Names for the Dawn by C.L. Beaumont

Author:C.L. Beaumont [Beaumont, C.L.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Carnation Books
Published: 2021-11-16T00:00:00+00:00

It was dusk when we pulled up at Toklat. My neck and arms felt prickly from a full day in the sun, and my eyes stung as they blinked through the gathering dark. We walked away from the freshly washed truck, and I stifled a yawn.

“Later than I thought we’d get back,” I said, just to say something. There had been a low thrumming between us since that moment out in the grass, building with every mile we traveled back to our cabins. I didn’t know what to do with it, even as I yearned for it, pulling me closer to him like cold hands to a flame, wondering how close I could get before I burned.

I was walking too close to him. Too far away. My voice was too quiet, too loud.

“You drive like an old man,” he said, matter-of-factly.

A surprised laugh tumbled out of me. “You just saying that to get a rise out of me?”

“Not at all.” We passed the turnoff to his cabin, but he didn’t break his stride. “You’d be laughed out of London if you tried to drive like that there.”

“You don’t have to look out for dangerous wildlife in London. Mudslides and avalanches.”

“Just traffic and thousands of pedestrians.”

He probably thought I’d never seen a city in my life. That I had never walked alone through New York, reading directions I’d written on my hand; or that I’d never watched the Space Needle break through Seattle’s dawn fog.

But then we reached my front porch, no more time to say anything else, and I felt young and naïve, shifting my feet on the steps, desperate to keep him standing there for a few more seconds. “My shift starts at seven tomorrow.”

He nodded. “I know.”

I could hear my own breathing. I was aware of being about to break some unspoken rule between us—that this new, fragile thing only existed out in the backcountry, among the flowers. But the thought of eating dinner alone felt like ripping away the memory of the sun on my skin, and I didn’t want to be in the dark. I peered around to make sure we were alone, nobody looking. “You want to join me?”

I regretted the words the instant they left my mouth.

He looked flustered. “Oh, you don’t have to invite me in. I’ll see you in the morning. It’s—I don’t need—”

I reached for him at the last second. “I know I don’t have to. But I’m—just for dinner. I always make too much.”

We both knew it was a lie, not even a very good one, and he waited, but I didn’t know what else to say. The thought of having to beg him to step inside made me feel both very young and very old. Like all the people I’d purposefully stayed away from over the years would peer out of the shadows, accusing me of lying back then, or lying now.

“Are you sure?” he asked. He shouldn’t have had to ask.

I let go of his wrist. “Just don’t feel like eating alone.

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