Sometimes being a girl is all sorts of awesome.
I thought he was going to be stubborn and sleep on the floor anyway. If he did, I decided, I wasn’t going to feel sorry for him or guilty. And I wasn’t going to take turns. I didn’t have any problems sharing a bed, so I wasn’t going to give it up.
I was about to share this realization when I felt the covers pull back and Liam slip into the bed.
***
The next morning started just as every other morning in Canada. I woke up slowly, my back slightly chilled, but the rest of me kept warm by the fur I had clutched in my fingers.
Except it wasn’t fur.
I pried my eyes apart slowly and then had to tilt my head at an equally sluggish pace since my face was smashed against Liam’s very human chest. With an exceptional amount of care, I unbent each individual finger, letting go of the sweatshirt Liam wore to bed. It took me no less than five minutes to fully disentangle myself from Liam, although even when I was finished his arm was still nestled underneath my waist. I wasn’t quite sure how to move away without waking him up, and waking him up was the absolute last thing I wanted to do. I couldn’t handle the horror on his face when he realized how I had cozied up to him in the night. My own horror was quite enough, thank you very much.
I weighed all the options and finally decided to just roll out of bed as quickly as possible. With any luck, I would be out and away from the bed before Liam woke up enough to figure out who had been where.
I counted to three and then made a leap for the floor. And find the floor I did. With my face.
“Scout?” Liam asked, his voice rough with sleep.
“I’m okay.” Nothing wounded but my pride. “Blanket reached out and grabbed my foot.”
“Beware the blankets,” he intoned like a bad horror movie. I peeked up over the side of the bed to make sure he hadn’t been spirited away by sprites and a Changeling left in his place, but he was already back asleep.
Chapter 18
Life in the cabin quickly took on a routine. Every morning Liam would head out to chop wood. It’s truly amazing how much you need to heat a small space, and it’s especially difficult to keep up with the demand when you’re using an ax as opposed to a heavy duty chainsaw. Sometimes I helped with the chopping, but not for very long. I normally would say anything a boy can do, I can do better, but chopping wood is an exception to that rule. Especially when the boy in question is Liam I-may-actually-be-a-descendant-of-Paul-Bunyan Cole.
On our first day there I discovered an old, tattered edition of The Foxfire Book along with War and Peace and Anna Karenina. I promptly ignored the two giant tomes, despite not having read anything since Liam bought me a Nicholas Sparks book at a gas station outside Milwaukee and I paid him back by reading a few choice selections aloud. However, up against the magnitude and overwhelming literary-ness of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, even Nicholas Sparks sounded appealing.
The Foxfire Book, on the other hand, quickly became my new best friend. My dad’s father had a full set of them on his bookshelf, and always liked to tell me how when my zombies came to overtake the earth I would need to remember where those books were so I could survive. Turns out, I did need the books to survive, although it was the wilds of Canada forcing me to live without modern amenities instead of the living dead.
We didn’t have a gun, which would have made hunting a bit easier, but I made spears out of limbs from the trees Liam chopped down. Pairing my Shifter super-abilities with the hunting tips I got from The Foxfire Book, I was able to kill something one out of every three hunting trips. Then, once again using the book as a guide, I would dress and cook my kill.
The first time I served Liam something he could actually eat I couldn’t stop smiling long enough to eat any myself. My heart hurt from wanting to call Jase, Charlie, and Talley and relay my many accomplishments, including my new mad cooking skills.
Every afternoon, just before the sun disappeared, we trained. I taught Liam martial arts, and he taught me to fight dirty. I taught him how to use a stick like a bokken, and he taught me how to stab someone with a knife. We both ended up bleeding onto the freshly fallen snow more often than not, and loved every single moment of it.
The only time our schedule changed was in December. I was making an impassioned speech about the injustice of using basket weaving as the go-to easy college major in my head while attempting to coax some splints I made into a hamper when Liam came stomping through the forest, a tiny evergreen tree trailing in his wake.
“What on earth are you doing?” It would have made more sense to hack it to bits where he chopped it down and bring it back piece by piece.
The smile stretched across his face made him look all of five years old. “It’s December sixth!”
“Yes, I saw that on the calendar you insist on etching on the wall.”
His boyish enthusiasm wasn’t the least bit marred by my cynicism. “It’s Saint Nicholas Day!”
“Of course. Saint Nicholas Day.” Whatever that was. “You do remember I’m not Canadian, right?”
The temperature had dropped throughout November, and now we looked forward to days where the high was only three ice cubes below freezing. Rarely did we venture outside without the full regalia of hats, scarfs, and gloves, but Liam had shed his ubiquitous Trapper John hat, letting snow crystals decorate his chestnut and copper hair. His teeth were a brilliant white and his eyes almost silver against the redness of his cheeks.
“Saint Nicholas Day is a European thing, not Canadian,” he said, smile still firmly in place. “My family always celebrated by putting up our Christmas tree and getting candy in our shoes.”
Europeans are so weird.
“So, this is our Christmas tree?” It was a small affair, not nearly as filled out as the fake tree my mom put up every year, but I kept my mouth shut out of fear of sounding too much like Peanuts’ Lucy. Not to mention, I would really hate for a dog - or wolf - to show me up by proving how a little love could make even the scrawniest of trees beautiful.
Our normal daily chores were suspended in favor of getting the tree inside and set up. Once it was firmly in place, I couldn’t help myself.
“O come all ye faithful…” I began.
“Joyful and triumphant…”Liam joined in.
We made it through the first three words of the second verse, and then realized we didn’t know any more.