Twist My Heart by Brooke Taylor (ebook audio reader .txt) 📕

Bear traffic? I set my spoon down with a clink. “I want to see.”

He held up a hand to stop me from getting up, keep me from getting too close. “It’s pretty dark out and she’s already headed out of sight. For the best. It’s not good for the bears to get comfortable around people.”

“Because they’re dangerous?”

“People? Yeah, very.”

I slumped back into my chair.

In an effort to keep him talking to me, I blurted, “I like your picture.” I couldn’t help but notice it was the only photograph out. It’d been next to a glass-topped box holding several service medals. Both items were on a bookshelf, not on display so much as stored there, laid down flat and gathering dust.

I’d been glad to see his house was free of knickknacks and photos. Having no memories of my own, I wasn’t really interested in seeing someone else’s home full of them. But then I came across the lone image of a much younger Nik, determined and proud, hugging a pouting preteen girl into his chest. He was standing next to a tightly smiling man and a woman with sadness in her eyes. My heart had shifted at the sight. “Is it of your family?”

I’d almost given up on getting an answer when his silence broke. “They aren’t here anymore.”

I cocked my chin to the side. I hadn’t seen any signs of family other than the photo. “They used to live here?”

“No. Two months after my first deployment, after that picture was taken, they were in a fatal car wreck.” His words and tone were matter-of-fact, smooth. It made him sound cold. No…cold was what he was being with me. This was something entirely different. Practiced, maybe? Guarded, definitely.

He braced his palms on either side of the sink, locking his strong arms straight. The muscles and tendons in his forearms stood out taut and corded. The expanse of his back spread out beneath his dark gray T-shirt as he drew a slow, deep breath. Between his intensity and his strength, I wouldn’t have blinked an eye had he pulled the sink right out of the counter.

I started to speak, but he cut me off. “Yes, it’s awful. Yes, I miss them. Yes, it hurts. It’s been eight years though and I’m over it.”

Clearly.

I probably should’ve been more sensitive and tiptoed around the subject, but I was eager to get down to it. He didn’t have to be stuck with me if he really didn’t want to be. And he was making it pretty clear he didn’t want to be. If Nik kept putting up walls, fine. I wasn’t going to beg him to take them down. But I sure as heck intended to get the truth out of him.

“I was going to say…I wonder what they’d think of you helping me.”

“Oh.”

Yeah. Oh. Their perfect war hero son and the armed and dangerous harlot thief he’d brought home. Kind of made the underaged hooker with a dog sound like marriage material. At least she could be reformed…woof woof.

Slowly, Nik’s muscles went neutral. “I think they’d be…I don’t know. Surprised?”

“Surprised by what I did, you mean?” Shocked, I was guessing. Horrified, even. Come on, tell me how I’m awful and you’re regretting helping me. I can take it. I hate me, too.

“Just…surprised.” The rumbling noise he made sounded like a laugh, but from the faraway smile in his eyes I couldn’t be sure.

I imagined he was with them in his mind—seeing their faces and remembering their voices. I envied him that, because in my mind there was only his face and his voice. Soon he’d be gone and I’d be alone, in jail most likely, remembering only him—his touch, his kiss, and his cold walls shutting me out for good.

It was several long, silent minutes before he spoke. “My dad would be totally mesmerized by your surviving the tornado.”

I sat back in the chair, pulling my knees up and hugging them to my chest. I hadn’t expected that, or Nik’s stony expression to soften as he continued speaking to the window.

“My dad was what you’d call a ‘prepper’. He was prepared for anything, specifically the end of the world as we know it. I’m still working down his supply of canned goods.” He cast a regrettable look at his bowl. “This crap is like ten years old, I think. Sorry. I cleaned out everything perishable before my last deployment and haven’t been here long enough to bother with stocking back up. Anyway, yeah, he’d think the tornado thing was really cool.”

Only a badass like Nik could get away with trivializing a tornado as simply a ‘thing’.

“I imagine my nearly dying in the bathtub wouldn’t be quite so enchanting.”

“He’d think your toughing it out in the ice bath showed incredible promise for the apocalypse. I probably get it from him.”

“You think an apocalypse is coming?”

“No, I find your ability to withstand pain and survive impressive,” he said to the trees outside, not to me. If it were to me, it might’ve given me hope. “My dad drilled into me early on how to turn pain into drive.” He gave his chin a shake, like he was disagreeing, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, he walked, soup bowl in hand, toward the larger windows in the great room.

I dropped my feet, swiveling the bar chair as I watched him move throughout the living area.

“My dad was out of his gourd. In addition to his whole prepper schtick, he was also a Squatcher. He’d take me on these survivalist adventures—living off the land, trapping, field dressing. But the whole time we were also hunting Bigfoot.” He flashed me an exaggerated eye-roll. “It wasn’t easy, but it prepared me well for being a SEAL, I guess. Hunting actual bad guys was more productive than hunting Bigfoot. I made the mistake of sharing that fun fact during training and now I fucking can’t shake it. I’ve gotten enough gag gift hats and shirts over the years to clothe