Page 27 of Love Below Zero

27

WANT TO BUILD A SNOWMAN?

JAMES

I should be embarrassed at the fact that I just fucked Rebecca with a Frozen Band-Aid stuck to my head, but I’m not.

I reach up to touch it, then laugh, pulling it off.

“I think we traumatised the reindeer enough for one night.”

She continues to giggle as I untie her, my fingers gently rubbing over the slight marks on her wrists.

“I’m sorry, love, I normally use softer rope.”

She shivers, and I become aware of our surroundings again. We are in a poorly insulated container in the middle of a blizzard. In Antarctica. I shrug out of my jacket, draping it over her shoulders. I check the med kit, but there’s nothing I can use for the rope burns.

She hops off the table, stumbling slightly. I reach out, catching her around the waist.

“You alright, darling?”

She giggles again, wrapping her arms around my neck. “Yes. You just turned my legs to jelly. ”

“Mission accomplished then.” I grin at her before capturing her lips in a soft kiss. She sighs happily, her body melting into mine. “Thank you.”

She pulls back, gaze meeting mine. “For what?”

I shrug nonchalantly. “For trusting me.”

I saw the apprehension in her eyes when I told her about the kind of sex I like. I was willing to throw all of my rules out the window for her though. The terror on her face was the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes in the container, and it shook me up. We were really in trouble, and she got both of us out of it on her own. That took immense strength, and I wanted to show her I was capable of that kind of strength as well.

But then she asked me what I wanted, and I couldn’t do anything but tell her the truth. In the face of certain death, my priorities completely rearranged themselves, and all I cared about was Rebecca. Whatever she wanted, I would give it to her, consequences be damned. I let my feelings for her fill my whole chest until there was nothing but her in my heart.

Was it dumb of me? Probably. But as Jules would say, love isn’t always logical. And when Rebecca looks at me with that lopsided smile of hers, mischief in her eyes, I know I’m going to be illogical for a long time.

“James.”

“Mmmh?” I trail soft kisses over her cheek, completely lost in her.

“Do you need help with that?” She looks down between us, where my erection is still pressing into her.

I swallow. I want her to touch me, badly, but exhaustion pulls at me. The events of the last few hours are catching up to me, and my headache is growing persistent. The light inside the container is suddenly too bright, the buzzing of the bulb becoming louder and louder. I rub my forehead. I should be chasing release right now, but really, I just want to not be in my own skin for a while.

Rebecca seems to gather all that from my expression, because she steps back.

“I’m going to get cleaned up. Why don’t you lie down?”

I nod, watching her as she grabs her clothes before disappearing toward the back of the container. I take a few deep breaths to calm down, the cold and the absence of her intoxicating scent helping.

Once I feel like I can move without imploding, I sit down on the mattresses she must have pulled out. Guilt settles over me. I left her alone in a snowstorm and scared the shit out of her by hitting my head and losing consciousness, I had my wicked way with her, and then I refused to let her touch me. Sex isn’t a tit-for-tat kind of game, but maybe I should have done more? Been less rigid?

This is the first time I’ve even attempted sex after Sara left two years ago. I’m out of practice. The last six months of my relationship with Sara were fraught, to say the least. Of course I didn’t notice it until after she was gone, like the idiot I was. Still am, probably.

Rebecca returns, now dressed in her thermals and my jacket. She places the heap of her other clothes on one of the other workbenches, then comes over. She holds out a water bottle and some painkillers. I knock them back, and she sits down next to me, pulling one of the blankets over her shoulders. She’s sitting close, but not close enough to touch me .

“Do you regret it?” she asks after a brief silence.

I look up at her sharply. “Regret what?”

She gestures between the two of us, and I shake my head so fast I almost snap my neck. “No! Of course not. Why would you think that?”

She pulls the blanket tighter around her shoulders.

“I yelled at you before the storm—I said mean things. And then everything got so jumbled, and it’s okay if it was just the adrenaline talking and you didn’t actually want ... me.”

This woman. And I thought I was the anxious one. I scoot closer to her, resting a hand on her knee.

“I want you,” I tell her. “In more ways than I can possibly list right now. But you were right. Outside, before the storm started. I don’t know anything about love.”

She reaches out to touch my hand, then thinks better of it and just folds her hands in her lap.

“James ... I didn’t mean it. I was being stupid and I really wish I hadn’t said it.”

“It’s still true.” I shrug. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, ever since you said it the first time on stage at that convention. You keep saying that I’ve always been able to see right through you, but the reverse is true as well.”

I lean my head back against one of the crates, closing my eyes. I have to tell her about Sara, about what happened between us.

“I was angry, and I was trying to discredit you. That doesn’t mean I was right.” Her voice is small, and I desperately want to look at her face, but this will be easier if I don’t.

“There was a woman, another astronomer. Her name is Sara. We met at Cambridge. We had the same career, the same interests, the same friends. It was ... logical to advance the relationship. I felt ... I was attracted to her. Sexually. It came as a bit of a shock to me. I’d never felt sexual attraction before her.

“And she was so understanding about it. She helped me figure out what I liked, researched ways to make it good for both of us. She suggested we try the ropes and blindfolds, and I really liked it.”

I’ve been thinking of Sara only in terms of the terrible things she’s done, and it’s been years since I’ve thought about all the good things. I did love her, more than I had loved anyone else at the time. She was it for me, and then she wasn’t.

Rebecca takes several deep breaths next to me, but she doesn’t say anything.

“We were comfortable,” I continue. “We had a good routine. And then we were both up for the same tenure position at the university. Like I said before, teaching posts are hard to come by. We had to prepare research proposals and went through several rounds of intensive interviews. It put immense strain on us, but I wasn’t willing to let the job come between us. I offered to help her in any way I could, and she returned the favour.

“We’d already been collaborating on a few projects, so sharing our proposals for the final interview seemed natural. At least, that’s what I thought we were doing.”

I rub my face, remembering Sara’s smile when she finished her interview. It was triumphant, like she knew she’d won. When she saw me waiting outside, her smile fell. I know now her expression was guilt, but back then I attributed it to nerves .

“Our final interviews were right after each other on the same day. She went first.”

I don’t want to admit that I had seriously considered withdrawing my application. I didn’t like the competition between us, and there was a very strong chance that one of us would get the position and the other wouldn’t. I didn’t want to deal with all of those emotions—hers or mine. I should have dealt with them.

“During my interview I got a lot of confused looks. Turns out my research proposal was almost identical to hers. She had co-opted most of my work and presented it as her own.”

Rebecca gasps, and I finally open my eyes to look at her. Her face is pinched in anger.

“That bitch! Please tell me you kicked her to the curb?”

I laugh humourlessly. “No. I was convinced it was a misunderstanding. We kept all our documents on a shared cloud, so maybe she got confused? Unintentionally copied some of my proposal? But when I got home, her things were gone.”

“Was there no way to prove the work was yours?”

“No, and honestly, I didn’t want to. She left without so much as a word. I might not understand subtlety very well, but even I got that message.”

She frowns, fiddling with her hands. “So you never got any closure?”

Closure isn’t necessary to move forward. Time goes by anyway, forcing you with it. You move on, whether you want to or not. Eventually the pain of her leaving lessened. I focused only on things within my control, like my work.

“Sara made her decisions, and I made mine.”

“Do you still love her?” she asks in a small voice .

I fully turn my head to look at her now. There is a riot of emotions in her eyes, the primary one trepidation.

“I’m not telling you all of this because I’m still in love with Sara.” Actually, the exact opposite , my heart says. “I’m telling you this so that you know what you’re getting. Sara broke me—some days, I think, beyond repair. I don’t know what love is, because the thing that I thought was love left me bleeding on the floor. Stole my work, betrayed me, and then left without a word. That’s my only frame of reference and then you ... you crashed into my life like a meteor and you turned everything on its head. You argue with me at every turn, you call out my bullshit, you obliterate me at chess.”

I give her a small smile, and she returns the favour. Her eyes are glistening again, and I can tell she’s close to crying. When she burst into tears earlier, I had wanted nothing but to make it better.

“You ask what I need and then you give it to me, no expectations and without a second thought. You carried me through a blizzard, for fuck’s sake. How can I still be in love with her when it’s so painfully obvious that I’m in love with you?”

I wasn’t going to voice those thoughts, but they tumble out of me regardless. It’s too soon to be telling her that. Maybe it’s because I’m tired, or maybe I just cannot have her thinking she’s someone unimportant to me when she is the centre of my universe.

She’s crying again, tears running down her cheeks. Fuck, did I come on too strong?

“Can I hold your hand?” she asks softly, and I turn my palm toward her. She takes my hand, weaving her fingers through mine.

“I think I’m in love with you too, James Reid.”

Something in my chest clicks, like a part of me that was missing slots into place. I was living such a monochrome life before this, and then she blew in like a whirlwind, bringing colour with her. Whatever happens after this, we will face it together.