I was usually the one that beat a hasty retreat after getting off and coming down. Once I had what I was after, I couldn’t get out the door fast enough. Typically, a cloud of shame and regret followed in my wake as I told myself once again, “You should do better.”
I liked sex. However, I very rarely liked the men I had it with. They were a means to an end, a tool used to get something I wanted, and then forgotten once I got it. I didn’t bother to invest time or energy into getting to know them because I never intended to stick around.
The truth was I was more intimately acquainted with Ben than any other man I’d been with. I knew more about him and he knew more about me than anyone else that had crossed my path in a very long time. Sure, part of that was the fact it was just the two of us out here in the middle of nowhere with no way to get out, but it was more than that. I felt like I understood him. I had a solid grasp on the regret and recrimination that hounded him and made his gray eyes lethally sharp. I lived in that same place of trying to figure out why I was the one that was spared when my sister had such a better, sweeter, softer soul. I understood the need to feed a habit you felt like you couldn’t control, even if the pursuit of that thing hurt the people around you. The things he struggled with were scattered on ground I’d traveled a lot in my life and I really wanted to tell him I could show him the way to the place where the path started to go downhill. It would be so much easier for him to find his way if he let me guide him.
But I never got the chance to tell him anything, because after giving me the best orgasm I’d ever had in my life, he disappeared, leaving me weak-kneed and shaking in the freezing cold water still pouring into the shower. By the time I rinsed the rest of my body off and went in search of something clean to wear, the cabin smelled like bacon and eggs but Ben was long gone. He’d left breakfast and a clean shirt, along with a way too-big pair of track pants, but there was no Ben.
I wanted to yell at him, to demand an answer as to how he could walk away from me, walk away from us. I wanted an apology for him so selfishly taking that impressive erection that he’d been taunting me with for hours upon hours, the erection that was rightfully mine, away. It was mine to touch. It was mine to taste. It was mine to savor and satisfy. I was angry that he wound me up, set me off, and let me fall without sticking around to catch me.
I knew he wanted me. The evidence was obvious. So was the fact that he couldn’t figure out a way to keep me once he had me. In the end, he decided to give me what I wanted, to take care of me like he had since the day he kept me from face planting in the snow. He denied himself something that was all his for the taking to protect us both from getting any deeper in when we both knew this was our only moment. There was no assurance we would have tomorrow or even tonight; all we were guaranteed were the stolen minutes surrounding us right now. There was no real world intrusions, no harsh light of reality here, even though he tried to force it on me. He did his best to remind me that he was a man that wasn’t any good for me off of this mountain and out in the reality of my day-to-day and because he did that, I totally disagreed with him about being worthy of a second chance. He didn’t want to be a mistake. But I wanted him to be a memory I would hold onto forever. I wanted my time with him to be the thing I held onto when I got lost and felt like I was alone.
We were two halves of a whole, opposite sides of the same coin, two people cut from the same tattered and torn fabric. His ugliness didn’t scare me; it called to my own and made it seem less harsh and unforgiving by comparison. He would never judge me, because he was a man that was too busy judging himself.
I bit into a piece of the bacon he’d left and wandered around the minuscule cabin looking for anything personal or private that would give me an insight into the mystery man that had turned my life upside down and saved me from more than myself.
There was nothing.
Not a single thing.
No pictures or knick-knacks.
No paperwork or documents.
No keepsakes or memorabilia.
All I found was a closet full of mountain man clothing and a jewelry box with a Patek Philippe watch in it. I almost dropped the damn thing, which would have been equal to tossing over a hundred grand on the floor. The watch was so out of place next to the worn denim and heavy flannel that again, I wondered who this man had been before. He was such a complicated mix of ostentatious and simple.
I was tucking the outrageously expensive watch back in its hiding place when the cell phone Ben had left behind jangled and vibrated on the counter. He’d mentioned the town doctor was going to call and try and make his way up to the cabin to give me the all clear to travel, but it was an intrusion into my newfound sanctuary that came much sooner than I anticipated. I moved across the room as quickly as I could, making me breathless when I answered the call.
“Hello.” I trapped the phone between my ear and good shoulder as I leaned on the edge of the counter and stared at the door, willing Ben to walk through it and finish what I’d started in the shower.
“Is this Echo Hemsley? My brother Cooper called me yesterday and said you were stranded up on the mountain with a pretty serious set of injuries.” His voice was deep and smooth. I wasn’t even in the same room with him and I could tell he had a good bedside manner.
“I got pretty banged up when the SUV rolled. I’ve got a nasty cut on the top of my head so I’m sure I ended up with a mild concussion.” I moved my shoulder and let out a wheeze of discomfort. “I also dislocated my shoulder, but Ben, the guy who found me, put it back in place and has been making sure I keep ice and heat on it. I think it’s about as good as it’s going to get until it heals up.”
He muttered something I didn’t quite hear and asked, “Are you nauseated at all, out of balance? Do you feel more sleepy than usual or have any ringing in your ears?”
The questions came so quickly that it took me a minute to work through them all in my head. “The first night and into the second day it was a yes to all of that, but I slept normally last night and feel mostly normal today, except for a slight headache and my shoulder hurting like a bitch.”
He grunted and I heard the scratch of pen across paper. “Do you feel you need emergency medical care, Ms. Hemsley? I’m the only doctor in Surrender and while I would like a chance to check you out, I would prefer doing it when I can get to you in a vehicle and bring you back to town with me. I would only put someone with all the symptoms of a concussion on the back of an ATV in a true emergency situation. Not to mention, the ride would be incredibly bumpy and miserable on that shoulder.”