Page 50 of Elijah's Hope
Fuck!
“You need more time,” I said. “To get to know her. Two weeks of pussy is not fucking love.”
He got up in my face. His jaw hard, his eyes pretty fucking cold. He was practically growling. It was a harsh reminder that, while most times Eli was pretty easy going, when he was not, he seriously wasnot.
“I don’t know what your deal with her is. You’ve been shit to her since she got here when she has managed to charm the pants off everyone else. Hell, Zeke lets her play with his son and you know what a sonofabitch he is. Maybe you’re jealous of what I found. Or maybe you’re just an asshole around women. But when you talk about Shelby in front of me, you do it respectfully. She is not pussy. She is Shelby and she is mine. Got it?”
What the hell was I going to do?
I have to tell him the truth.
I did not want to tell him the truth. She was supposed to be gone in two days. Two weeks of fun and fucking then she was supposed to be gone.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “I got it.”
He backed off and raised his chin at me. “We’ve been cool for the few years we’ve been stuck here together. Don’t let a woman ruin that.”
He was right. We’d been more than cool. We’d been friends. And friends weren’t something I had a lot of. Not before and not after, which is how I marked time in my life. BP/AP. Before Prison/After Prison.
I wasn’t going to let him down. No matter how much he might hate me for it. He could have his two days but after that, Shelby was going home. Maybe I would be spared. Maybe when he asked her to stay, she would do the smart thing, the right thing, and say no.
* * *
Shelby
“Are you serious?” I asked Eli. We were together in my cabin. We had “cooked” again, which meant hot dogs and beans in a pot on the stove. Eli had brought over another one of his fancy bottles. Champagne again. To celebrate he’d said.
Then he’d gone and done it. Done the thing that I thought I wanted. The thing I had hoped for. He’d asked me to stay.
“Why do people keep asking me that?” He sat next to me on the bed and took my hand in his. “I wouldn’t ask if I wasn’t serious.”
“I can’t think.” That, at least, was the truth.
“I know it’s a big deal. I know you would be giving up a lot. But there is some work here in Hope’s Point. There is an Indian reservation not too far north that might need teachers. Heck, Zeke and Eve’s kid is going to need a tutor. But listen, that would only be temporary. I’m up here for the money and this place has paid really well. In another year, maybe two, I’ll have us set up so we can go anywhere you want.”
“Eli…” I said, stopping his enthusiasm. “It hasn’t even been two weeks.”
That was also true. I knew how I felt. I obviously knew how he felt if he was asking me to stay. It wasn’t logical or sensible or anything like that, but I was pretty sure love happened that way.
At least it did in books and movies.
Not in my life. Never in my life. Only here I was in Alaska. Sitting on a bed with this ridiculously handsome, good man who made me hot dogs, brought me champagne and made it so I never had to fake an orgasm.
And he wanted me to stay with him. Here. As far away from my problems as I could get. He would care for me, protect me, and I wouldn’t have to rebuild my life from scratch in some strange place.
It might have been really wonderful, if wasn’t so awful to know that if he knewme, the realme,he probably wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
The thought was heart crushing. How had I gotten to this point where Eli had the power to crush me?
This had not been part of the plan!
He squeezed my hand. “I’m not asking you to marry me, Shelby. Itistoo soon for that. I’m asking you to stay so we can see if what we have is real. I feel it. I know you feel it. And if we’re right, then we owe it to ourselves to try.”
“You want me to stay, here, in this cabin?”
“Yes, I can afford the rent. We might have to make accommodations for the next couple weeks. The other women are meant to stay here, too, but we’ll figure that out. Worst case, I could ask Eve to put you up until this place is open again. Or there is Zeke’s old cabin, although he seemed reluctant to let us use that one. That’s why we had to stagger all the visits.”
“But what about your work?”
