Cora Carmack - Finding It

I slid down off the sink, my legs still shaky from our kiss, and Hunt turned.

He said, “I’m sorry, Kelsey. I—”

“Don’t, Jackson. Just don’t.” Whatever it was, I didn’t want to hear it.

I reached for the door, and he pulled me back to him once more.

He pressed a hard kiss against my temple, sweet, but still tinged with anger. He said once more, “I’m so sorry.”

Then led me out of the bathroom.

The owner had fled after his little declaration, thank God. Hunt pulled my seat out for me once more, but there was an intensity between us now that hadn’t been there before.

Before there had been attraction and maybe friendship. And those things were there still, but had morphed into something more. The attraction was stronger and tinged with the darkness that only comes when you can’t have what you want.

Each step, each breath took on a voice, and I could hear it whisper why . It wasn’t enough to think of this gap between us as a line or a wall. I needed more than a metaphor. I needed to know what exactly stood between us.

We spent the rest of the evening pretending that the darkness wasn’t there, pretending we hadn’t just shared the most intense kiss of my life. We forced ourselves to talk and laugh over anything that could be even remotely deemed funny, like the fact that the food I’d ordered was some strange soup that looked like a mixture of oil and blood and smelled like whatever dead thing the blood had come from. I used one of my dares to make him switch food with me because if I had to touch that stuff, I was going to be sick all over the table.

By comparison, his meal was mashed potatoes with onions and some kind of blackened, oozing sausage. I would definitely be avoiding the sausage, but the mashed potatoes looked promising. That is until I took a bite and found lumps of something sweet that might have been apples mixed into the potatoes.

Heaven and Earth, my ass.

We kept up our facade through the entire meal. Hunt took my hand as we stood to leave, and we both thanked the owner, who had been smiling like a maniac since Hunt and I stepped out of the bathroom together.

He came forward and grasped our linked hands in his.

He said something in German that I didn’t understand, but I got the feeling it was a blessing, not that we deserved it.

Our hands stayed linked as we made our way through the darkened city to the train station where we’d first arrived.

“We’re leaving now?” I asked.

Hunt nodded. “I thought you’d rather travel through the night. But we can find a place to stay if you want.”

He didn’t look at me as he offered. Clearly, the idea of being anywhere near a bed with me right now was out of the question.

“No, the train is fine. We have a schedule to keep after all.”

I’d like to think I kept most of the sourness out of my tone, but the slow sink of his shoulders said otherwise.

I MIGHT HAVE said to hell with Hunt’s issues and demanded we find a place to stay if I’d had any idea what I was in store for that night. I thought we’d be on another overnight train like the one we’d taken from Budapest to Prague. Instead, he’d lined up a series of seven trains. SEVEN. For a total of roughly fifteen hours.

It was a recipe for disaster (me being the disaster, of course).

The first train was just twelve minutes and took us to another station in Germany. From there we had just over ten minutes to jump on board another train to Basel, Switzerland. That one was about two and a half hours and filled with restless attempts to sleep on my backpack or the window or whatever surface looked appealing to my bleary, bloodshot eyes. Because I sure as hell wasn’t talking to Hunt, not without biting his head off.

We arrived in Basel just before midnight with six minutes to transfer to our next train. Hunt had to pick up my bag and pull me along at a run to keep us from missing our train.

I collapsed into the first two open seats I could find and said, “Remind me to never go on The Amazing Race. This is not as fun as you would think.”

We took that train, transferred to another in Olten, and arrived in Bern, Switzerland, roughly an hour later. We weren’t in any one spot long enough to even think about sleeping, which left me plenty of time to seethe in my frustration.

“Just keep thinking of Italy,” he said. “It will be worth it when we get to Italy.”

“Is there a shower, the world’s softest bed, and a professional masseuse waiting for us in Italy? Because that’s the only way I can see this being worth it.”

Exhausted, we arrived in Bern and I said, “Where to, captain?”

He pulled out the printed schedule that the ticket seller in Heidelberg had given him and flipped through the pages of timetables and information.

When he found the page he was looking for he said, “Oh.”

“Oh? What does oh mean?”

“We have a little more time for this transfer is all.”

“How much is a little more time?”

He scratched absentmindedly at his jaw, still staring at the paper instead of meeting my eyes.

“How much more time, Jackson?”

He offered a sheepish smile and said, “Five hours?”

“My brain is too foggy with sleep to pick which way to kill you, but give me five minutes and I’ll figure it out.”

“Kelsey—”

“Sharks,” I said. “I would like to give you a few paper cuts and feed you to sharks.”

“I don’t think there are sharks in Switzerland.”

“Then I’ll find an aquarium!”

“I’m sorry. I should have paid more attention when she gave me the itinerary. I was just concentrated on getting there. But it’s going to be okay. We’ll kill some time. Maybe go get some food.”

“It’s one in the morning, Hunt.”

We did manage to find a McDonald’s that was open, though. So, I had to eat my words.

I said, “McDonalds in Switzerland is not exactly my idea of an adventure.”

He didn’t have to know how much I was worshiping these fries at the moment, though. After our last food adventure with apple mashed potatoes and blood soup, McDonald’s fries were more valuable than gold. When we’d approached the restaurant and gotten our first whiff of fried goodness, I was two minutes away from falling on my knees and proposing to the pimply counter attendant just to get some freaking fries.

I made myself eat slowly, but every time Hunt looked away I did a Hoover vacuum impression and inhaled the stuff.

With my stomach achingly full, we made our way back to the train platform. It was summer, so it wasn’t exactly cold, but the night wind blew in from the openings on the tracks, and I shivered. We found a bench on the platform our train would leave from roughly four hours later, and started making camp. Hunt pulled a jacket from his backpack, and handed it to me. I turned it around backward, and used it like a blanket.

“Come here.” Hunt took a seat and pulled me closer to him, his hands reaching underneath the coat to touch my shoulders.

“What are you doing?”

“Just relax. You’re tense and tired.”

And bitchy. That was the word he didn’t and probably wouldn’t say.

“You wanted a professional masseuse in Italy. Well, this is Switzerland, and I’m no professional, but I bet I can get the job done.”

His thumbs pressed into muscles that ran from my shoulders to my neck, and I swear my whole body went numb for a few seconds. Words fled my mouth, and all I managed was an unintelligible noise of approval.

Screw having a professional masseuse. It was so much better when he touched me.

“Is that okay?”

Okay was beyond my vocabulary at the moment. My eyes nearly rolled back in my head and I said, “Huh?”