Page 28 of Elijah's Hope
A woman couldn’t rely on a man to protect her. Not these days. Not without him wanting something back. Which meant I had to take care of myself. It was easy to get lost in what I was starting to feel for Eli, but I couldn’t forget what I knew about men. Even the men who were supposed to care about me.
The plane got closer to the ground and jostled a bit as it hit the runway. I could see from the hangars and the major airline signs that this was an actual airport, unlike what they had in Hope’s Point, but it wasn’t big by any stretch.
We pulled up to a private hangar and Eli moved after the pilot got out first to help me down the two steps to the tarmac. Doogie handed Eli a filled backpack which he took and that was all.
“No gear?” I asked. “You’re not thinking we can catch fish with our hands, like, bear style, are you? Because, my goodness, I bet the water has to be freezing. And I might like to think I have cat-like reflexes, but I sure as heck never caught one of Old Man Gunner’s kittens that always seemed to turn up every spring around his cabin. I tried hard, too.”
Doogie looked at me and blinked. “Think them might be the most words I heard from anyone all year.”
“We can rent rods at the place we’re going,” Eli said with a smile even as he took my hands. “Appreciate the ride, Doogie.”
“Your dime. Back here on Sunday?”
Eli nodded, then started pulling me along toward the hanger in front of us.
“Sunday.” I said. “That’s two days from now. Today’s Friday. So there is Friday night and Saturday night.”
He glanced at me over his shoulder with a smile that made my knees melt. “Why, someone back home taught you the days of the week real good.”
“Eli, don’t play with me,” I said, digging in with my knew hiking boots. “Where are we staying?”
“There is a small bed and breakfast place in town. They do a kickass brunch.”
He was avoiding what he knew to be my question.
He sighed when I didn’t say anything. Because he was already coming to understand that me not saying anything was actually me saying a lot.
“Yes, I got us one room. And no, nothing has changed. I still don’t have any expectations. I thought it might be nice to hold each other while we slept. We haven’t done that.”
We hadn’t done anything but hold hands and kiss. But he was too much of a gentleman, or at least trying to be for my sake, to say so. The idea of being held against his big, massive body. Listening to him breathe. Knowing I wasn’t alone in the dark? It would be unlike anything I had ever known.
So much so I wanted to skip the day and get right to that part.
Suddenly, it all caught up to me and I had to swallow a sob. “Why are you being so nice to me?”
His head tilted, and he gave me a strange look. “You ask me that like no one has ever been nice to you before.”
Oh right. The lie. “Don’t be ridiculous. I have an amazing family. I just…well, you seem so different from most of the guys I know, it’s hard to wrap my head around it all.”
That made him smile. “Then you don’t know the right guys.”
“Eli, I’m serious. You’ve been so amazing to me this whole time and I feel like…I’ve not done anything for you.”
“How many times do I have to tell you this is not about an exchange?” He ran his hand through his hair, which he did when he was getting agitated. That was something I knew about him now. “Look Shelby, I like you. I think we’ve established you like me. I’m not the best guy on the planet. I can be short-tempered and moody on my bad days, but I have more good days than bad. And every day with you has been a damn good day. So it’s easy to be the best version of myself. Why can’t you accept that for what it is?”
Because nothing was ever that simple, I wanted to tell him. Only I couldn’t because the Shelby he knew wouldn’t think like that. The Shelby I actually was thought like that all the time.
“Now, do you want to stand around the airport all day, or do you want to do some river fishing?”
“Fishing please.”
At least that wasn’t a lie. I really did love fishing. You sort of had to when, sometimes, it was the only way a girl was going to eat.
He took my hand and for the rest of the day, I didn’t think about anything other than him, the beautiful country we stood in with our poles dangling and the Dolly Varden fish I eventually caught and sadly had to let go because we had no means to cook him.
* * *
A bar in Nome
