With her limbs anchored by timidity, Raven imagined herself calcifying and remaining there for eternity, but Silas’s gaze eventually found hers.
It took a frown, a questioning tilt of his head, and several more brutal seconds before he completely assessed her plight and approached with urgent footfall.
“What do I do?” she whispered through clenched teeth.
“Slow steps to your left,” he said, and with much effort and grit, she inched her way toward him.
“That’s it,” he said. “One step at a time.”
But some hostile force must’ve been hell-bent on making her day miserable because the cabin door opened and customers burst out, chatting and laughing. Silas tried to quiet them, but they were wasted attempts.
“A skunk!” someone shouted, and cries of distress erupted. They all retreated into the cabin, leaving Raven, with reflexes no match for the frightened animal’s, to receive a spritz as light as a morning breeze but the olfactory impact of a sucker punch.
ChapterNine
Raven heardSilas call her name from somewhere in front of her as she was doubled over, coughing, choking, retching, spitting. Her throat burned, her eyes stung, and she wished for a meteor to hit and end it all.
But Silas’s voice was persistent, and it yanked her from her hopeless spiral.
“Help me,” she said in a pathetic little voice.
“You’ve gotta listen. Don’t fucking touch your eyes,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
There was more talking, more commotion, but Raven was too focused on surviving the next breath to bother with interpretation.
Silas returned to her after a time and said, “I’m going to need you to open your eyes and walk to my truck.”
She pried open her lids, finding the sun had suddenly become too bright, but she zeroed in on Silas, who was gesturing for her to walk.
On wobbly legs, she followed him to his vehicle, where he instructed her to sit in the passenger seat covered in a tarp. All the windows, including the sunroof, were open. When they started moving, it didn’t dispel the stench of rotten eggs and cabbage as much as it convinced her she’d never smell anything else again.
“Are we going to the hospital?” she asked Silas, whose head was in threat of decapitation the way he drove with it out of the window.
“You’re not dying, Raven.”
“Honestly, for a second or two back there, I’d have preferred that.”
“You need to get the smell off with a bath, that’s all,” he said.
“We’re going to need a lot of tomato juice,” she said, already steeling herself.
“No tomato juice. That’s an old wives’ tale.”
“Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“My place.”
And what a place it was. Raven didn’t know what she was expecting, but she arrived at a beautiful bungalow with a perfectly kempt lawn. Silas kept his distance as he guided her to the back of his house.
“Stand right here,” he said, pointing to the corner of the porch. “Don’t touch anything.”
He disappeared through the glass sliding doors into his home, and with each passing moment, she felt herself become one with the funk. When Silas returned with a large garbage bag, she was thinking about her chances of survival if she flayed her skin.
“Okay, take off your clothes and put them in the bag,” he said.
“See, whenever I’ve heard those words from a random man, I’ve been at least a few shots deep into a bottle of tequila and can find the humor in it.”
“You’re not stepping into my house with those clothes on,” he said before turning away from her. “Go ahead.”
