The Long Game (Long Game, #1)(60)

Here I thought that having to wash my underwear by hand and hang it out to dry on the antlers had been the lowest point this week. Of course not. There was the stupid panic attack I just had. Me storming off out of the barn before the pottery class finished. And now this. I glanced back at the tire and I shook my head. Pressure clamped down in the mouth of my stomach. I wondered if I was going to cry.

I patted my eyes. Dry. The notion of me still not able to figure out when the last time I’d shed a tear came back. A bitter laugh escaped my mouth.

Another one followed, because God, I was a mess. Before I knew what was happening, I was cackling at the dark sky above my head. I let out my frustration. Although it quickly turned into anger. Disbelief. Desperation. “Shit,” I heard myself breathe out with a humorless laugh. “Fuck.” The cackling died out. My eyes fell on the tire. I kicked it. “Screw you, you stupid goddamn flat fucking tire!”

“That escalated quickly.”

My whole body stilled. My back stiffened.

“Motherfucker,” I murmured. Because I never swore but I was allowing myself to have this one moment.

“Oh wow,” Cameron said, and I heard his steps coming closer. “Please don’t stop on my behalf. I’m rather enjoying this.”

I looked over my shoulder, finding him with the amused expression I expected from his tone. “Always happy to hear about how my misfortune amuses you.”

He sobered up. “It doesn’t,” he countered, his gaze going up and down my body. Swiftly but thoroughly enough to make me pause. His throat worked. “It’s you who amuses me, Adalyn. And I can’t even figure out exactly why. Which bothers me. And fascinates me.”

I shook my head. “Is that supposed to be a compliment?”

“Hell if I know, darling,” he said, kneeling down. He checked the tire and straightened back up. “I’ll drive you back to Lazy Elk, come on.”

He pulled out his truck keys and unlocked the doors with an elegant click.

I opened my mouth, but he cut me off with a “Don’t bother.”

“How do you know I was going to speak? You were not even looking this way.”

“Because I’m not the only one who operates in two single modes,” he delivered in a sharp tone. “You do, too. You either overthink, or object. Both tirelessly, and usually directed at me.” He threw the copilot door open and shot me a look over the hood of the car. “You didn’t seem that bothered by me when I had my arms around you, so save the complaint and jump in the car.”

My arms around you.

My face flamed. “That’s different. Pottery and getting into an enclosed space with someone who could very well be planning to murder me and throw my body into some creek in the woods, hoping that putrefaction and scavenger creatures dismember it in a week so the bones sink straight to the bottom and all traces of the remains vanish are two very different things.”

“Oddly specific.” He tilted his head. “But creative.” The corner of his lips twitched. “I think you’ll survive this one drive, come on. I’ll call Robbie on our way back and let him know your car will stay the night on the farm.”

“That’s… completely unrelated to what I was saying, but okay.”

Cameron shifted on his feet, casually resting an elbow on the hood of the vehicle, looking like someone who had all the time in the world to pick my words apart. “Okay, you’ll get in the car? Or okay, I’ll continue bitching around out here, in the middle of the night, without a jacket on, just to spite me?”

I frowned. Spite him? I… All the fight left me. “I don’t do things to spite you, Cameron.”

“Jump in then,” he said, and I swore his voice softened like never before. “I promise I won’t feed you to the fish.”

“Thanks,” I clipped, closing the distance to his truck. “Just for the record, I want to state that I could know how to change a tire.” I didn’t. “You made an assumption.”

A strangled sound left him when I reached him and slipped under his arm to get inside. I ignored it. I also ignored how horrible I felt for being purposefully difficult and how good his car smelled. Just like he did. And when Cameron pushed my door closed, walked around the car, folded his large body into the driver’s seat, and did that thing where he placed his flexed arm behind my headrest and reversed the car, I ignored how squishy that made me feel inside, too.

Generally speaking, I did a whole lot of disregarding how he made me feel on the drive back to Lazy Elk. And Cameron must have been doing the same, because neither of us spoke a single word until he killed the engine in the driveway.

“I’ll ring Robbie when I get inside,” he said, his voice sounding so… deep and low and intimate inside the confinement of his truck. “We’ll get the tire sorted tomorrow.”

We. That we again, as if we were… an item. A team. My chest did some of that squishing at the thought.

“Thanks for doing that,” I told him. I was so tired of antagonizing this man. “I’d insist on calling Robbie myself, but I don’t think he likes me very much.”

Cameron seemed to think about something. “His kids adore you.”

I wasn’t sure if he’d said that to make me feel better or because it was true. “I wouldn’t go that far. María likes me, but a part of me believes she’s trying to prove to the rest of the team that I’m not a witch.” I shrugged. “And Tony is a teenage boy who calls me ma’am and barely talks to me.”