Page 13 of Beacon

I grumble wordlessly and try to pull away from the hand.

It won’t let me. “Fuck it, Anna. Open your damn eyes.”

The words and tone are sharp enough to pierce the fog in my brain. I squint up at the perpetrator with a scowl. “I’m sleeping.”

“I know that. But you’ve been asleep for eight hoursnow. You slept through lunch, and you can’t sleep through dinner too. So sit your ass up.”

Mack.

The man talking to me and shaking me awake is Mack.

I scowl again as I push myself into a sitting position, blinking several times as I try to clear my mind. I do as he says automatically, not because he sounds particularly mean. He doesn’t. He’s clipped and matter-of-fact and not at all Mack-like, but he’s not mean.

I’m strangely embarrassed, however. “I slept through lunch?”

“You’ve been sleeping the whole damn day. Did you hit your head when those guys went after you?” He leans over, pulling out the hair tie I wound my bun with and loosening my hair so he can slide his fingers over my scalp.

He’s not caressing me, although his touch feels weirdly good. He’s looking for injury.

“I don’t think I hit my head. I don’t know why I slept so much. You should have woken me earlier.” The morning is coming back to me. The hike. The attack. The rescue. Then returning to the cabin and lying on the couch to close my eyes for a few minutes.

I must have been sleeping ever since.

He continues the inspection until he’s satisfied by the lack of bruising or tender spots on my head. He stepsback. “I thought rest was what you needed, but then you wouldn’t wake the hell up.”

He sounds gruff. Almost grumpy. But I realize he must have been worried about me, so I stifle my defensiveness. “Well, I’m awake now.” I smooth down my hair since it’s all messy from Mack’s hands. “Do you need help with dinner?”

“Nah. Got it done already.”

“Okay.” It takes effort to push myself to my feet.

“You don’t gotta get up,” Mack says, turning back from his route to the kitchen.

“I need to go to the bathroom anyway. I’ll just be a minute.”

After going, I wash my hands and stare at myself in the small mirror above the sink.

In the artificial light, my hair looks more brown than red, but it’s loose and thick and getting really long now. The rumpled waves hang halfway down my back and look oddly sensual despite their disarray. My skin is even paler than normal with the freckles sprinkled over my nose and cheeks standing out starkly. My blue eyes look too big and somehow wildly haunted against the dark smudges beneath them. And my lips look full and rosy. Almost swollen although it’s been two years since I’ve been kissed.

There are still the light scratches on my chin from the tree bark, but even that doesn’t shift the overall impression.

I’m not this pretty. I’ve never been this pretty. It’s surreal.

I really have no idea what’s going on.

Since Mack is waiting and isn’t in a patient mood, I shrug off the musings and head for the kitchen, limping on my bad knee. It hurts but more like bad bruises than a break or a sprain.

Mack is scooping stew into bowls when I reach the kitchen. There’s a working refrigerator here, so he was able to save and reheat the leftovers from yesterday.

It smells good again. I take my bowl and carry it to the table.

“I coulda brought it to the couch for you,” Mack mutters.

“I was up anyway, and stew is easier to eat from the table.” My first instinct is to be hopeful that he’s acting more like himself—thoughtful and considerate. But when I see his face as he sits across from me with his bowl, I realize that’s not what it is.

He was hoping I would eat in a different room so he wouldn’t have to talk to me.

He focuses down on each big spoonful he shovels out of his bowl and doesn’t look at me.

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