And she wasn’t listening to him either. She was thinking and thinking hard, nodding her head only so often to let the cops think she was paying attention, but I could tell from the way her brows came to meet each other above her bunny nose that it was all for show. Plus, you know, I heard her thoughts.
All right, so I had only heard two of them, but it was enough to make me want to open up her head and stay a while.
One thought was the more harmless, “I just want to go home,” which I assumed she meant was our home in Seattle. But maybe it wasn’t. Because did she consider that her home or did she mean her home, her parents’ place in Portland? After all, that whole “I’m moving out” thing was still on the table and I couldn’t be sure that a night of hot sex would eradicate that.
The other thought that blasted its way into my head, like I couldn’t have kept it out even if I tried, was a lot more loaded: “This is so f**king weird.”
The minute I heard that, I had to bite my actual tongue to keep from asking what was so weird. Not only did I not want the cops to think we were nutty telepaths, but I didn’t want to put Perry on the spot. She knew I could read her thoughts on occasion, but the less I drew attention to it, the better. I never censored myself but I knew Perry would, especially when it came to us. I was fortunate enough that she was sitting there and thinking away without shooting me nervous looks.
Not to say that she didn’t look a bit uptight, rubbing her lips together like she was on the receiving end of never-ending Chap Stick. She kept staring out the window, at the endless rows of trees as the cop car climbed higher and higher into drama llama land. There were so many f**king things I wanted to say to her, to do to her. And no, not just bending her over, but holding her hand, putting my arm around her. But maybe that’s just what was so f**king weird. Maybe it’s that things between us were so unresolved and we couldn’t even have a moment to resolve them.
I waited until we pulled up to Rigby’s to finally reach out to her.
“You doing okay, kiddo?” I asked before she stepped out of the vehicle, putting my hand on her knee.
She gave me a small smile and I was relieved that she didn’t flinch from my touch.
“Just tired,” she said.
I couldn’t hide my smart-ass grin. “It was worth it though.”
She nodded, her cheeks going pink. Score one for me.
I applied pressure to my grip and leaned in closer. “There’s more of that where that came from. We’ll just do what we can this morning, then get you to the hospital—”
“Dex, I’m fine.”
“And after we get you checked up at the hospital,” I went on, voice harder, “to make sure nothing gnarly happened to you yesterday—”
“You’re the one who should get checked out. You were buried under a ton of rubble when the cliff collapsed beneath you.”
“Yeah, but I’m clearly fine.” And that was my own thing that was so f**king weird, every day finding out that I wasn’t quite the man I used to be. “And I’m sure you’re fine too, but I’m being more careful with you from now on.”
She rolled her eyes.
I continued, giving her knee a final squeeze. “And then we are high-tailing it the f**k back to Seattle.”
Captain Asshole chose that moment to rap loudly on the hood of the car.
“Are you coming or what?” he said, opening Perry’s door.
I leaned across her and looked up at him. “I thought Canadians were supposed to be polite.”
“Not when Americans are wasting our time,” he said. “Now please, if you will, let’s get this thing over with.”
Clearly they still didn’t believe in the whole Sasquatch thing, even when we handed them what evidence we had. They wanted to write Mitch and Twatwaffle off like the victims of a mangy bear and move on. For once, I was totally cool with them not believing us. It would make things move a lot faster.
“Can you give us a moment?” I asked, and then reached for the door handle and shut it on him before he could answer.
My face was just inches from hers, and if this was weird, it wasn’t coming through. She just looked scared, like a baby deer. A totally f**kable baby deer.
Jesus, Dex, I told myself. Get a grip before you start imagining her on Animal Planet.
“Perry,” I said softly, my mouth too close to hers. Could I kiss her? Should I kiss her? Would she want me to? Did that belong only in the bedroom? Did it belong to only last night?
When would I know?
She swallowed, her delicate throat moving, and I had to fight the urge to run my tongue up it. I focused on those big blue eyes instead.
“I think maybe you should stay here in the car,” I told her. She twitched, shocked.
“Why?”
I shot Captain Asshole a quick glance before coming back to her. I was totally aware that I was leaning over her, encroaching in her space, but I didn’t care— she was going to have to get used to it.
“I know you don’t want to go back out there, and frankly I don’t either, but I’ll do it. They don’t need two of us to be the tour guide for the Snowcrest Llama Massacre. Besides,” I lowered my voice, “I want to get out of here. You stay here because of your injuries and then I can at least insist that they take us back to town early to get you checked out.”
She didn’t seem to think that would work—and probably didn’t appreciate me using her injuries as an excuse—but I knew she was grateful to stay behind in the car, even if the cops were a bit reluctant to leave her there alone.
Luckily, the plan did end up saving us a lot of time. Rigby came out of his house, still shell-shocked it seemed, and together we led the cops over the snowy ridge and to that damn cabin. I explained again what had happened to us over the last few days, Rigby piping up now and then to back me up. The cops were still set on the whole mangy bear idea, and if they weren’t so close-minded I would have felt sorry for them. I mean, I don’t know about you, but personally I’d want to know if some monster was lurking in the woods, ready to rip your arm off.
Speaking of mutilated corpses, the decapitated Twatwaffle was evidence enough for them that this was the work of a crazy animal. They wanted me to lead them into the woods and show them where Mitch was, but I just scribbled it down on the map, staunchly refusing to go myself. The cabin was hard enough to revisit, the horror that we experienced just waiting to relive itself in my brain. There was no way I’d be taking them into Mitch corpse territory, and especially when Rigby and I both knew that the beast could still be out there, perhaps dead or perhaps merely wounded by his shotgun. Either way, I used the opportunity to remind them that I needed to get Perry to the hospital, and one of the officers agreed to take us back to town, especially since they had to organize a bigger search party.