Page 9 of After the Fade, Vol. 1 (Asheverse: B-Side)

Our breaths bloomed in the tent, white and brilliantly opaque in the lamplight. Austin squirmed a little closer to me in the sleeping bags we had zipped together.

“Your feet are warm,” he said.

“Your feet are cold.”

He stuck them between mine. Two blocks of ice. How could a guy this hot have feet that cold?

Resting his chin on my shoulder, he said, “You shouldn’t have gone alone.”

“I had bear spray. And Sugar and Jimpson were there.”

“Without me.”

“You were dealing with Emmett.”

Dealing with Emmett. That was the nicest way I could say it. Negotiating with the greedy, miserable, selfish bastard so that he wouldn’t toss us out naked into the cold and let us die. That was a little more accurate. So that he wouldn’t make me wear a blindfold the entire time I was in the cabin. So that I couldn’t even see him, much less talk to him.

“Relax,”

Austin said, squeezing my shoulder. “You’re letting him get to you.”

“Ouch.”

“You told me about the crack to the back of your head. And that guy hitting you. What happened to your shoulder?”

“Nothing.”

“You just said ouch.”

“It’s just bruised. It’s nothing.”

Austin’s hand drifted lower and rested on my belly. He scratched the trail of nearly-invisible blond hairs.

I made an interested noise deep in my chest.

“Good thing you found our bags.”

I grunted. He just needed to move his hand a little lower.

“And good thing I packed the lube.”

I grunted again, and I took his wrist lightly and slid his fingers down a few more inches.

He laughed. Then his touch slid up again to my belly. “Don’t jump the gun.”

“You are fucking awful sometimes.”

He kissed my shoulder. His hands teased the blond trail below my navel. Applied pressure. Rubbed, firmly, a circle that didn’t go quite far enough south.

“You’re a fucking monster sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t rush into things.”

He kissed higher up my shoulder. “Alone.”

Another kiss, sliding toward my neck. “Without even telling me.” His stubble rasped the side of my throat and I trembled. I shook like a fucking leaf.

“Aus, come on.”

“I’m trying to teach you to slow down a little.”

“Fuck,” I moaned.

Then something moved outside of the tent.

I bolted upright, knocking side Austin’s hand, his touch forgotten. Footsteps came toward the tent. A single pair of them, and they were hard to make out, as though the person was trying to keep us from hearing. It was Bud. He’d decided he wanted round two. I slid out of the sleeping bag, laid a finger over Austin’s mouth, and shook my head. Then I squirmed to the tent door and worked the zipper in millimeters, holding my breath, trying to keep the nylon shell from shivering.

The footsteps came closer.

The zipper got hung up somewhere. I swallowed a curse and jerked it. Softly. It came free, but then the zipper rasped loudly along its track, and someone swore out in the night, and footsteps clapped up the canyon floor.

I ripped the zipper open the rest of the way, and night rushed in like a wall of ice. A black shape drifted toward the top of the hill, framed for a moment by the blackberry bushes. There was no moon, but the air was so clear and thin up here that it magnified the starlight into a silver radiance that dripped off every leaf and blade and stone. And I knew who was up at the top of the hill. I knew those slim shoulders. I knew the way his torso pivoted at the hips. I knew the taut line of his jaw against the starglow.

“That fucking pervert was trying to—”

I swallowed the rest of it when I saw the clothes: mine and Austin’s, neatly folded in front of the tent, with the bear bell and the bear spray and the keys and the fishing vest and everything else. Even socks and shoes. I touched my jeans, and the denim was still warm. It had been inside. For hours. Soaking up all the ambient heat of the cabin.

The night air made me shiver, and I grabbed the clothes and stacked them inside the tent and glanced up at the break in the blackberry bushes, and he was still there, squatting, elbows on his knees, watching.

And you can’t tell anything about a person from a distance like that at night, not even with the starlight flooding the mountain air. Even if he looked like the loneliest guy in the world, even if he looked like he was just regret and sorrow held together with catgut, even if he looked like he wanted to say he was sorry—that this, dropping off the clothes like this—was the closest he could ever get to saying sorry for a stupid prank—well, it didn’t matter what I thought. You can’t tell anything about a person. Not at a distance like that. Not at night.

I was a psychic, and I still didn’t have any idea what the hell went on in Emmett’s head. But I figured maybe I should cut him some slack. Maybe I hadn’t realized how bad things still were for him.

“What?”

Austin finally whispered. “Is it those Sheridan dicks again?”

I jerked the zipper back along its track, sealing us in darkness, and crawled into the sleeping bag again.

“Now your feet are cold,”

Austin grumbled. “What was that all about? Are those our clothes?”

I rolled on top of him, pinning his wrists against the tent floor, and felt him harden underneath me. “Fuck yeah,”

he mouthed, bucking up against me, his chest up-and-down with a flurry of breaths.

“I believe,”

I said, tightening my grip around him with my knees, bearing down with my weight, letting my voice drop low and rough like the canyon, “we were having a lesson about patience.”

And then I kissed him.