Page 54 of Crucible
I brace myself for a fight, but he just tosses back, “Why do you think we’re keeping you?” as he passes me.
“You can’t just keep me, Khalil.” I stomp up the stairs behind him as we leave the root cellar and return to the den. “Search and rescue will find me. I bet they’re looking for me right now. Once they do, it’s over for you.”
“Uh-huh.” His dismissive agreement is all he says as we travel through the den. I glare at his back as I reluctantly follow him back up to the first floor. Why isn’t he more worried that I’ll escape or be found? His complete calm is having the opposite effect on me.
Khalil takes me out on the front porch, but no further since I’m not wearing shoes, and my only clothing is this flannel. I try not to fixate on the reminder that I’m not wearing anything underneath.
It’s cold as hell, and I start shivering immediately.
I don’t notice that I’m shuffling and huddling toward the closest heat source until I feel warm skin brushing against mine, and then I realize that source is Khalil. He doesn’t look too happy about my proximity, either. In fact, he’s even more tense, as if I’m the one holding him hostage.
Outside, it looked as if another ten feet of snow had fallen while I was out of it. The sky is clear now, and even though it’s day, I can see the moon—or at least the half that’s visible—so it must be later than I thought. I hear the sounds of nature all around us. The views from this high up should be stunning, but all I see is my prison.
Khalil points out a much larger cache of wooden logs a few feet away and another shed where he tells me they process and cure the meat from their kills. He then tells me Thorin does most of the hunting.
“What’s that?”
Khalil follows my finger to the four wooden boards no more than two feet high. It forms a square, but I can’t tell what it’s meant for with all the snow covering the ground.
“Garden bed,” Khalil answers with a displeased grunt. I’m wondering if he’s annoyed with me for asking when he adds, “I tried my hand at growing our own produce a few times, but I wasn’t blessed with a green thumb.”
Huh.
Apparently, my observation skills are shitty because I hadn’t noticed it when I first arrived.
I choose to blame my three days lost in the wilds.
Staring at the small abandoned garden, I ask, “If you don’t grow your own produce, how did you get those vegetables in the cellar?”
Khalil’s expression pinches when he realizes he’s shared too much once again.
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip, biting back a victorious smile while smugly bringing my vigilance skills up from a solid four to five and a quarter.
“Thorin is good at killing shit, and I’m good with my hands,” Khalil says tightly. “We sometimes trade his game and my woodwork for supplies we can’t grow or make on our own. It’s how we paid for a lot of what you see inside. The furniture, housewares, everything.”
“With who?”
Khalil’s eyes darkening is my only warning before he crowds me against the porch railing and cages me in with both hands gripping the wood on either side of my hips. He doesn’t touch me, though. Thank God.
“No one comes up here, Aurelia. Stop thinking you’re going to be rescued and start focusing on how to be happy here.”
I snort at his lunacy. “Pass.”
“You’re a bitch. You know that?”
My hands ball into fists at my side. “I don’t care what you think of me.”
“No?”
I shake my head, but my next breath stutters out of me when his hands leave the railing and skim the outside of my thighs. They stop right below the shirt I’m wearing.
Whoseshirt I’m wearing shouldn’t even matter, but it does. The flannel still smells like them—warm, spicy, and woodsy, with only a touch of sweetness that you have to really dig deep to reach. It smells like cardamom.
My visceral reaction to the scent pokes at my confused brain and mocks my insistence that I hate the bearer of this flannel.Whoever he is.
“You ever think that if you would just stop running your mouth, we’ll be nicer?”
“I don’t give a shit about you being nice to me, asshole. I want you to hand me a radio and then disappear forever.”
