“Right there.” He pointed to a door.
I entered and saw the greatest thing ever: a shower with towels. Lots of soaps and lotions. In the top drawer, I found a lipstick, and in the closet, I found a washer and dryer and a white robe.
I called out to Greer. “How much time do we have before dinner?”
“Twenty minutes.” I didn’t need to hear it twice. I stripped down and went right in the shower. The shower was, in a word, amazing. The heat washed over my body. I stayed in as long as I could, knowing it would be rude to remain in the bathroom while dinner went cold.
My uniform smelled so much worse after the shower. I couldn’t do it. This guy had sewn up my head and spent night after night with me. I wanted to smell good for once. I put on the lipstick and chickened out. I wiped it off. I wrapped myself up in a housecoat so thick and long, it might as well have been a blanket.
I left the bathroom in time to see Greer plating the food. He was no novice. My guess of professions had to be accurate.
Looming over the smell of the steak was the scent of something sweet and buttery.
Greer watched me out of the corner of his eyes.
I asked, “Do you have laundry to run?”
He slowly nodded his head, and my chest fluttered. He still hadn’t turned to look at me fully.
“Sit.” Greer put the plate down on the counter. He moved next to me and unfolded into his lap. The steak was perfect, and the potatoes were buttery, flawless—and let me tell you, I had high standards for potatoes. “I wish I had more vegetables and spices but, well...”
He was still not looking at me. The robe must have been making him uncomfortable.
“It’s delicious.”
We ate in silence, but it felt like a different silence. There was an edge to it, like a breath or a moment might change everything. We were painfully quiet. My skin tingled, and my chest felt cold and hot at the same time. Even when we were both finished eating, we sat there in silence.
A beeper in the kitchen went off. “Cookies. I made cookies and coffee.” That explained the smell. He went to the kitchen and poured out two cups, one for him, one for me. “I don’t know what you like in your coffee.”
I wasn’t a huge fan, but it was so nice of him to get the coffee for me, I wasn’t going to mention it. I tried to get around him to get the milk from the refrigerator (the only way I drank it was with a heavy dose of cream), but before I could, Greer stopped me. “Sit back down. I can get it. What do you take?”
“Cream.” Something about him in the kitchen, making us both something to drink, was the most attractive thing I had watched him do.
“Want a molasses cookie?”
“I’d love one.” Just like Grandma. He made those because I had mentioned my grandma made them, and it overwhelmed me that he was nice enough to make them. “I can’t believe you made cookies.”
He smiled and took the coffee and cookies over to the coffee table.
The fire crackled, and the rain on the tin roof was a steady clank, clank.
There was something completely and utterly indulgent about the coffee and cookie I never appreciated in my other life. Greer sat down next to me on the couch and to be honest, if that moment was my last, I’d consider it to be the warmest and most comfortable in my entire life. I never wanted to leave this cabin. At the moment, I didn’t miss home, my parents, Sasha. The Merrics didn’t exist. I was happy to be where I was, warm and next to Greer.
Greer was silent. Oh, how lovely to be in his head for a minute, to know exactly what he was thinking about me or planning to do. Mainly, did he have the same feelings for me, or was this one-sided? On second thought, I didn’t want to know. Knowing the worst might spoil the moment.
“The cookies are so good.”
“This is one of my mother’s recipes.”
“Was she a cook?”
Greer laughed. “No.”
“So just cookies?”
“Something like that.”
I snuggled into the couch a little more. Greer sat close; our legs centimeters apart, and his arm draped behind me, not close enough to be around me but behind me. He made his mother’s cookies. You don’t make your mother’s cookie for just anyone. We sat silently.
“I could stay here forever,” I said.
Greer sighed. “We’re leaving tomorrow to catch a train to the beach.”
That just about killed me. I wished he’d waited until tomorrow to tell me that one. “Please tell me you mean hobo style, jump the rail cars kind of thing.”
“No, we’ll be riding in a private boxcar.”
“So, what are we supposed to say or do?” My stomach plummeted to the floor. “The last time I was in public, a man tried to kill me, and that was before my picture was in the paper every day with an 11-million-dollar reward.”
“25 million now, and I know.” Greer inched forward. I did too. He put his coffee on the table and turned to me. “We’ll be fine, or we won’t. The same is true every day in the woods too. We’ll be fine, or we won’t.”
“But—”
“Worrying about this won’t help,” he said calmly. I wished I had his confidence, but I didn’t.
“I don’t belong in this world,” I said, but I wanted to say we. He didn’t either. We belonged somewhere else entirely, in a sane world and an ordinary place like in this cabin and on this couch, having cookies and coffee.
“I won’t deny that. You don’t.” We were so close there on the couch. “You’re a good person.”
“So are you,” I said.
“I’m not.” He gazed into my eyes.
“With as many times as you’ve rescued me? I highly doubt that, Greer.”
“Greer,” he said
