Page 27 of It's a Brewtiful Day
“So where the box hit you … you’ll bruise?” He looked horrified.
That wasn’t my intent. There was no reason for him to have any guilt. “It’s no biggie. If I run into the dishwasher, I bruise and likely sustain a cut too.Seriously. It’s crazy how delicate my skin is. Like onion skin.” I nodded, trying to assure him the cut on my forehead and the possible bruise on my ankle was truly no big deal. “Now, my turn.” My heart rate sped up. “Let me check you. Where did the door hit you?”
“Right here.” He pointed to a spot above his eyebrow. “But there’s no bump, and I didn’t get hit hard enough to leave a mark. I just left my pride on the door, is all.”
Still, I wanted the same moment. “Close your eyes. Let me double-check.”
He obeyed, and I scanned his face as quickly as I could while taking in everything. There was a little groove above the left side of his lip I’d never noticed before. Nesting in the arch of his eyebrow was a tiny mole, and his eyelashes fluttered under the light, much like my pulse. Dang, he was fine. But it wasn’t real. Guys like him didn’t exist except in romance novels.
I cleared my throat. “Glad you’re not hurt. Let’s get to the front, shall we?”
Elliot aimed the light in the direction we needed to leave.
“Wow, it seems less frightening with a little light.”
“Were you scared?” he asked as we advanced back toward the main area at a breakneck speed. Something metallic on his backpack jingled as we walked.
“No.” I shook my head and kept my focus onthe shadows in the doorway. “You?”
“Never.”
I knew that to be a lie; we had both been a touch unnerved but each for different reasons. I was worried about the unseen monsters and creepy crawlies; I had no idea what was making his skin crawl.
We stepped out into the main area with a sigh of relief.
“Doesn’t seem so bad now, does it?”
I glanced over at him, a strange feeling of desire building as I stared into his eyes. “No. Not at all.” I cast my gaze downwards, breaking our connection. “Maybe turn off your phone so you can save battery power. It’s not like we can plug it in or anything if it dies.”
“You sure?”
“Of course.”
The main area wasn’t pitch black like the windowless back room had been but was still dark, like being outside when it was a new moon. Well, maybe not even that bright; the town was still without power. The winds howled but at least it wasn’t pelting rain against the windows. There was a different scent too, the weakened smell of the pastries and coffee beans.
He turned off his phone and pocketed it. It took a few seconds, but surprisingly, it didn’t take too long to adapt back again to the absence of light. “So what do we do until we’re rescued? We have no cellsignal, and the town is in a blackout.”
“We’re completely trapped, aren’t we?”
“Not necessarily. Someone must know you're here?”
I snorted. “No, my sister thinks I was heading to a friend's house after work, so she's not expecting me home for hours.”
That had been my backup plan, that way I had an out when meeting Fox if things didn’t go well.
“Will she get concerned when you're not home at all?”
I hung my head. “No, not really. Me not coming home isn't a big deal, neither is me coming home in the middle of the night. My brother-in-law is a firefighter and loves the night shifts when it’s his rotation. Because of that, she sleeps like the dead.” It was scary but true. It was a massive undertaking to awaken her, even in an emergency. “She may be somewhat concerned in the morning, but it won’t be a big deal. What about you? Will anyone go looking for you?”
His gentle waves of hair moved in time with his head shaking. “Nah, I live on my own, and I was closing up when the rain rolled in. I had clocked out before the power loss, so if the boss was to check time logs and all that jazz, according to the computer, I'd already left.”
“So now what?” It wasn’t the worst place to be stuck, but still. At least I wasn’t trapped with someone I hated, and I shuddered imagining how thatwould’ve gone.
Elliot was a stand-up guy, sweet and charming, and relatively easy to talk with. In his presence, there was a comfort I’d never felt before—like I wasn’t trying to pretend to be someone attractive or funny or well-liked. With him, I was just me. The kicker was, he didn’t seem repulsed by it.
However, maybe it was the circumstances. Or maybe Cassie was wrong, and the type of heroes I read aboutweretrue. Maybe. It was so confusing.
“We wait, I guess. I don't know what else to do. I've never been trapped before. Have you?” He said it in such a way it came off as a joking way to ask.