin, what?” she yelled back, her voice muffled by the surrounding walls and the sound of drawers opening and closing, the wardrobe door squeaking.
Ruin things by getting dressed?
What was that supposed to mean? Did he like the look of her in nothing but a bath towel? She wondered briefly if he’d watched her walking down the hallway.
“The chicken,” he replied as if she should have known what he was talking about. “You’ll ruin the chicken, if you heat it up.”
Olivia returned a few seconds later wearing a pair of black lounge pants and a pale blue sweater, her damp hair now towel-dried properly and tied back into a messy bun on top of her head.
“What are you talking about?”
Olivia walked past Isaac into the kitchen, grabbing two beers out from the fridge. She held one up in the air and Isaac nodded, grateful to have something to do with his hands. He was fidgety, and he didn’t like the way that made him feel.
He wasn’t much of a drinker, but he flicked the cap off with his thumb, taking a long deep swallow of the cool ale, enjoying the taste and the way it slid so effortlessly down his throat. “Leftovers are way better if you eat them cold.”
Olivia took a small sip of her own beer. She wasn’t a big drinker either if the truth be told, but sometimes a beer after a long day was exactly what she needed. She swallowed and then placed the bottle down on the table in front of her.
“You’ve lost your mind. You know that, right? You don’t drink coffee, and you eat cold leftovers. That makes no sense at all.”
Isaac twirled the beer bottle around between his fingertips. “Trust me, cold is way better. It brings out the flavor. You should try it.”
Olivia shook her head as she opened the refrigerator again and took out the container of fried chicken that she’d cooked a few nights back. She placed it down on the bench and grabbed two plates out from the cupboard above the sink. “Sounds disgusting, but sure, let’s do this your way.”
“You won’t regret it.”
“I highly doubt it. You’ll owe me one.”
“I just replaced your light bulb,” he said, dryly.
Olivia blinked, processing his words.
Was he serious?
Or was he being sarcastic? Trying to be funny? It was impossible to tell if he was joking or not. His blank expression gave nothing away. But when she looked closer at his face she caught a tiny glimmer in his dark eyes, tiny creases around the edges, and Olivia felt a shift in the air, as if something had just changed between them.
She laughed, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. “Fair enough. Cold leftovers, here we come!” She reached for the chicken with a pair of tongs. “Are you a leg, or a breast man?” she asked, without thinking, and then watched as a slow grin spread across Isaac’s face.
Olivia gasped when she realized what she’d just said, and how it might have been construed.
“I mean… uh, of course, I mean the chicken. Do you prefer fried breast meat, or do you want a drumstick?”
Isaac let his eyes drift downward, over Olivia’s legs. The lounge pants she was wearing were soft, they clung to her thighs and he liked the way her flesh moved inside them when she walked.
He didn’t like much in this world, not that he freely admitted to at least, and he rarely gave in to things that were out of his control. But with the way Olivia looked in those clingy pants, it had him thinking that maybe he’d just done both.
“Leg. Please.”
“Okay.”
Olivia busied herself dishing up the rest of the meal. She’d gone to put a bowl of leftover roast potatoes in the microwave, but Isaac had caught her attention. One brow arched as he pointed toward the dinner table.
“You can’t be serious?”
He nodded, and Olivia fake-gagged, her tongue hanging out of the side of her mouth as she plonked the bowl down in front of him straight from the refrigerator.
“Cold potato. Yummy. Dig in.”
Satisfaction bracketed Isaac’s mouth when he picked up the chicken leg she’d just served him and started eating it with his hands.
Olivia felt a strange pulse run through her.
Isaac looked feral with all that hair, eating meat straight from the bone. It was primitive, but there was something oddly appealing about it too. He took a big bite, chewing quietly. He must have been hungry, and despite the mess he was making, Olivia enjoyed the fact that at least he was comfortable enough to be himself around her.
“So, big plans for the weekend?” she asked, somewhat facetiously.
There wasn’t much to do in Woodlake, not of the adult, going out on the weekend kind of variety. There was Chaser’s, of course, but it stood to reason that by ten o’clock on a Saturday night, the bar would be full of middle-aged men all looking to drown their sorrows with cigars and bottomless glasses of whiskey. Not exactly Olivia’s cup of tea. Apparently it wasn’t Isaac’s idea of a good time either.
“Yeah, right,” he remarked.
“This town isn’t exactly known for a good time. I mean, it’s hardly New York City. I guess there’s always church on Sunday?”
Olivia knew she was rambling again, but she was nervous and she didn’t know what to do with her hands.
“I don’t go to church.”
Isaac looked up at Olivia, noting the look of surprise on her face. He wasn’t sure why she looked that way. Everyone knew he didn’t go to church. No one had seen him there in years. Not since he was a little boy and he’d been dragged through that stone archway whether he liked it or not.
His grandfather had done his best, tried his hardest to convert the non-believer—just like he’d done with Becky all those year
s back—but he’d ended up attending church alone from the time Isaac was twelve years old.
That was just the way of things.
Isaac didn’t believe in it, and he didn’t care to waste his time doing something he didn’t believe in. Isaac believed in God—he had his moments, his doubts on occasion—but he didn’t believe that God was locked away inside a sandstone building, with flaking timber siding and a brightly polished bell hanging overhead.
Isaac believed that God was in the trees, and in the lake, and in the silvery frost that fell across the land. He wasn’t locked away. He was everywhere. And Isaac didn’t feel the need to celebrate that fact week in and week out just to prove a point.
“What do you do?” asked Olivia. “When everyone else is in church?”
“I just, uh… I…” Isaac felt Olivia watching him closely, so closely he could feel her blue eyes wash over him, cool water on scorched red skin. He paused, wiping his hands on a napkin. “Look, about earlier…” His voice was low and gruff. He licked his thumb slowly, deliberately, like he was taking his time with something playing on his mind. “I’m sorry for the way I spoke to you. It was wrong of me.”
Olivia stopped him, reaching across, placing her fingers on the back of his hand. “No. Please, you have nothing to apologize for.” She studied his hand as she spoke, his fingers long, a dusting of dark hair across the base of his wide palm, and with that small touch it was impossible not to feel the air thinning. “I shouldn’t have interfered. You were right. It was none of my business.”
Isaac stared at the place where their skin met, Olivia’s tiny, flawless hand resting on his big calloused knuckles, and while every instinct he had in his body told him to pull his hand away; he resisted with every ounce of strength he had because it felt like nothing he’d ever felt before.
It felt like warm sun on cold, aching bones. Olivia’s skin was soft and smooth; her fingers delicate and something sizzled and surged between his head and his heart.
He was always so shy and uncertain, but something about the way Olivia touched him felt different.
“Does that sort of thing happen often?” Olivia’s voice was soft. She didn’t move her hand despite the way Isaac was staring at it. She didn’t want to and she wouldn’t let herself. If Isaac wanted her to stop touching him, he would have to be the one to tell her so. But he didn’t move his hand either and that was enough, for now. “Do people really speak to you like that?”
The Winter Before Page 10