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I sensed it immediately when Reggie entered the kitchen. It wasn’t so much that Iheardhim. Rather, there was a shift in the room’s energy I could feel. His perpetually boisterous presence altered the peaceful quiet I had always associated with this cabin just by walking into a room. Even when he was silent, everything about him was always so loud.
I was starting to find that when he wasn’t around, I missed the noise.
The laugh that burst out of me when I looked up from my work and saw him dispelled any lingering awkwardness between us.
He wore an ancient apron of Dad’s that saidKiss the Cookin red letters. Beneath the words was a cartoonish pair of bright red lips, all puckered up. I could have sworn Mom made him get rid of the thing years ago. Where on earth had hefoundit?
Reggie pointed at the pile of papers I’d arranged beside my computer, hand on his hip. He looked so much like Mom when she disapproved of something we’d done as kids it was uncanny. “You’re usually asleep at this hour, as you’ve reminded me more than once. What’s all this?”
“I can’t sleep,” I explained. “So I’m working.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“Whynot?” He stared at me. “It’s the middle of the night, for starters. And we are in awinter wonderland.”
Was he being serious? “A winter wonderland?”
“Yes.”
I shook my head. “More like a winter nightmare.”
The right corner of his mouth kicked up into a half smile, cracking his stern façade. But he recovered his composure quickly. He leaned over and put his hand on my laptop as if to close it.
I glared at him. “Don’t.”
He chuckled. “Can I just say that you are the epitome of what’s wrong with young people today?”
“I thought the official boomer position was that millennials are lazy,” I quipped. “Not that we work too hard.”
He rolled his eyes. “First of all, I amnota boomer. But no,” he said, shaking his head. “The problem with young people is not that they’re lazy. It’s that they think they have unlimited time. So they postpone the fun parts of life thinking they can get to those later. Only at the end do they realize how badly they squandered…well. Everything.”
Holding my gaze, he slowly lowered my monitor until my laptop was closed.
“Hey!” I protested. I tried to pry his hand off my computer but he quickly covered my hand with his to keep me from shoving him off. A wicked, delicious shiver ran down my spine at the contact. I could tell from the way the muscles in his forearm tensed that he felt it, too.
I didn’t know why I found that nearly unbearably hot. But I did.
“It is the middle of the night,” he said again, his voice sounding more strained. “You can do that work tomorrow.”
“You have no idea how behind I am.”
“I don’t,” he agreed. “I also don’t care. If you don’t take a break, you’ll burn yourself out before you’ve even started living.”
“Reggie—”
“Two hours,” he said, holding up two fingers. “Take a break with me for two hours. If at the end of those two hours you still think getting back to work is more important than sleeping like a normal human, then at least you’ll have done something fun first.” He leaned in closer, his face nearly level with my own.“And if, instead, you decide you’re enjoying your break, you can keep taking one the rest of the time we are stuck here.”
With me, he didn’t say.Take that break with me.But the implication was there—in the way he looked hopefully into my eyes, in the way his grasp on my hand tightened almost imperceptibly. His eyes were so vivid, with a sort of starburst brightness to the blue I’d never seen in anyone else’s eyes.
I really must have been the densest person alive not to realize from the jump just hownothuman he was.
They were beautiful eyes, I realized.
He was beautiful.
“I suppose it wouldn’t be the end of the world if I took a small break,” I conceded.
