Page 52 of And Now, Back to You

She sighs. “Yeah, okay.”

She takes a noisy slurp from her hot chocolate and goes back to scanning whatever website she’s using to try to find a place to stay. I wouldn’t be surprised if she made her own listing on some random social media platform:

WEATHER WOMAN STRANDED, LOOKING FOR ACCOMMODATIONS.

WILL WORK FOR SUGAR-INFUSED DRINKS.

It’s enough to have me punching the keys of my laptop aggressively.

She’s staying with me tonight. I won’t have her in a yurt without a toilet or on some knitting club’s pullout couch. I don’t know how I’m going to handle her in a bed three feet from me, but it’s certainly better than the alternative: a slow slide into mental instability because I don’t know where she is.

“Oh, this one looks promising.” She turns her phone to show me the screen. It’s a sideways picture of a beanbag chair in the corner of a basement with wood-paneled walls. God help me. “Look, they have a cat!”

“Great. I love cats.” I reach into my pocket and pull out the extra key card I asked Lottie to program. I slide it across the table. “Anyway, here’s your key.”

She stares at it. “My key for what?”

“Your room. Here. At this lodge. Without cats.” Or any questionable stains on the carpet in front of the door. Or suspicious sounds coming from the closet. Or weapons leaning up against an empty TV stand.

I’m going to have nightmares for weeks.

She picks it up like she expects it to bite, dangling it by the very corner between thumb and forefinger. “Lottie said there weren’t any rooms.”

“That’s right. This is a key to my room.”

Delilah snickers. “How very presumptuous of you.” When I don’t laugh, she sobers.

“Jackson,” Delilah sighs. She slides the key back across the table. “I’m not taking your room.”

“Of course not. You’re sharing it.” I poke around some more on my computer screen, trying to ignore the electricity that zings up my spine. It doesn’t have to mean anything. I shared the cab of a van with her for six hours. I can share a hotel room with her for a week.

I’m sure this uncomfortable attraction and borderline affection I’m nursing will evaporate as soon as I see the way she brushes her teeth. Or how she’s packed her suitcase. I glance at her across the length of the small table we’ve tucked ourselves into, right up against one of the glass windows. “I know this might be a deal-breaker for you, but there’s a toilet and everything.”

I watch her face move through the seven stages of grief, settling somewhere between bargaining and depression.

“No,” she says. “I can’t.”

I pluck the key card out of her hand, then reach across the table and slip it into the tiny pocket on the front of her shirt. My knuckles brush against her collarbone. “Yes. You can.”

I swear if I hear about one more accommodation that is only probably, like, twenty percent haunted, I’m going to lose my actual shit.

“Jackson, I—”

“This is the best possible solution.” I steamroll right over her. “When there’s two feet of snow on the ground with winds upwards of sixty miles per hour, how do you intend on walking from your yurt to wherever we’re broadcasting?” Her mouth snaps closed. God. That probably shouldn’t feel as good as it does. “You know as well as I do that this storm will likely knock out the power. You need to be somewhere that has a generator.”

You need to be somewhere I won’t worry about you, my brain tacks on.

An inconvenient truth, all the way around.

Delilah stares down at the key card in her pocket. “Are you sure?” she asks, her voice uncharacteristically hesitant. She trails her fingernail along the edge of the card and my body has an instant, visceral reaction.

“I insist.” My voice sounds like I’ve swallowed ten pounds of gravel.

Her eyes hold mine. “You’re not going to be weird about this, are you?”

I’m probably going to be at least a little weird about it.

“I won’t,” I promise instead, hoping that somewhere between here and there, I can figure out how to occupy the same space as her without making a total ass of myself. I won’t throw all her clothes into the hallway in a fit of night terrors, I guess. That’s a good start.