The Darkest Embrace. Megan Hart

of afraid to see what kind of shower they have in there.”

      “I’ll go inside, pay for the gas. You need anything else?” he asked, thinking about the crash of glass from the back of the truck. He should check it out, see what had broken and what they might need to replace.

      Ten minutes later, he’d paid for the gas inside. And while it pumped, he’d opened up the truck’s double back doors to assess the damage. The plastic crate he’d packed with a couple bottles of wine had tipped, and the rich earthy smell of the good Bordeaux he’d picked because Jessie liked red better than white hit him in a wave. Shit.

      The damage got a little worse when he tried to pick up the glass and promptly sliced his thumb at the base. Bright blood welled to the surface, just a bead at first but then a rapid gush as he cradled it to his chest. Jessie came around the back of the truck just then, her mouth open to say something that she stifled at the sight.

      “Max, what happened?”

      “It’s nothing. Just a flesh wound,” he joked, knowing she’d get the reference to Monty Python. They’d watched it on one of their first dates.

      She took his hand and looked at it, not even wincing at the sight of blood. She frowned. “No, it’s not. That’s pretty deep. What did you cut it on?”

      “Wine bottle.” He used his chin to show her the broken bottles inside, the dark wine splashed all over the rest of the groceries.

      “Well,” she said with a grin, “that’s too bad, isn’t it?”

      A second later, though, she was frowning again in concern, his hand cupped in hers, her thumb pressing the wound to stanch the blood. “You need stitches. Or at least a bandage. C’mon, I’m sure they have something inside. Go wash your hands in the bathroom. I’ll see what’s in the store.”

      He wanted to protest, reassure her that he was fine. Manly enough to handle just a little flesh wound. The truth was, the cut was already throbbing, the blood flow slowing but caked into his skin, and the way the skin gaped was making his stomach hurt.

      Jessie closed her hands over his, gently cupping his wounded thumb. “Go.”

      In the restroom, he used a paper towel to turn the hot water faucet until a trickle of first lukewarm, then scalding water shot out and splashed his front. Max did the best he could to clean it, but it was starting to hurt a lot more and he muttered a particularly creative string of curses.

      Turning from the sink, he caught sight of the advertised shower, a narrow stall with a sagging, mildewed curtain shielding what looked like equally moldy tiles behind it and a steadily dripping showerhead. You’d have to pay him a helluva lot more than the five bucks they wanted to charge to get naked in that thing. On impulse, he twitched the curtain aside and stepped back at once with a stifled shout.

      It looked like an abattoir.

      Summers growing up as a kid, Max had spent a lot of time on his uncle’s farm. Uncle Rick and Aunt Lori had raised a few dairy cows, kept a bull, a coop of chickens, one or two pigs. They kept animals for food, not profit, and definitely not for pets. Max had learned that the hard way after he’d adopted a spindle-legged calf named Doey. Years later, when he watched the film version of The Silence of the Lambs, the scene in which Clarice described the sound of the lambs screaming had sent him from the theater faster than any of Hannibal Lecter’s tooth-sucking comments about fava beans. To this day, he couldn’t eat veal.

      The barn had looked like this shower stall the day he’d found them slaughtering Doey.

      Max backed up so fast that the heel of his boot caught on a ridge of tile. To catch himself from falling, he flung out his injured hand. Fresh pain, bright and wide and thick, covered him, and he let out a yelp that echoed in the dimly lit room. He could smell it now, he thought. The stink of old, dried blood. And hear the soft buzz of flies battering themselves against the small window set high in the wall.

      Shit and blood, that’s what Uncle Rick had always said brought flies. Shit and blood.

      Outside in the late-afternoon sunshine, the scene in the restroom seemed surreal. When he came around the corner, he found Jessie talking to the old woman/man sitting in the rocker on the front porch. Rather, the ancient lump of wrinkles and raggedy clothes was talking. Jessie seemed to be just listening.

      “Stay out of the woods,” the old person was saying.

      Jessie glanced up at him, her expression so carefully neutral that he could tell she was trying hard not to laugh. “Thanks, Mrs. Romero.”

      “Who this?”

      Jessie reached for Max’s good hand to pull him closer. “This is Max, my boyfriend.”

      It wasn’t the first time she’d called him that, but it was still so new the word tied knots in his gut. “Hi.”

      Mrs. Romero tipped her wizened face toward his, her eyes asquint, mouth still sucking greedily on the pipe. “You bleeding?”

      “He cut his hand,” Jessie explained, pulling out a package of gauze bandages and first aid supplies from a cheerfully bright yellow plastic bag. “I’m going to fix him up, though. He’ll be okay.”

      This set Mrs. Romero cackling so much that she pulled the pipe from her lips to point it at Jessie. “Oh, I betcha. He’ll be perfect.”

      Another burst of cackling laughter sent the old woman into a spate of thick, congested coughing that bent her forward so far that Max was sure she was going to tip right out of the rocker. The door behind Jessie opened and a blonde woman wearing jeans and a denim shirt came out to grab Mrs. Romero by the shoulders and keep her upright. It took Max a second or two to figure out what seemed so off about the woman: Just like the guy back on the road, the blonde woman was extremely tall.

      She shot them both an apologetic look. “Sorry. Mom, Mom! Mom, you got to calm yourself.”

      Jessie backed up a few steps to get out of the way. “Sorry to upset her.”

      The blonde woman shrugged, patting Mrs. Romero on the back until the coughing fit eased a little. Mrs. Romero fixed Max with a solid glare and pointed her pipe at him. “Perfect.”

      Somehow, the way she said it didn’t make him feel perfect.

      “Sorry,” the blonde woman said again. “She’s...old.”

      “We need to get going,” Max said. “We’re supposed to be getting to the cabin.”

      The blonde stood. “Oh, you’re the renters? Freddy’s been waiting for you so he can show you around, how to use the stove and stuff. You’re late.”

      “We ran into a little trouble on the road,” Max said. His hand gave a twinge.

      She shielded her hand to look up at the sky. “You’d better get moving, then. It’s getting dark and you don’t want to try to unpack in the dark. Storm’s coming.”

      “There aren’t any lights?” Jessie asked with a quick glance his way.

      “Gas lights,” the woman said as she rubbed Mrs. Romero’s back and the old woman turned her face to the side and spit on the porch floor. “Gas heat, stove, hot water. But you don’t want to be out too long after dark, the bugs will eat you alive.”

      “Better bugs than Mrs. Romero,” Jessie said with a soft giggle when they were back in the truck and she’d torn open the package of bandages to work on his hand.

      An innuendo rose to his lips about being eaten by Jessie being better than anything, but he quashed it. What was so easy for him over text or instant message never came out right in person. Instead, he let her take his hand to clean it with the antiseptic wipes she’d bought. It stung, but that wasn’t why he hissed in a breath. It was when Jessie took his hand and gently kissed the wound before pressing a gauze pad against it and wrapping it with a bandage that his heart skipped and thudded. Not to mention the rise in his pants.

      Still cupping