Page 6 of Doink (Rainbow Dorset University)

DANA

T he cabin is small and cold. I’m not sure if the chill is from the storm, the fact I’m soaked to my bones, or maybe I’m a little shaken from thinking there was someone on the island. There are a ton of horror movies that begin in storms. I don’t want to live one.

“I’m going to start a fire,” Peyton says. “Want to see what’s in the cabinets? Look around? Be nosy? Grab the second lantern right there. Just unplug it.”

I nod. The lantern is a modern, battery powered rechargeable lantern and gives off a lot of light. It makes the cabin look a little less freaky.

Lantern in hand, I move further into the small area as he heads for the wood stove. There aren’t many places to explore except the closed cabinets, so I head for them. I feel sloshy. My feet squish and squeak in my sneakers.

The bottom two shelves are filled with bottled water.

The next shelf is stacked with linens and towels.

The next shelf is stocked with all kinds of first-aid supplies.

Up next is a shelf of thick plastic-packed…

meals? Oof . I bet those are delicious. Rounding out the supplies, the top two shelves are packed full of what appear to be clothes.

Under the counter beside the cabinet are some pots, bowls, cups, and utensils. No sink. Probably no running water. That explains the gallon of hand sanitizer on the counter.

Turning back into the room, I find a framed statement on the wall and stop to read it.

Welcome to Emergency Cabin 78 in Northern California. Please adhere to the following rules.

1.

Take only what is necessary. Please understand that this is an emergency shelter. Not a shopping mall.

2.

Take all the trash you generate. This includes trash from the emergency rations and water you consume.

3.

Be respectful of the cabin. Do not leave it trashed and in need of repairs.

4.

Take the linens and clothes you have soiled with you. If you are able to return them at a later time, please do so.

5.

There is a radio able to broadcast in case of a true emergency that requires immediate rescue. It can be found under the table.

6.

There is moderate power stored in batteries charged by solar panels. They are capable of powering handheld electronics for several days without sunlight. Please make sure the lanterns are plugged in again when you leave.

7.

Make sure the cabinets are shut tightly and latched to keep insects and critters out.

8.

If you are able to leave a donation, it will be used to restock what you’ve consumed.

Reading the notice makes me wonder how often people get caught out here. Based on how well the cabin is stocked, I’m guessing it happens more often than one would think. That it’s here at all shows there was apparently a need for it.

It’s been a long time since I took any kind of science class having to do with weather, but is there something about being surrounded by mountains in a valley? Don’t mountains create their own weather to a degree?

Absently, I watch Peyton. There’s fire flickering inside the woodstove now. He’s blowing on it. Aside from being just as wet as I am, he’s still breathtaking. Maybe ‘ aside ’ isn’t the right way to begin that thought. I’m sure it only adds to his appeal. He’s all wet! Yum.

Something on the wall catches my attention, and I move toward it. I run my fingers along it as I try to figure out what it is. It looks like it comes away from the wall somehow. There’s a pin here that gives me the impression that it’ll come away.

After a few failed attempts at tugging in the wrong place, I manage to get it to pull away. When the top is about a foot from the wall, it falls open, and I’m looking at a drying rack.

“Nice,” Peyton says. He’s grinning widely. “We’re going to need that. Nice find, hot stuff.”

I turn away, hiding my smile and the heat blooming on my cheeks at his words as I work out how to make it sturdy enough to hold two sets of drenched clothing. After a little more blind tugging, I find the leg that opens and settles on the ground.

Peyton gets to his feet as he pushes the door to the stove open. “Okay, we’re going to be warm soon. What did you find?”

“Water, towels, first aid, what I’m guessing are items that’ll pass as food in an emergency, and clothes. Oh, and rules.”

He grins. “All useful items. Let’s check out the clothes first. I don’t know about you, but I’m over being wet.”

“Same,” I agree wholeheartedly.

We start poking through the clothes. I find a pair of long gym shorts and a shirt. Peyton finds a pair of shorter gym shorts.

“I’m not shy,” Peyton says, “so unless it makes you uncomfortable, I’m changing in front of the fire.”

“Is there another option?” I ask, my eyes narrowing in on what I’m assuming is a door that leads to what can only be a little better than an outhouse.

“Yep, you found the second option,” Peyton says, humor clearly evident in his voice.

“I’ll brave it out here,” I say, even though my heart races in anticipation of being naked with this guy. This guy I’ve been fantasizing about for months.

I try to keep my eyes down as I peel off the clothing that’s sticking to me. It’s so saturated that even though we’ve been inside for maybe ten or fifteen minutes, it’s still suctioned to my body. I feel like my skin is going to take a month to dry out.

My hands pause on my pants. Not because I’m embarrassed to be naked in front of him.

I’m definitely a little self-conscious, but I’m wearing really cute briefs that I think might be borderline sexy.

When he sees them, he may figure out that I was possibly prepared for some wishful thinking to come true.

The alternative is staying in wet clothes and trying to explain why. Come on, Dana. Be an adult. Closing my eyes, I shove my pants and underwear down together and step out of them. The dry shorts are already in my hands as I quickly put them on. My cheeks burn for no reason at all.

I’ve been naked in front of plenty of guys before. This is no big deal.

I glance toward Peyton when I’m completely stripped of my wet clothes. He’s only wearing the little shorts. No shirt. Nothing else. The shorts are telling, but not obscenely so. It only emphasizes that this man is an athlete, and a beautiful one at that.

Wow .

He’s carefully lining his clothes on the drying rack. I pick mine up and join him. I try to hide my underwear on the inner racks with my socks hanging over them to block them out. It’s dim enough in the room that I may succeed.

“Put your pants up here,” Peyton says. “They’re probably going to take longer to dry, so let’s get them closer to the heat source. We’ll put our shoes under the stove to dry. Short of putting them in the fire, that’s as close as we’re going to get. They’re going to take days to dry out.”

Especially my sneakers. I should have taken him up on the water shoes.

Finally, we’re done. Stripped of the wet clothes and in dry ones that have been here for fuck knows how long. I’m choosing not to think about that.

“Well, this isn’t quite what I had in mind,” Peyton says as he looks at the window.

The rain is pelting against it, nearly sideways.

There’s just enough of a gap in the canopy that the rain has a clear shot at the cabin.

Makes plenty of sense, really. Whoever built this place had to clear trees to make room for the cabin.

It’s small enough that they’ve kept the footprint pretty small, so that’s good.

He looks at me. “How about we enjoy an indoor picnic?”

“Sounds good.”

“Did you find blankets, or are we spreading out towels?”

I look at the mattress. There’s nothing but a mattress pad covering it. But I see three totes lined up under the bed. “I didn’t check these out. I figured they were linens for the bed since they were with the bed.”

Together, we pull out the totes, and sure enough, we find sheets, pillows, and blankets. I chew the inside of my lip and glance at the window, where the storm is showing no signs of letting up. The sky is so damn dark.

“How long do you think the storm’s going to go on?”

Peyton sighs. “I don’t know, but unless it breaks within the next couple of hours, we should probably plan to hunker down for the night. I’m not familiar enough with the area to feel confident that I can get us back to the truck by moonlight.”

I nod. Oh, god, I’m going to be sharing a bed with this man! Unless he’d prefer one of us to sleep on the floor…

Peyton pulls out a blanket. “Want to grab a couple towels? We’ll put them down first since we’ve brought the rain inside.”

I do as he suggests and bring a few towels with me. “The rules say that we need to take what we use with us and return it clean if we can.”

He nods. “Yep. I’ll take care of that. I want us to be comfortable, so I’m not worried about what we use.”

Peyton hands me the blanket and takes the towels from me. I watch as he spreads them out long edges together, right in front of the fire. Then he lays the blanket over them. He gestures to our indoor picnic area for me to sit while he pulls over the tote we’d carried from the kayak.

He sits beside me, and my brain doesn’t know that we’re stuck in a storm.

It refuses to acknowledge that this isn’t how the date was supposed to go—sitting in front of a fire in a tiny cabin with a single bed on a remote island caught in a lightning storm.

All my heart and head and stomach think is holy hell, this is so fucking romantic .

“Let’s ration a little,” Peyton says. “Not that you can’t eat whatever if you’re hungry, but I’m not sure how long the storm will last. You didn’t sound thrilled with the MREs in the cabinet.”

“MREs?”

“Meals ready-to-eat. Or something like that. They’re meal boxes that the military ration when deployed or on missions or whatever. Honestly, they’re not as bad as they sound. They’ve come a long way over the last fifty years.”

“You’ve had them?” I ask.

He flashes me a grin as he pulls one item from the tote at a time to examine the contents.

“Yeah. When I was a kid. There were times I’d spent the entire day on the water over the summer.

My uncle and father were in the Marine Corps, so they decided it was best to send me with something that wouldn’t bake in the sun and make me sick.

I’ve had probably every single meal option. ”

“There are multiple meals?”

“Tons,” he answers, grinning. “Some better than others, but I think a lot of that has to do with your personal taste. I love spicy, but if you’re not into spicy, there’s a handful you won’t like. I don’t like beans or chili, so there are two that I don’t like.”

“Huh.”

Peyton replaces half a dozen items from the tote back inside, leaving us with four. “We’ll splurge a little right now,” he says, winking at me. “This is a date, after all.”

I try my hardest not to blush, but… yeah, it is. A date I bid on. Whatever. It’s still a date.