CHAPTER NINETEEN
The longer Dex lied on top of me, his naked body held firm against mine, pressing me into the silver blankets, the more confused I became.
Because I began to think and have thoughts again. And my brain started to analyze. And I realized what the hell we had done and where we had done it. We had almost died, were chased by a creature, then swept by a wild river, almost succumbed to hypothermia, yet we found the time to have sex?
Sensing the change in me, Dex’s eyes flew open and he stared at me intently. “What’s wrong?”
I turned my head and looked away. Our clothes were scattered around us, drying in the sun. “Nothing’s wrong.”
A chill began to spread on my body and I tried to move out from underneath him.
His nostrils flared. “Where are you going?”
He pressed down on me hard but I was already rolling out of the way.
“I’m not going anywhere,” I told him, getting to my knees, painfully aware I was naked and in broad daylight. “There’s nowhere to go.”
I quickly snatched up one of the space blankets from the ground and wrapped myself in it before the chills had the chance to set in. I grabbed another loose one and handed it to Dex who was on his knees.
“Here,” I told him, placing it in his hands. I walked past him and examined our clothes. They were all still wet, though drying faster than I had thought. “This might take a while.”
“Perry,” he said, sounding confused.
I bit my lip and looked behind me. He was still holding the blanket and it was doing nothing to hide the erection that was barely fading.
“Cover up,” I told him quickly, looking away. “You’ll freeze. And I want to use the blankets underneath you. Maybe if we lay our clothes out on them, they’ll dry faster.”
“Perry, let’s talk about this…”
My mouth twisted. “Talk about what?”
Dex raised his brows and slowly got to his feet. Still naked.
“We just had sex.”
I tightened the blanket around my shoulders. “I am aware of that.”
His eyes grew soft. “That didn’t mean anything to you?”
I jerked my chin into my neck, blinking hard. “Um.”
“Because it meant something to me,” he said, coming forward. His voice quivered slightly. “It meant too much to me.”
His words tore me up inside. I couldn’t handle that. I didn’t even know what it meant to me. I didn’t even have time to think about it. I didn’t want him to think that just because we had sex, that all was forgiven between us. I didn’t want him to think that he “won,” or he had me or that it was fine that he left me broken before.
He placed his hand on my cheek and brought his face close. “I’d give anything to know what you’re thinking right now.”
I looked down, feeling the warmth from his lips. I closed my eyes and took in a breath for strength, then moved away from his hand.
“I think we need to start figuring out what to do next.”
“Between us?”
I shot him a look. “No, not between us. There’s no time for ‘us’ right now. We’re in the middle of the f*cking forest Dex and I’m pretty sure that, that thing, is out there looking for us!”
He cocked his head, eyes turning hard. “There’s no time for us?”
“Are you deaf?” I knew it sounded nasty the minute it left my mouth, but it was too late.
Dex was caught off guard, looking stunned. “You’re angry. Why are you angry?”
“I’m not,” I told him and walked away, back to the clothes. Or maybe I was. I wanted to get out of here, I wanted to run away and I couldn’t. We were stuck there, naked except for the space blankets that Dex was finally wrapping himself up in, and there was nowhere for us to go. Nowhere for me to go, to just get a handle on things and think. I felt trapped, scared and confused.
His brow lowered, his hands gripping the edges of the blanket. “Are you trying to punish me?”
Now it was my turn to be surprised. “Punish you?”
He smiled with eyes that remained cold. “Yes. For what I did to you. Is this my payback? First you f*ck Maximus and now this?”
My eyes nearly bugged out of my head, blood whooshing loudly in my veins. “What?!”
“Don’t tell me you actually wanted to do him.”
I threw my hands up in the air, nearly losing my blanket in the process. “What does that have to do with anything? This isn’t about punishing you, this is about how f*cking inappropriate it was, what we just did, with all this shit going on. Dex, this is a life or death situation we are in and I need you to focus on that. Not this ‘us’ bullshit!”
He swallowed hard, his eyes never leaving my face. They were growing darker and harder by the second. “You think all of this was bullshit?”
I buried my face in my hands, growling in frustration. “I’m not even wearing f*cking clothes.”
“Do you?” he repeated. His voice was louder, causing my heart to shake. “Do you think we’re bullshit? After everything we’ve been through…”
I still didn’t look up. “There isn’t time.”
“You were f*cking possessed when you slept with him!” he yelled. I couldn’t believe he was still hung up on the whole Maximus thing. I should have known that he was harboring a grudge about it.
“Don’t tell me then there isn’t time, because you f*cking made time to f*ck him and deal with that! Why not me?”
My eyes snapped up and I felt my chest shrink at the wild, pained look that was raging across his face. “You broke my heart!” I spat out. “I don’t owe you anything.”
He took a step toward me, shoving his finger in my face. “And you need to get the f*ck over yourself!”
I gasped and stumbled back from him, feeling blind and stupid in my anger. “How dare you!? After everything you put me through!”
“Oh, I dare,” he said, baring his teeth. “I dare and I’ll continue to dare until you can just give me a f*cking break.”
My head felt like it was going to cave in; the frustration was rising up in my throat, tasting sour. “I don’t understand this, I don’t!” I cried out. “We just had sex, who f*cking cares, it was just sex and it’s over and now we have more important things to worry about. Why can’t you see that? Just drop it. Why do you care so much about this?”
“Because I love you!” he roared. A sledgehammer swung right into my heart. The words took their time to soak in, permeating each bone in my body, sticking to the marrow. I was speechless. Breathless.
Then heartless. The injustice spewed right out of me.
“You,” I sneered, unable to control myself, my eyes slicing into his. “You don’t get to tell me that. That isn’t fair.”
“You want to talk about fair? You lied to me! You’re going on like I ruined your whole world, like you’re some holy, pious creature who’s never done a wrong thing in her life, but you lied to me. You switched my pills just to see what would happen, with no regard of what the f*ck that would do to me, then when I asked you if you loved me, you looked me straight in the eye and you said no. You lied. You. Loved. Me!”
“You’re right! I did! Past tense!”
“I know it’s past tense. You couldn’t be more obvious about it!”
Oh good, because I wasn’t done.
“You slept with me, then freaked out and treated me like, like a used condom!” There was no turning back now. It was all out on the table, every feeling either of us had ever felt.
His hands gripped his blanket even harder and he marched up to me, his eyes crazy in the heat of our words, his jaw clenched tight. “How poetic, Perry,” he said, struggling to bring his voice down, to stay calm. “Do you know why I freaked out? Because I realized I’d fallen in love with my best friend. The very same person who had just told me she didn’t love me. Call me an a*shole for overreacting but that’s what happened. You’re not the only one who is hurting here, Perry. At least I didn’t do it deliberately.”
My forehead scrunched up but I refused to back away from him.
“I’m not doing anything deliberately. What are you talking about?”
He took in a steadying breath and let his eyes fall shut. “For the last couple of weeks, you’ve been doing everything you can to spear me, to make me hurt. And if you keep on thinking that nothing can hurt me, well then maybe you don’t really know me at all. You’re not just hurting me Perry, you’re killing me.”
I gulped, my throat closing up. I felt a pinch deep, deep inside, like my soul was getting cut. It started to ache.
“This is me trying, Perry,” he said softly, the anger being drained of his face. “This is me taking my heart out of my chest and putting the bloody mess in your hands. I can’t give you much more than that.”
The ache grew. So did the fear.
Dex was saying he loved me. Beneath our anger, our words, our mistakes, he was telling me he was in love with me.
Me.
I just didn’t know what to do with that. It didn’t fit anywhere inside of me, didn’t fit into the world I had created in his wake. Why couldn’t it have happened months before? Why now? Now was too late. It was far too late. He loved me but I didn’t love him. I couldn’t love him. The risk was far too great and there was no way I could go through all that pain again if things were to go wrong. Fool me once, shame on me. I didn’t want to get fooled again. The shame was enough. It was more than enough.
I swallowed hard and looked away. “Then stop trying.”
“You don’t mean that,” he said quickly. “I know you don’t. Oh baby, you can’t mean that.”
Now my heart was aching as well, bleeding out with my soul. I fought back the tears that were teasing behind my eyes. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that it had to be this way. It wasn’t fair that the pain I felt wasn’t going away. It wasn’t fair that I finally had everything I ever wanted and I was too afraid to reach out and grab it.
“I do.”
“Please,” he voice cracked, his eyes begging mine. “Don’t just dismiss this. Just…please baby. I need another chance. We both deserve it.”
I shook my head, the tears now coming loose.
“I can’t. I can’t get over it,” I sobbed. “I can’t. I’m sorry. I just can’t turn that part of me back on. It’s gone.”
“Let me bring it back.”
“And if it fails? I can’t take that chance. I have you back in my life, as my friend. Maybe that’s all we were supposed to be. How do you know?”
“I’m not supposed to be anything else than a man that’s stupidly in love with you. That’s what I know.”
And now, it’s what I knew too. But he had to step back and look at us. We couldn’t make it five minutes after sleeping together without everything blowing up in our faces. I didn’t know whose fault that was. Maybe it was just the way we were together. Dex and Perry always leads to trouble. Maybe this was a sign that we really were better off as friends.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, torn between wanting to touch his face for comfort or to wipe away my own tears. “I don’t mean to hurt you.”
His eyes fluttered with disappointment. He didn’t believe me anymore. And why should he?
Then came the most painful part, the right thing to do that felt oh so wrong. “I’ll be moving out when I get home. I don’t want to put either of us through this again.”
He nodded, seeming to accept it. I hated that he accepted it. I hated that I made him accept it. “Just know, if you do find you can get over it and until you move out, you know where I’ll be.”
“The room next door?”
His smile was sad. He nodded gently. “The room next door.”
He turned away from me, hugging the blanket close to him, and walked back along the green grass. I watched, numb from the inside out, as he began to lay out our clothes on the reflective silver, hoping they’d dry faster. I waited, summoning up a little courage, then joined him at his side. >
~~~
Our clothes were pretty much dry just as the sun was beginning to set behind the mountains, the dying streams of orange light gleaming on the dark water. Though the space blankets did a good job of keeping us warm as we sat there together on the grassy banks, both of us tired, drained, and lost in our own heads, it felt good to be able to put on our clothes. We were wearing everything we had with us, not caring if we resembled Stay-Puft, and set about finding our way back.
The river had the most light to see by, so we walked along that as Dex examined the map, trying to figure out where on it we could be. He seemed to think that if we followed the flow of the river, it would eventually lead us back to the path we had been seeking. The only problem was there was no way of knowing how long it would take to get there and a night in the woods seemed looming. We would have to find shelter before it got completely dark. Twilight fell hard out here.
I was just about to pull the flashlights out of the backpacks when Dex came to a stop.
“What do you think?” he asked me. He hadn’t been saying very much to me and his voice came as a bit of a surprise.
I looked around his body. We had gone a few feet into the forest and stopped at the base of a giant, partially hollowed-out log that had fallen on its side. The interior was big enough for us if we squished and looked dry thanks to the overhang. There was some soft moss as well, that looked nice to sit on after the day we had, and would probably help provide some warmth too.
Still…
“Do you think we’re stealing an animal’s home?” I asked, peering at the log closer. “This looks like prime real estate.”
He sighed. “Do you want me to clear it out in case there are bugs?”
I grinned sheepishly, looking up at him with pleading eyes. “You don’t have to…”
He rolled his eyes but set down his backpack and started wiping away at the log with his hand, brushing away cobwebs, dirt and leaves.
“She’s been possessed yet she’s still scared of a few insects,” he muttered to himself.
“Oh, well you try taking a bath in a tub full of spiders and tell me how you feel after that!” I pointed out defensively.
“I’m not even going to ask. There.” He stood back and displayed the somewhat cleaner log. “Your home for the night.”
“Thank you,” I said and started to rummage through the pack. Dex was being nice and acting like everything was fine, but I could tell he was still smarting from our fight. I definitely was. Every time I ran the words “Because I love you” through my head, my heart sank. And when I remembered what I said, how adamant I was that my feelings were in the past, it sank even more. I was cruel, unnecessarily cruel to a man who said he loved me, just because I couldn’t let go of the anger I had inside. It wasn’t fair. I needed to apologize again but I wasn’t sure how. Or if it would even matter at this point.
Before I got swept away in my own self-loathing, we quickly made sure we had everything we needed. The space blankets would keep us warm overnight, providing the temperature didn’t drop too much. Clouds had started to move in over the darkening sky, bringing the threat of snow but also better insulation. We spread out the two thicker ones underneath us and the rest on top. I felt myself getting embarrassed as we made our makeshift bed – I was never going to look at a space blanket the same way again. Hell, I wasn’t going to look at sex the same way. Dex’s performance had ruined every other man for me, I just knew it. My blood throbbed at the memory.
We went through our packets of food, rationing them out with the bottles of water we had filled at the river. Tonight our dinner was more beef jerky plus chocolate covered raisins and an apple. Not gourmet, but not bad considering the circumstances.
“We just better find that cabin tomorrow,” Dex said, turning on the flashlight so we could see what we were eating. “We just have the trail mix and the dehydrated soup left.”
“We could always light a fire and try to boil some water.”
He shook his head. “Can’t risk a fire. We don’t want to attract attention to ourselves.”
“I think we should attract attention to ourselves,” I said. “Maybe someone will rescue us.”
He shot me a sidelong glance, his eyes shadowy in the dark. “We don’t need rescuing, kiddo. We’re getting out of here tomorrow, I can promise you that. But until then, we have to stay hidden. You know what’s out there.”
I swallowed hard and gathered the blanket around me. I did know.
“You saw it,” he continued in a grave voice. “Tell me.”
I sighed, wishing my brain was made of steel. My nerves were shot and the last thing I needed was to see that creature again in my head. But Dex deserved to know and I couldn’t keep the sight all to myself.
I picked at some jerky and explained everything I could remember about it.
After I was done he stroked his chin thoughtfully, his light beard scratching against his glove. “Legs like a kangaroo. I remember thinking that too when I saw it walk past.”
“But it didn’t run like one. Like, it wasn’t hopping. It was sprinting. Like a person would. I hate to say it, but Christina wasn’t that far off with her impression. It kinda did look like a velociraptor from the way its hands just hung in front of it, the way it was all hunched over and decrepit looking. Those…claws.”
I shuddered and for once I wasn’t cold.
He exhaled loudly. His eyes were thoughtful. “I just don’t believe it. You know? How…how? How is this shit real?”
“I don’t know. But it was.”
“There’s some Twatwaffle-gobbling monster out there.”
“I think a monster is a pretty good way to describe it. Or an ape, kangaroo and raptor hybrid.”
“F*cking terrifying.”
“F*cking right.”
“And that’s the infamous Sasquatch. Man, Harry and the Hendersons were way, way off.”
I managed a smile. “I don’t know what the hell it is. It doesn’t matter, does it?”
“Guess not,” he said, furrowing his brows. “Too bad we lost another camera.”
“But,” I said, reaching into my coat pocket and pulling out the small baggie. “We have this.”
He snatched it out of my hand. “Did it make it?”
“I think so. It stayed dry.”
He turned it over in his hands, a smile tugging at his lips. “You know, for once, we might actually have a damn good show.”
“I thought you didn’t care about the show,” I teased, watching his face carefully.
“You’ll always come first, as long as you let me put you first,” he said softly. Then his eyes perked up. “But I care about a paycheck too. And so do you.”
I sucked in my lips and watched the trees around us grow dimmer in the fading light. Soon it would be totally black and we’d be alone, waiting for morning.
“You know,” I mused quietly, conscious of the night fall, the need to keep quiet and hidden, “I don’t know why I thought being the camera person would keep me out of danger.”
“Perry, you couldn’t have known this would happen. I sure as f*ck didn’t.”
I shrugged and took some more jerky out of the bag.
“I guess I always felt like you were always so removed from everything,” I admitted between chews. “You know, being the host, you have to go first. I mean, you always had me out there ahead of you. I had to face everything alone, at least that’s what it felt like. I just assumed you were never as scared as I was, that you weren’t at risk. But…now I know you were. You’ve been with me every step of the way. Every scary ass door you made me open, you were right behind me. I’m sorry if I seemed…”
He raised his brows. “Disagreeable? Wussy? Wrong?”
I tapped his hand lightly. “You know what I mean. Now I know. We’ve always been in this together.”
He looked straight ahead into the forest as he brought his knees up to his chin and rested his arms on them. “I’m glad you finally caught up.”
A silence, heavy as paint, sank on top of us. With no roar or crackle of the fire, there was nothing around us but the quiet of the trees and the occasional chirp from an insect of some sort.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking about turning in,” he said after a yawn.
“It’s like six.”
He shrugged. “And I’ve had a long day. I don’t know if it’s the same with you and your…Jean Grey thing…but having to fight off Mitch really tired me out. I guess that’s the drawback for being Hulk. I feel like I could sleep for days.”
I was tired too but my mind and heart were too jumbled for sleep.
He eased himself out of the log and disappeared behind the trees, taking a whiz somewhere. When he came back, I was lying lengthwise in the log, my back to the wood.
“You don’t have to turn in too,” he said crouching down so he was at my level.
I nodded. “I know. And I don’t think I could sleep anyway but it’ll at least keep us warm.”
“How about you keep the first watch and I’ll take over the rest?”
That sounded like a plan.
He lied down in front of me, back against my chest, and I brought the blanket around so we were both tucked in. Despite the odds, it was actually comfortable.
A few moments passed in the dark, each second feeling infinitely longer than the last as I wrestled with my conscience.
Finally I whispered, “Dex?”
He twitched and grunted in response.
I waited some more. Then I said, “I’m sorry.”
Silence. I was starting to think he hadn’t heard me and was about to repeat myself when he answered.
“I’m sorry too, kiddo.”
And that was that. He sounded sincere and he sounded sad. And even though my forehead was almost pressed to the back of his neck, I felt the walls going up around him. A distance settled in where there wasn’t distance before.
I didn’t want to lose him. I couldn’t lose him. But I hadn’t given him much choice. It’s all I could think about as the minutes turned into hours and the sounds of the forest intensified.
The night was long.