sign of the storm Viktor kept referring to.
“So how exactly were you thrown into the deep end?” I asked.
Viktor grunted in response. He was so reluctant to talk to me about himself.
“Do you mean like when you moved to America?”
“And sometimes before. I travelled often.”
“For work?”
Viktor nodded again. He watched as the water slowly started moving in the pot, the heat causing it to mix and churn, steam starting to rise from the surface.
“What did you do?” I asked.
Viktor grunted again, visibly annoyed. “You ask a lot of questions.”
“And you refuse to answer them,” I replied hotly. “Why don’t you want to share anything about your life with me? What are we doing here?”
He glanced up at me, and his eyes weren’t kind.
The look he gave me fueled my ire, and my face was as unkind as his when I responded. “We’re not just fucking around, are we? Or is it just about sex? A romp between the sheets since you’re always alone, a reason to get off and that’s it?”
Viktor pulled up his lips in what looked like a snarl. “Are you suggesting I’m using you?”
“I’m suggesting it comes across that way if you don’t want to share a little about yourself with me.”
He looked at the pot, and I focused on the water swirling around, too, silently seething. He wasn’t obligated to tell me anything about himself. He didn’t owe me anything, did he? Bullshit. Of course he owed me something! He couldn’t just take my virginity, make me feel like a queen between the sheets, and pretend that what was happening between us didn’t exist otherwise.
The fact that he was so hesitant to answer made me suspicious. What was he hiding? Why didn’t he want to tell me anything other than where he was from? I felt like I had to play Twenty Questions just to get him to say anything at all, and even then, his answers were vague.
And after he’d questioned me like I was some sort of criminal when he lifted me out of mudslide.
How had he ended up here? Men who lived alone did so for a reason. What was he running from, hiding from? Viktor didn’t seem like the type that would run and hide from anything. In fact, with his face twisted in a snarl like that and his muscular build and large frame, he was the type of person people usually ran and hid from.
I changed the topic, saving my questions for later. My frustration was clear in my tone. “I need to go home at some point, you know.”
Viktor looked up at me and frowned. The water had started boiling, and he lifted the pot higher, effectively ‘turning down’ the heat. We sat together in silence, staring at the pasta boiling for some time. He didn’t answer me.
“Do you think the roads will be repaired so I can get back to Grizzly Falls?” I asked.
“Why?” he asked.
“I need to finish my last job,” I said. “And I’m sure my mother is worried sick.”
His scowl shifted and became less angry. If I didn’t know better, I would think he was worried.
“Then I need to leave Grizzly Falls soon, too.”
Before Viktor could respond, a loud crack of thunder echoed around us. I looked up and noticed clouds coming from the mountainside, clouds so dark it almost turned the world to night. I hadn’t thought it would come so soon. I hadn’t thought it would come at all.
“It’s going to be a bad one, isn’t it?” I asked.
Lightning crackled across the sky, a crooked finger that scraped the rocks on the mountainside.
“Yes,” Viktor said. “This is pretty much done. We should get inside.”
He picked up the pot of boiling water, holding it by the handle as if it weighed nothing, and started toward the cabin. I followed, and the first raindrops fell onto the canopy of leaves above, making a pattering sound. The drops that broke through the leaves were fat, splashing on my skin.
We were barely inside the cabin when the rain fell so hard I could barely make out the other side of the valley. I watched as muddy rivulets ran down the side of the mountain I could see.
I wouldn’t be going home any time soon. I’d been here for three days. I had four left. Four days in which I needed to get home, pack my life, and leave Colorado. The text I’d sent to my mom hopefully calmed her fears, but she was probably terribly upset. I