Finally Ours (Harborview #2)

7. Angela

7

ANGELA

I stare at my face in the mirror under the dim lighting of the cabin’s tiny bathroom. The mirror itself is so cheap it’s like a funhouse mirror, distorting my features as I move away from it and only showing my true features when I’m up close.

My skin is pale, there are bags under my eyes, and my curly hair is starting to frizz. I blew it out yesterday morning but it got damp in the rain, and that’s all it takes. I take it out of the ponytail it’s been in and shake it out. The curls are coming back to life. I’m not wearing any makeup because we were going for a hike, but I guess that’s okay. It would be wrecked by now anyways, and I don’t have any makeup remover with me. All the owner of the cabin has in here is a tube of toothpaste (thank God) and some hand soap.

Sadly, I still care what Carter Steel thinks of my appearance, so I pinch my cheeks to make them appear less deathly pale, like I’m some sort of heroine in a regency romance novel. I take one last look and decide that’s as good as I’m getting.

I walk back into the main room of the cabin and find Carter lying on his back in bed, flicking a coin into the air and catching it as it falls back down. Our entertainment options are pretty limited in here, so I go to sit by the window. It’s still storming outside.

I can barely make out the ocean through the storm, even though this cabin looks out over it. The whole world is blanketed in gray—gray clouds, gray cliffs, gray sea. Even the pine trees, now coated in ice and snow, are mere dark wisps in the landscape.

It’s beautiful, though. I’ve never really seen a storm like this. Not up close, anyway. Usually my moms and I cuddle up in the den when there’s a storm, watching endless movies and eating snacks.

It’s also really, really cold. The cabin is clearly not well insulated, and the wind whistles through it, cutting through the silence between Carter and I. Our conversation earlier only has me more confused.

Carter Steel claims to have a chink in his armor. A weakness. He actually admitted that to me. I’m going to make it my goal to find it, I vow to myself. If only to see the shock on his face when I figure it out.

And also, I’m curious. What makes this man weak? Is it his PhD? Is he worried about academic success? He certainly seemed stressed about it when we spoke about it yesterday. But no, he’s probably just worried about finishing it. I doubt he’s actually unsure about the research. I remember being in class with Carter in high school. He was never the first hand up, no, that’s too obvious for him. He’d wait it out, seeing what his classmates said, how they fumbled to get to the right answer, and then he’d raise his hand, and smugly make his point, which was always correct, brilliant, and far above what everyone else in the class had come up with. I used to roll my eyes at it, but I secretly found his intelligence kind of hot.

A man like that won’t be feeling vulnerable about the quality of his academic work. Unless he’s had a personality transplant. It must be something else. I wrap my arms around myself and continue to consider it as I stare outside.

“Cold?” Carter asks.

“A bit,” I admit, though as I say it, I start to shiver. “Argh, I should have worn more layers.”

“It was sunny when we left Acadia, and you are wearing long sleeves,” he says.

And then I feel something brush my shoulders. The blanket from the futon—Carter is draping it around me.

“May I?” he asks, his voice cracking a bit.

I nod.

He wraps the blanket around me, and then comes around my front, and tucks the edges in. His hands come to rest on my shoulders, and I can feel the warmth coming off of him. Carter Steel feels as warm as a roaring fire, despite the cold and wind outside.

His hands drift upwards, and I do nothing to stop him as he gently frees my hair from the blanket.

“Beautiful,” he says.

I give him a blank stare.

“Your hair, Ange. It’s beautiful. Like an angel.”

I feel my face flame at that.

“I’m serious. You’ve basically got a halo.” He brushes a curl behind my ear, and the heat of his fingers scorches my cool cheek. I want to lean into him—his warmth, his wit, his wisdom—but I’ve done that before and it left me in ruins.

I lean my head back ever so slightly away from him. Carter is Carter though, so of course he notices, and immediately removes his hand from my face.

“Sorry,” he says.

“No, don’t be. Who doesn’t like being called an angel,” I joke. “And I was really cold.”

He smiles at me, and it’s not a full grin like before. It’s more subdued, like he’s holding something back. I add it to my mental folder now labeled “The Chink in Carter’s Armor,” and promise myself I’ll obsess over what it means later.

“What should we do?” I ask.

“I guess we could turn in early? Hal doesn’t have any curtains in here so we’ll be rising with the sun. And if the storm is clear in the morning then we can get an early start hiking back to town.”

“Oh,” I say, my anxiety over our sleeping arrangements coming back in full force. The futon is small, but we could probably both squeeze onto it. Problem is, if we do that, I’ll probably never fall asleep. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” I blurt.

“What? No, Ange, we’ll both fit fine.”

I’m not sure how to explain. “It could be a king bed and it wouldn’t matter,” I mutter.

Carter takes a step back from me, and his eyebrows fold in a bit. I’ve hurt him.

“No, not like that. It wouldn’t matter if it were you, or anyone else. I have insomnia. I can’t sleep next to anyone.” I feel myself blush again. The only people who know about this are my moms and Cat. It’s not anything to be ashamed of, but I’m a private person.

“But all those years ago, when we?—

“I was up for nearly the whole night,” I explain.

“I remember it took you a while to go to sleep. Or maybe I just thought you had. But we stayed up talking for hours and I guess I drifted off.”

“Yes, that’s what happened. I really appreciated you staying up with me though, even if you didn’t know what it meant,” I admit. It’s the one part of that memory that I treasure: having someone wait out most of the long night with me. Having Carter by my side when I would normally be tossing and turning, anxious and alone.

“How do you handle it? Being a nurse and not being able to sleep?” He cuts right to the heart of the issue, as always.

“A strict routine. I normally get seven or eight hours, but I have to be regimented about it. I exercise after work. I listen to white noise. I wear ear plugs.”

“That makes sense,” he says. “I can see why a routine would help. I’m having trouble sleeping at the moment, too.”

I shoot him a quizzical look.

“My brain is just…always on ,” he says. “It’s full of my research, and I can’t get it to shut up.”

“I know what you mean. After a long day at the hospital my brain is firing at a million miles a minute just trying to process everything that happened during the day.”

“What’s the craziest thing that you’ve ever seen in the ER?” he asks.

I can’t help but roll my eyes, because everyone always asks that. “I mean the craziest things are always the most traumatic,” I say. “Physically, I mean. Things like car accidents.”

He’s quiet, digesting this for a few moments. And I find I like his silent respect, his reflection, I imagine, on what it must mean for me—to be witness to so much pain, but also to be there helping to fix it.

“But there have been a few flashlights shoved up people’s butts,” I say, cracking a smile and not allowing the moment to become too heavy.

Carter laughs, and I try not to smile again at the sound of it.

“What’s the craziest thing you’ve ever seen in field work?” I ask.

“One year I went to Iceland to tag puffins and we had to camp during the trip. The wind was so loud at night I thought my tent would get blown away. But during the day…it was magical. It was my first time really working up close with puffins, and I fell in love, right there.”

“Do you have pictures?” I ask.

“Yes, but I won’t waste phone battery showing them to you. We can look at them when we get back to Harborview.”

Right—Harborview. For a moment, I forgot that Carter and I aren’t at home. That we’re in some alternate reality in which we’re actually speaking to one another without immediately arguing. Back in Harborview, this type of conversation would never happen between us.