Page 66 of Cabin Fever Baby

EIGHTEEN

2 Days til Christmas

“Ocean?”

The low voice drifted into my dark room.

I’d closed the curtains for the first time. I didn’t want to see the beautiful views anymore. I was curled under the covers in Hudson’s thermal shirt that he left behind. The same sheets that we’d shared every night over the last three nights.

Three nights.

How could everything inside of me feel different after so few days?

Q didn’t wait for an invitation. He just sat on the end of the bed. “You can’t stay in bed all day.”

“What does it matter?”

“You’re the one who dragged us all out here in the middle of snow country.”

“I see you all the time,” I mumbled.

“Kent got here an hour ago.”

I slipped my blanket down from where it was over my head. “He did?” Kent was the only one who knew about Hudson. I could only imagine what my brothers had been talking about.

“Yeah.” Q was in a pair of plaid sleep pants and a Hozier T-shirt. It couldn’t bethatlate.

“What time is it?”

“Two in the afternoon.”

I sat straight up. “What?”

“Yeah. Are you honestly telling me you’re going to mope around about some douche rag?”

“He’s not a douche rag.” I threw my pillow at him. “He’s one of the nicest men I’ve ever known.”

“Sure didn’t sound like it when he told you to fuck off.”

“He didn’t use those words.” I tucked my knees under the shirt, surrounding myself with his scent. “I did lie to him.”

“You don’t know him.” Q rolled onto the bottom of the bed like he had when we were kids and put his head on his stacked arms. “What, you knew him like a week?”

Worse.

Not even close to a week. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It’s just lust.” He winced saying it. “We’ve all had a fling, O. It seems intense at the time, but the longer you spend with them, you see it was just a moment.”

“Maybe,” I murmured.

It didn’t feel like a fling. It felt like I lost out on something really special. Something that could have been a future.

“It was only a few days. But it was long enough for me to fall in love with you.”

“Or the woman I thought you were.”

I’d given him more of me than I’d offered to anyone in my life.