Page 24 of Austin
Chapter Six
Ellie gave Kristenblankets after she confessed that she’d “forgotten” her sleeping bag. Later, after she and Austin had excused themselves, she arranged the blankets on the rear seat while Austin rolled out his canvas bedroll. After climbing into the back seat and closing the door, she stretched out as far as she could. It was tight, but she tended to sleep on her side anyway. Except that the seat was justthat muchtoo short andthat muchtoo narrow. She could open the door and let her feet hang out. Yes. That was one solution. Awkward, but doable.
“Sure you don’t want to come back here?” Austin asked about five minutes after she’d opened the door—possibly because the dome light wouldn’t go off and it was keeping them both awake. And running down the battery.
“Fine.” Kristen got out of the truck and pulled on the blankets, bundling them into her arms and then carting them to the rear of the truck, where she dumped them unceremoniously on the open tailgate.
“Want me to build the divider?”
“Bite me,” she muttered, sounding more like Whitney than herself as she climbed in to the truck bed. She stretched out on top of his canvas bedroll, pulling the blankets up over her. The canvas made a decent barrier and since she was fully clothed, it wasn’t that cold. Really.
It felt so good to stretch her legs all the way out that she was willing to put up with a little cold.
“And thank you for not asking me where to bite,” she said as Austin rolled over, presenting his back to her.
“Saving that for later.”
“Right.” She snuggled deeper into her blankets, wishing he hadn’t said that. What would it be like to be nipped with those very white teeth? Her stomach tightened as a warmth unfurled deep inside of her. Even on top of the canvas, she was too close to the man, and it didn’t help matters that she really loved the way he smelled. But she was not sleeping head to feet. That would be admitting defeat.
Da head. Da feet. Hahaha.
She was losing it.
Kristen sucked in a breath, thought back to saner times, when she wasn’t sharing the bed of a truck with a bull rider, when she’d had a nine-to-five job. When she was traveling along her planned trajectory. Amazing how one unplanned event could throw everything off track so effectively. And try as she might to get things back on track, nothing seemed to work. The loss of perceived control was devastating to her world view.
‘Perceived’ being the key word. Yes, you could do all the planning in the world, but shit happened…and you ended up sleeping in the back of a truck with a bull rider who was more attractive than he had any business being.
What was a person supposed to do?
Suck it up. Roll with the punches.
Easy to say, hard to do, but she couldn’t keep living as she was, on the edge of anxiety, ashamed of the fact that she’d failed. She needed to get some perspective.
She needed to stop feeling as if she wanted to snuggle closer to Austin, and not just for warmth.
Really…what would that get her?
Answers to questions she’d once wondered about…questions she was still wondering about.
Sometimes it was best not to know; not to add new complexities into a life she was already having a hard time managing.
“Kristen?” Austin spoke softly, but his voice sounded overly loud in the quiet desert night.
“Yes?”
“Go to sleep.”
How, when she was so damned aware of him that her entire body was throbbing? She let out a long breath. “I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
He rolled over so that his face was close to hers. She felt the warmth coming off him, the warm scent rising from the bedroll he was enveloped in. Felt like leaning in. Getting closer.
A shiver went through her and it wasn’t because of the cold.
“Austin…”
“Yeah?”
