Page 36 of Unnatural (Men and Monsters #2)

Autumn kicked the cottage door closed behind her, her arms full of the chopped logs she’d gathered from the pile near the shed outside.

She halted, spotting Sam standing near the table, his hands behind his back.

There were two bowls of what appeared to be mac and cheese on the table, steam rising in the air.

Autumn smiled, turning to the fireplace and squatting as she set the logs down on the hearth.

“You made dinner?” She’d stayed outside longer than it took to collect the firewood, just gazing out at the lake and thinking about their complicated predicament, thoughts that had turned to hopeful daydreams of how this all might turn out well.

The first star had appeared in the sky, and she’d closed her eyes and turned her dream into a wish. “Thank you, Sam.”

Sam gave what looked like a forced smile, his hands still behind his back.

“Are you okay?” Her gaze went to the mac and cheese. Was he nervous he’d messed up dinner somehow? It was almost foolproof. The three-step directions were right on the box.

Sam brought his hands from behind his back, set down the pad of paper he’d asked for the week before, and stepped away as though it might bite him. As if it was best that he distance himself from it.

Autumn took off her gloves slowly. It appeared that he couldn’t look at her, his eyes glued to the table.

“I wanted to thank you,” he finally mumbled. His cheeks were flushed. Was he blushing? “For taking care of me. For helping. And for staying too. For not leaving me here alone.”

“You already thanked me for caring for you,” she said with a smile.

“And I wouldn’t have left you alone.” She threw her gloves aside and then shrugged off her oversize sweater and tossed that onto the back of the couch.

She took in his nervous expression, and tenderness took hold.

What a sweetheart he could be. So uncertain.

Looking so hard for acceptance. “But I appreciate a nice dinner. Thank you, Sam,” she said again, this time with more meaning as she sat down. “That was very thoughtful of you.”

“I would’ve, ah, made you something…better for dinner, except…”

Oh my gosh, the guy looks utterly lost and completely flustered. She wanted to laugh, and she wanted to hug him.

“Don’t be silly. Mac and cheese is my absolute favorite.”

He released a breath and took a seat too and then picked up the pad of paper and handed it to her.

“I…did this for you. Made it. Copied it.” His blush deepened, his cheekbones tinged a deep shade of pink.

“For you, to give it back. I shouldn’t have taken it.

I tried to figure out a way that I could give your journal back to you.

Even though it’s just…not as good.” He pushed the pad of paper across the table and then withdrew his hand quickly.

Autumn tilted her head, confused as she picked up the pad. She turned back the cover, her heart giving a small gallop. It was her name and her birth date, written in precise all-caps printing.

She brought a hand to the silver necklace at her throat that Bill had given her on the day her adoption had become legal, the one she never took off.

Something clogged her throat, and she swallowed around it as she turned the first page, and then another and another, her heart beating ever more swiftly.

“You rewrote my journal,” she whispered.

She raised her gaze, meeting his. His face was still flushed, eyes wide as he waited for her reaction.

It looked like he was holding his breath.

Scared. Oh, he cares so very, very much.

Autumn stood, rounded the table, and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“Oh, Sam, thank you. I can’t believe you did this.

” He’d had it memorized. All these years.

The entire thing. And she couldn’t begin to understand how or why, but he did, and he’d rewritten every single word.

It was a moment before she realized how tense he was and that his breath had turned to small, almost-silent staggered pants. She unwrapped her arms and leaned back slowly. She’d noticed before that he seemed to tense each time she touched him, but she’d thought it was due to his injuries.

Now she realized how averse he was to being touched at all, and her heart pinched.

She brought her hands gently to his golden stubbled cheeks, cupping her hands in their shape, though only brushing his skin.

Their eyes met, and there was a world of raw need in his.

Autumn remembered what it was like to crave touch, something that was rare when she was younger.

She’d become such a tactile person as a result, so it hurt seeing what touch did to Sam.

He was an ADHM baby too, motherless just like her.

Had he ever been held or caressed or simply cared for gently?

“Thank you, Sam,” she whispered again. She returned to her chair and sat down across from him once again. “Will you tell me why you memorized it?”

He blinked, looked away, ran a hand over his short hair. “Your words…the way they made me feel. I’d never felt that way before.” He paused and met her eyes. “Repeating them made things easier. The surgeries…the pain.”

She pulled in a shaky breath. She felt honored and overwhelmed. She gave him another smile, and he smiled back, this one appearing more natural as his broad shoulders lowered.

She kept the journal on the table but used one hand to thumb through it, catching passages, poems, word combinations she’d liked, descriptions, poorly drawn sketches—one of him.

Her boy made of moonlight. A smile skittered across her face as she remembered the girl she’d been then.

“These were my thoughts during that time,” she said. “This was who I was.”

He watched her so intently. “What do you mean? Who you were?”

She closed the book and picked up her fork, taking a mouthful of macaroni. “Well, we’re different during different phases of our lives, don’t you think?”

“How so?”

The question appeared to startle him, maybe trouble him slightly too.

She was beginning to understand his facial expressions and body movements.

He hadn’t told her nearly enough about himself, and she felt strongly he was holding quite a bit back, but even so, she’d begun to know him, to understand him, even if his “tells” were subtle, his mannerisms extremely reticent, his personality almost… muted.

He was rough around the edges, introverted, often withdrawn, but there was a world of tenderness that lived inside him too.

He protected it, and she understood that he had great reason to do so.

Those who had “raised” him had not valued that quality, nor encouraged it.

If anything, the opposite was true. So the fact that he’d managed to protect it anyway spoke to his strength of heart and his iron will.

She also knew he didn’t see it that way.

He was so deeply complicated, and some part of her wondered if she’d ever really know him, even if he allowed her in.

Because she sensed that he didn’t fully understand himself.

His own thoughts. His own feelings. What she did know was that despite his rough exterior, no one who didn’t possess a tender soul would have given her the gift he had.

She thought about his question. “Don’t you think you were different when you were in the hospital than you are right this minute?”

He took a bite, chewed, looked thoughtful. “I know more now. I’ve had different experiences.”

“Right. And those things change you. They alter your views of the world, of people. Your tastes change and expand.”

He looked thoughtful again. “Experiences change your mind, but do they change your soul?”

It felt like something clanged inside her, dull and echoing. “No, but souls don’t need changing. All souls are good. The minds are what get warped.”

“Maybe. But souls can be ruined too.” He said it so matter-of-factly, in a way that made her heart thump hollowly, similar to the way she’d felt when he told her his soul never sang.

“Do you think your soul is ruined, Sam?”

“Sometimes.” But his expression told her more. His expression said, All the time. He gave her an unpracticed smile. “But this is supposed to be a nice dinner, so let’s talk about happier things.”

She watched him for a moment, taking in his golden lashes and his full lips, that square jaw, and the matching scars at his temples where metal plates had been embedded under his skin.

He’d told her that the doctors had healed him and then been forced to use metals in place of body parts that had been damaged by the pharmaceuticals.

But what could have possibly been damaged at his temples? How did medicine ruin ribs? Or knees?

Something was terribly off.

And not just about him. About her own experience too. She sensed something deeply sinister, even beyond being left in the woods so that “trainees” could practice hunting with real prey. Her.

But he was right. As many challenges as they faced, they also needed moments of lightness in order to deal with the things weighing them down. She gave him a secretive smile. “There’s a box of cake mix in that cabinet,” she said, gesturing behind Sam. “We can make dessert too.”

He looked surprised. “Cake?”

“Sure. We’ll eat the whole thing and make up for all the birthdays we spent in a hospital.” She took a bite and swallowed. “When is your birthday, Sam?”

“I don’t know.”

“They never told you?” They never sang? Never gathered in the lunchroom—not for cake, their systems couldn’t handle that, but for applesauce or sugar-free pudding—as they had in her area of Mercy? That seemed very odd. And terribly cruel.

He shook his head, but he didn’t seem upset about it, not like her.

“Well then, we’ll definitely make that cake,” she said.

Sam smiled and nodded, and then they did talk about happier, more mundane topics.

A little about the town she’d grown up in, her schooling, the career she loved, and about the apple farm he’d worked on, doing odd jobs for the blind man named Adam.

When they were done with dinner, Sam cleared the table as Autumn stoked the fire.

She kneeled in front of it, staring into the flames, enjoying the moment of peace and safety, the sounds of water and dishes clicking behind her.

She glanced back at him, and the vision held an absurdity that made her want to giggle.

Sam. Doing dishes. The man belonged emblazoned across the pages of a comic book, fighting for peace and equality, not standing in a quaint cottage kitchen doing dishes .

His back was so broad, his waist so narrow.

Her eyes went lower, and a flare of heat arced up her spine.

Speaking of things that should be emblazoned across pages of just about anything…

She turned back to the fire before he could catch her ogling his ass.

Very professional, Nurse Clancy.

Except she wasn’t only his nurse. Not even close, and she knew it. Their connection, even barring any ass ogling, went far beyond professional.

He cleared his throat behind her, and she startled, a blush moving up her neck as if he’d caught her thinking about him. Stop being ridiculous. She turned.

“I’m going to go take a shower,” he said. “I haven’t yet today, and I…need one.”

“You don’t have to explain your reasons for wanting to shower,” she teased him.

He seemed confused for a moment but then smiled awkwardly. “Okay. Well.” Then he turned stiffly and walked to the bathroom.

To take a shower without hot water. She assumed.

We didn’t have hot water in the hospital. I guess I’m just used to it.

She stood and walked back to the table where she sat down and opened the recreated journal again so she could look through it more closely. Reading the words made her feel so emotional, so sad for the girl she’d been. Sick. Confused. Searching for love.

In some ways, she’d been relieved to leave this girl behind. To cast her off. Forget her. Because it had been a hard, lonely time. The girl in the pages of this journal had thought her days were numbered, and she’d lived in a constant state of fear, waiting for another friend to die.

But…

Reading these words, the questions, the phrases, made Autumn remember that she’d been a fighter too, despite all she had going against her, despite the fact that she barely had the energy to walk a flight of steps.

She’d fought hard and she’d loved hard, and Autumn felt proud of her younger self for how she’d conducted her limited life even in the midst of sickness and pain and loss.

Her eyes filled with tears. Sam had carried that girl in his heart and his mind even when Autumn herself had not.

What a gift he’d given her. She suddenly felt even more overwhelmed than she had when she first realized what he’d done.

The sound of the shower drummed behind the bathroom door.

That sweet, wounded, brave, sensitive man should not shower under frigid water.

It wasn’t right.

The injustice couldn’t stand.

Autumn closed the journal, and then with a deep intake of breath, she stood, heading toward the bathroom. Heading toward Sam.