Chapter 10: The Loft

We pumped the stolen diesel into Tor's tank until one in the morning.

Tor stood over the gauge with a flashlight, saying numbers to himself like a man at a graveside.

Nine thousand gallons would run the farm until spring, if we were careful, and I felt it in my knees.

I had won, and the win had a number, and the number was a winter.

Wyatt backed the trailer into the Quonset shed and didn't say a word.

He hadn't said a word about the list since the truck stop.

I couldn't stop watching him.

The house was full.

Forty-one people were asleep in every room.

Bets was in the shack with the net murmuring, and Jonas was curled in the recliner.

I stood in the yard under the stars with my arms wrapped around myself.

Every nerve I owned was awake.

In the barn, a light was on.

I climbed the ladder to the hayloft before I let myself decide.

He sat on a bale by the open loft door with his boots off.

A horse blanket lay over his knees, and he was looking at the dark.

The air smelled of hay and diesel and cold, and a barn cat watched me from a beam.

"You should be asleep," he said.

"So should you."

"I'm not tired."

"No," I said. "Neither am I."

I crossed the loft and stood in front of him.

He looked up, and his face in the lantern was open and tired and wanting, and nothing in it was a stranger's.

"You said something in your sleep," he said. "In the kitchen."

"I know."

"You said I told you something I haven't said yet," he said.

"Wyatt."

"Tell me what that means."

"Not tonight," I said.

I took his face in my hands, and I kissed him.

It was a hard kiss, not a polite one. I had been wanting it for fourteen days and eighty-seven before that.

He made a sound low in his chest and his hands came up to my hips and hauled me into his lap.

I straddled him on the bale with the blanket falling away.

His mouth was warm and tasted like coffee, and his stubble scraped my chin.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Died Saving Me on Day 87, So Now I Save Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.