Beautiful Disaster

Beautiful Disaster Chapter 14

Chapter 14

                “How the fuck did you find me?”

                It’s a voice I would recognize anywhere.

                “You brought in a lizard.” I can feel his arms scooping me up. “You’re lucky it didn’t finish you off if I hadn’t found you and killed it.”

                There’s a ringing in my ear, a taste of salt and blood in my mouth, and I have a beating headache pounding through my head. Sand is entangled in my fingertips, matted in my hair, and my clothes are soaked.   

                “Damn you for practically killing yourself.”

                My lips release a small groan as he tugs me closer to his chest. The whiff of jasmine and spice or simply—him spreads over me like a wave. Breathing in the scent, I relish over its sweetness.

                “Stupid girl,” he grumbles, tightening his hold on me.  

                Now that makes me angry. Whatever it was, it was so not my fault. I tighten my fist in his shirt beating what I can against him. It makes no difference since my hands are badly bruised and his hard-chest is plumped with thick muscle. James says nothing to my attempts, but rather ignores the fact that I am attempting at all to make a pathetic difference.

                In the surrounding background I can hear the calming swish and crash of waves brushing up against land. In actuality, as the ringing in my ears slowly abates, the entire premise is soaking up the tranquil waves. There’s the smell of heavy-sea salt; the warmth of the sun burning away the jittering goose bumps beneath my clothes, and against my skin the wind’s gentle bristles brushes against me like the outside of a rose.

                James walks up the shoreline with me tightly knitted in his arms. Slowly turning my head away from his chest, I peel my eye lids open to catch a glimpse of a small cottage up ahead. Its dandy—if that’s the word for it and small, but a quant Irish shoreline cottage. It’s built out of washed out creamy stone, toppled with hay molded and dampened down so securely weaved together, and a wooden door run down by the natural course of time. There are even two small windows on each side decorated with small flower pots.

                Quant, very quant.

                “Where am I?” The words slip through my lips so quietly, too gently that even my own ears can’t hear what I’m saying.

                James places a massive hand on the aged door handle, pushes, and we enter inside. The hinges squeak in a high pitched moan, causing my body to cringe against the noise. His boots clamp down on wooden floorboards and behind him the door creaks groaning all the way before shutting closed in a sigh of relief.   

                It’s a small room accompanied with simple table and chairs set in the middle, a tiny fireplace on the far right wall, and an antique aged rustic oven drooping adjacently on the opposite wall. There’s a lamp in a corner and as I peer up a ceiling fan rotates its cycling, but it looks like in mere moments it’s going to fall down completely. James makes no time to stop, but glides over to the far wall where a single door occupies next to the oven.

It’s a tiny squared off bedroom, walls warn down, attired with a divided fixed window. I scan around the room, quickly gathering the surroundings as best as I can under my heavy lidded eyelids. It’s furnished with double sized bed and a wardrobe cabinet positioned in a corner next to the bed. Aside from the basics, there are no crook and crannies to give any indication of who might live here. No personal items to entail any sort of human existence. There are no pictures of any kind of family, objects for an inkling of decoration, and it’s absolutely the kind of room one would find abandoned.