Demon Fire (The Angel Fire Book 3) by Marie Johnston (top 10 novels of all time TXT) 📕

His chest heaved. Truth was, he’d run out of shit to say. He didn’t know anything about her. After her lame attempt at a backstory, he’d left it alone. He didn’t need to know the truth to rehab her and move her along.

But two weeks had passed and other than scabs that dwindled in size and severity, there was no progress. At all.

“I . . .” A furrow formed between her brows and he stopped, hanging on her words, hoping for something that’d explain why she acted the way she did. “I don’t want to move. I don’t want to get better. You should’ve left me in the snow.”

Acid ate at his gut. He’d thought of doing just that. For the briefest of moments, but he hadn’t. He wasn’t a hero, but he wasn’t a monster. And she didn’t care.

She had no idea what she did to him. His physical wounds were healed, but the emotional ones had gaped open as soon as he’d spotted her.

“But I didn’t,” he bit out. His volume increased with each word. “I didn’t let you die. I live in this place so I don’t have to care about any goddamn thing anymore, yet here you are. I had the balls to give a shit and all I’m asking is for you to do the same.”

He hadn’t yelled at a woman, at anyone, for two years. Memories assaulted him. The tormented face of his wife. The wicked gleam in her assailant’s eyes. The tearing in his chest that had nothing to do with the gunshot in his side.

“You don’t know what you being here does to me,” he croaked, trying to stomp those memories out like they were nothing more than a harmless campfire. But he might as well use a water gun on a forest fire. “The least you could do is take a damn shower.”

He spun and stormed out of the cabin. He had his boots on. A coat wasn’t necessary. Anger burned through him so hot that near-zero temps weren’t going to touch him.

He didn’t know where he was going, or what he was going to do now that he was stamping through the snow. He didn’t have a plan. Just like he hadn’t planned to be alone in a cabin with a beautiful woman who made him care about life again.

There was a lot to unpack in what Boone had said, but the overall message was simple: he’d been hurt, he didn’t want to be hurt again, and she was hurting him.

He cared about her and he didn’t want to. He cared about her because she was a living creature in his care. He cared because it was the right thing to do and he couldn’t help it.

She stared at the log wall. By now, she had memorized the long, elegant grains of the wood. Where the knots were. The bumps in the seams between the logs. She’d watched them like she was bingeing on Netflix.

She was pathetic and he was going to hate her for it.

That . . . bothered her.

The last thing she’d wanted to do was fall and have someone care about her right away. But her inaction when Winger had left was Boone’s punishment. He was stuck with her.

The least she could do was shower.

She pushed herself into a sitting position. The cabin was empty. The bathroom door gaped open like it was inviting her. She wasn’t filthy. She’d cleaned up. Boone regularly changed the bedding whenever she was in the bathroom and she hadn’t wanted to climb in and make a mess. Though her hair hung limp. No number of cat baths would be as good as a thorough shampooing.

Boone was a simple guy. The only toiletries he kept were shampoo, a bar of soap, and a can of shaving cream. The medicine cabinet held supplies for each when they ran out, and his toothbrush and toothpaste. He’d had an extra toothbrush. She even used it.

As much as she wanted to shrink away from the world, she’d been doing the bare minimum to care for herself. Not exactly the actions of a woman who gave up.

Time to be brave and do something a normal human would do. It all started with a shower.

Running the water, soaping her hair, washing off were entirely familiar and utterly foreign at the same time. It felt more like ten years had lapsed since she’d done this instead of five or so weeks.

Coming out of the bathroom, dabbing at her damp hair, she scanned the small living area. Boone was still gone. His coat hung on the rack by the door. Same with his snow pants.

She frowned. He was still outside?

She bypassed the bed. Her back tightened up, pulling at the scabs that remained. She ached with the effort not to crawl beneath the covers and try to forget who she was and what she’d done.

At the chest of drawers, she found a new shirt of his and a pair of sweats she’d swim in. With enough rolling and tucking and tying, she got them to stay on. Her heart hammered from the effort, but she didn’t dare sit on the bed. She had to keep going.

She made it to the kitchen, which was a trek measured in feet, not yards or meters. Her stomach rumbled. Between the fatigue, the mental fog, and her constant nausea, she’d rarely experienced true hunger since her fall.

She was starving.

Searching the few cupboards on either side of the oven, she found the oats that Boone was so fond of. A little brown sugar would make all the difference, but the cupboards were like the rest of the cabin. Plain and uncluttered.

Other than the oats, she found baking supplies like flour, along with staples like rice and pasta. Jars of tomato sauce and cans of vegetables. The freezer wasn’t any more exciting, but he had some meat packaged in white butcher paper. Since she found rolls of butcher paper in a cupboard, she assumed the meat