Page 6 of Bone to Pick
And yet here we were.I have a bone to pick with fate, indeed.
“I was supposed to be sleeping my way through this storm tonight,” I muttered to Porter, who was grinning goofily at the fire. He didn’t appear to be listening to me, let alone moving from his comfy spot… by which I meantmycomfy spot. “When I came home this afternoon, I promised myself I wasn’t leaving the house again all weekend except to shovel. I brought in firewood. I downloaded a new novel. I got all the grocery foods you’re supposed to get for snowstorms—enough milk and bread and eggs to feed the whole town french toast, and I don’t evenlikefrench toast! It was going to bedelightful.”
Now my lovely three-day weekend was being delayed by a child’s revenge fantasy gone wrong.
“Sunday? Sunday!” I nudged his knee with my own none too gently. “Christ.”
Porter’s eyes had slid shut, and he startled guiltily. “I… yes? Sorry. I was just…” He yawned, his jaw opening so wide it cracked.
“Yes, I’m sure sonnet-bombing really takes it out of a man,” I said waspishly, but fucking Porter had already zoned out again.
Hauling his semiconscious self to my truck wasn’t going to be easy. Driving in these conditions wouldn’t be ideal either, but the storm was only going to get worse. It was now or never.
I yanked Porter up and slid an arm around him to help him to the door. The warmth of his body permeated my clothing layers, and thankfully, the scent of warm woodsmoke and mint wafted off him rather than the stench of vomit. Even though he hadn’t been in the cabin long, he still smelled like home…
I quickly cutthatthought off, then leaned away from him and took a deep breath of frigid mountain air to clear my head.
“Where do you live?” I asked, carefully navigating the shallow porch steps with him at my side.
“That’s easy.” Porter took a deep breath, like the cold air was clearing his head, too. “Little Pippin Hollow,” he said confidently.
Jesus Christ.Clearly, the cold wasn’t clearing his headmuch. He’d named a town over an hour away.
“I wasn’t asking where you’re from,” I said through my teeth. “I mean where do you live at Hannabury? An apartment? Dorm? Frat house?”
He snorted. “I’m twenty-six. Not really dorm or frat material anymore, Professor.”
This surprised me, perhaps more than it should have. Tonight’s debacle aside, Porter Sundayhadalways seemed more mature than my average undergraduate student—he never missed a class or turned in a paper late—but I hadn’t guessed he was a full four years older than most of the seniors.
Not that it mattered. Or made it any more acceptable to be unreasonably turned on by the feel of his heavy frame against me.
“Address. Please,” I repeated, picking my way carefully over the slippery ground to the passenger-side door of the truck.
He looked around us at the snow-covered branches of the encroaching forest. “Your address?” An adorable little divot formed between his eyebrows. “Don’t you know? Or are you like that guy in that movie from the film class where it’s all backwards and tattoos and… oh my God, does that make you the killer?”
He laughed so hard I lost my grip on his waist, but rather than tumbling to the ground, he managed to get his feet under him. Then he began stumbling down the driveway as if he planned to walk back to town in the cold, dark night.
“Mr. Sunday,” I snapped. “I haven’t killed anyoneyet. Stop where you are before you nosedive into the bushes.”
“I figured I’d check the mail in your box and figure out where we are,” he called back with a careless wave of his arm that nearly sent him sprawling again. “That’s what we call smart thinkin’.”
Jesus fuck. It wassomethingalright.
But it was a good thing Porter wasn’t facing me because I couldn’t help letting out a soft laugh, despite clapping a hand to my mouth to restrain it.
I hadn’t been charmed by a drunk college guy since Iwasa drunk college guy nearly a decade ago. I wasn’t sure why Porter Sunday was the exception… but then, he was the exception to a lot of people’s rules.
People at Hannabury College were drawn to Porter Sunday like he was the damned Pied Piper. Faculty members in every department found him charming and magnetic. Students regarded him as friendly and kind. And everyone knew the man was gorgeous, judging by how many of the men on campus got hearts in their eyes when he flirted with them.
But I’d still been surprised when Jean Chenault, my English department colleague and Sunday’s academic advisor, had come to me at the start of last semester and positively gushed about what a “brilliant young man” Porter was, with a “keen eye for social justice” and a “poet’s soul.” She’d begged me to find a spot for him in my Creative Non-Fiction class, and I had. Gladly.
Later in the semester, Jean had come to me again, asking for clemency on Porter’s behalf—the first and only time I’d known her to interfere on behalf of a student that way, which just went to show that Sunday could talk anyone into anything—and I’d told her sadly that if he had bothered to display his supposed “brilliance” in his classwork, I wouldn’t have had to fail him.
Another gust of wind blew in, and a sharp crack like a gunshot filled the snowy air, drawing my thoughts back to my current ridiculous predicament.
I whipped my head back and forth for the sound of the noise as Porter continued to meander slowly toward the street, shuffling along to a beat only he could hear.
Crack! The sound came again, this time followed by a strange creaking sound. My body identified the noise long before my brain did, and I began rushing down the driveway.
