Nova
He doesn’t look at me as he buckles in and reaches for the button to turn on the ignition.
Yup.
A button to turn on his car.
Meanwhile, when I splurged for the new-to-me sedan with just short of a hundred thousand miles currently resting in the snowbank, I was excited about finally having electronic locks.
Oh, and airbags.
Meanwhile, this man has a button to turn on the ignition, leather seats, a space-age-era computer in the dash, and…
My butt is warm.
Cozy and warm.
I casually sneak my hand down, press my palm to the leather.
Yup.
Warm air is blowing through it.
I don’t realize how cold I am until that warmth begins to sink through my clothes, glides over my skin. A shiver skates through me and my teeth begin to chatter. Cold or adrenaline letdown or…
Steve’s wet nose brushing my throat.
I shudder but don’t push him away.
I could have seriously hurt him if the crash had been worse, could have lost him.
That has me shuddering again.
The man flicks his gaze to mine, and our stares connect in a way that sends my pulse skittering. He’s intense and big and those eyes of his are deep pools of brown and green and gold, as beautiful as a vein of granite I stumbled upon once when I was out hiking in the summer. The hillside seemed to have cracked open, maybe from an earthquake, maybe just because we had a lot of rain that year. Either way, that cross-section of earth had frozen me on the spot for long minutes.
Only when a bird chirped in the distance had the spell broken slightly.
And then I wanted it back.
I took picture after picture, trying to commit the beauty of that moment to memory, to capture every unique facet that had so completely captivated me.
The gold specks sparkling in the sunshine.
The way the green seemed to race the bands of brown from side to side, top to bottom.
The rough texture that was also somehow smooth.
The way nature made something more beautiful than any art I had ever seen.
I filled an entire memory card during the hours I spent there.
And when I got home, I found the pictures I took couldn’t do that spiritual experience justice. They weren’t three-dimensional, didn’t make my heart race, didn’t lift goose bumps on my arms.
I learned then—
Or maybe had it pounded home.
That sometimes, special moments in time are impossible to capture, impossible to hold on to, impossible to keep close.
And sometimes the heavy, dark, terrible ones stay bright. They never fade away.
They remain tattooed on my mind forever.
No matter how hard I try to erase them.
I shudder a third time, struggling with the barbed thoughts.
He breaks his stare away, reaches for a button on the dashboard, jabs at it several times, and hot air fills the inside of the SUV.
“What about my car?” I ask as he shoves the gearshift into drive, eases off the brake and we start to roll forward.
“I’m not the fucking Hulk,” he mutters, gaze pointed at the windshield.
Even from his profile, I can see he’s scowling.
I wonder if he has any other expressions.
Given the lines between his brows, around his eyes, probably not.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say when he doesn’t expand on his superpower abilities, and I mean, I get that he’s big, but it’s not like I’m going to confuse him with the giant green guy.
“Join the crowd,” he mutters, wiping his sleeve on the steering wheel before slowly maneuvering around the snow piling up on the side of the road.
I frown. “I’m not the one talking about the Hulk.”
“Your car is buried in the snowbank,” he clips out, slowly and steadily leaving my car behind us. “I don’t have superhero strength, so it’s going to stay there.” A beat. Another flash of those hazel eyes on mine before he looks out the windshield again, jerks his chin forward, as though indicating the ever-thickening blanket of snow around us. “Same as this storm. It isn’t going anywhere any time soon.”
“Because it’s Snowmageddon,” I say softly.
“Yup,” he mutters on a sigh. “The storm of the century and I’m stuck out in it, rescuing your ass when we’re supposed to be bracing and buckling down at home.”
Hurt coils through me, but only for a moment.
Because then my anger is back.
It’s a weird sensation.
I’m not a woman who gets angry. Not much bothers me. In my life, I couldn’t survive if I let all of the small things pile up and weigh me down. They have to skate down my back like water, wash away and not impact me.
But this man…
Oh man, does he grind my gears.
And I’ve known him for all of ten minutes. Tops.
“I didn’t try to get stuck on the side of the road, you know,” I mutter, crossing my arms around Steve and drawing him tight against my chest.
He licks my chin, snuffles against my skin in the typical pug way.
A flick of those hazel eyes toward mine again, judgment in golden green depths. “Regardless,” he says the words, sharp spikes of ice hurling through the air, “I’m not the Hulk and I can’t singlehandedly rescue your car. We’re going to have to wait for help to dig you out”—he turns right onto Forest Bend, navigating the snow and ice like a professional (and maybe he is)—“and you’re going to have to deal because that’s going to take at least a couple of days.”
I blink once.
Then again.
Not hours, but “Days?” I exclaim.
Steve woofs.
The man just says, “Snowmageddon.”
And look, I’m not a woman prone to violence, but I very much want to reach across the console and throttle him.
Of course, that would probably cause us to end up in another snowbank.
Sigh.
“I’m not letting you freeze to death,” he says, taking the hill with a speed that has my free hand gripping the seat, my other arm wrapped tightly enough around Steve that he snorts disapprovingly against my chin. But then we’re up and over the hill, moving slowly and steadily along the road. “Too much fucking paperwork.”
“Let?” I ask dangerously.
A danger he ignores, just driving forward without answering me.
“Paperwork?” I ask, tone even icier.
He flicks on the radio, keeps driving, and I debate hurling myself out the door.
But…Snowmageddon.
And Steve.
And hurling sounds like it would hurt.
So, when he keeps driving, the soft rock music playing in the background, I settle into my seat and do what I always do.
Let this latest fuck-up roll off my back.
And then I hug Steve a little tighter.