Owen and Lex raced through the rain that was steadily worsening. Lex had initially thought they'd be able to get out of the rain relatively dry, but she was proved wrong. By the time they reached a row of trees, they had become soaked. Lex's hair was drenched, with strings of it stuck to her face. She felt quite literally like she'd just stepped into the shower fully clothed.
After they passed the few trees blocking the clearing to Owen's place, Lex could just make out a place, nothing more than an Airstream travel trailer that backed right up into a small, wooden bungalow that was little more than a shack. Owen darted ahead of Lex once he knew she could see where they were headed..
Lex watched in amazement as Owen reached a motorcycle, and grabbing it by its handlebars, led it to an even smaller utility shed just behind the wooden structure of his bungalow. She followed behind him, and her mouth dropped as he stored the motorcycle in the shed and closed the door. After his task was accomplished, Owen ran past Lex, grabbing her hand and pulling her with him. He pulled her into the trailer portion of his bungalow, and closed the door behind them.
"You had us run through the rain…" Lex said, wiping the rain from her eyes. "For a motorcycle?"
Owen turned on Lex and gave her a boyish, but sarcastic look. "It's a Triumph Scrambler! With a custom paint job! I couldn't leave my baby out in the rain."
Lex grumbled, wiping still more water from her face. "Men. If it's not toys, it's women."
Owen had turned his back on Lex, and produced a bath towel that was frayed around the edges. "Sometimes it's both," he added, with a glint in his eye.
"Thank you," Lex said, for the towel. She began toweling off her face, her arms, her hair, which she pulled out of her French braid so it could dry. "I. Am soaked." She chuckled.
"Oh, yeah…" Owen looked Lex up and down. "Hang on a sec." For a moment he headed toward the back of the trailer, when Lex noticed that he'd engineered the trailer to lead directly into the wooden bungalow structure. He disappeared up a small flight of three or four steps.
Lex turned and looked at the structure. It was like any travel trailer, but had quite a few more modifications on it. He'd removed the area where the bed would have been, and added a few lounging chairs. There was a nice setup in the galley of the trailer. Overall, Lex was impressed. Owen reappeared, with a stack in his hands.
"Here," he said, looking self-conscious as he held out something for her. Lex took it and found that it was a button down plaid flannel shirt. It would dwarf her, for sure. "Something dry." He paused. "You don't have to… I just figured you'd want to let your shirt dry."
Lex's heart quickened. "Thanks, I'll just, uh…" She unfolded the shirt and paused to look at Owen. The hint finally resonated through his brain.
"Yeah, I'll just be… up there for a minute. Let me know when I can come back down."
Lex watched him ascend back up into what she assumed was where he slept. She stood there, frozen, unsure if she should change into the shirt he so graciously offered her. Instantly, a "fuck it" type attitude overcame her as she felt that her damp clothes were steadily becoming colder in the drier air. She peeled off her knit tee shirt, and assessed the damage on her bra. It was far too wet to leave on, but a sense of modesty was suddenly making her second guess her choices.
Lex had stripped off her shirt and bra, and slipped into Owen's very comfortable plaid flannel shirt. Lex noted to herself that it even smelled like him. She thought it was a little pathetic that she found it so intoxicating. She just hadn't worn another man's clothes for so long. It made her feel safe, somehow.
She finally noticed that the shirt was long enough that it covered enough of her butt to allow her to strip off the now cold and wet khaki shorts she'd been wearing. She kicked off the boat shoes she was wearing, and the shorts after. She took each item and hung them over the sink.
"Ya decent?" she heard Owen from his lofted bungalow.
"Uh huh," Lex sat nervously at his galley table, which was a circular shaped booth with a circular shaped table. She slid one third of the way in, and tucked a leg under her butt. Owen reappeared, pulling a shirt down over his chest. Lex closed her eyes tightly as she saw more of Owen than she'd seen before. She willed herself to open them, and Owen stood in front of her in cargo shorts and a white knit tee-shirt. He stood there, looking from her bare legs to the clothes draped over the sink, and said nothing.
He reached the refrigerator, and opened it. Owen pulled out two water bottles, and set them down on the table in front of Lex, sliding into the booth next to Lex. Lex took the opportunity to fill the silence by opening her water bottle, and taking a few sips from it.
"So," Lex ventured to break the silence. "How long do you think this is going to go on?" Lex ventured that it was already well into the afternoon.
"It's hard to say, I haven't checked the weather report. But I'd say well into the night."
Into the night? Lex thought. She shook her head, feeling the need to apologize. "Had I known this might last into the night, I'd have just stayed back where they have me. I really hate to be an inconvenience."
"You're not an inconvenience," Owen reassured her, again taking her free hand in his. "If it were an inconvenience, I wouldn't have brought you back here." He kept looking at Lex's hand, which held the amber ring. "In any case, I didn't want to leave you alone during a tropical storm."
"Thanks," Lex said. Owen's fingers interlaced with Lex's. This made her stomach do somersaults. "Owen, you… you haven't really told me what you meant when you said you were curious about me. Why are you doing any of this for me?"
"It's not my normal, M.O. that's for sure." Owen admitted, taking a deeper than usual breath.
"So tell me," Lex looked Owen in the eye until he finally made contact with hers.
"It's just when I learned you were coming here, I knew it wasn't the best idea. Your brother, Tim, he spoke out about what happened here in '93. So I knew it wasn't going to be easy for you. And…"
Lex squeezed Owen' hand.
"Years ago. When your grandfather died. I'm not much older than you, but when he died, you were still a teenager. I remember watching the news—they couldn't seem to leave you alone—and I remember the video from his memorial service. And I just always remembered how sad you were."
"It's been a long time since '97, Owen," Lex said. With a pained heart she remember how much she cried at the service, and how she could barely get through the few words she had prepared for her grandfather before she broke down again.
"I know," Owen said. "They play that footage occasionally when they talk about the park in the news. And like I said I was curious about you the night we met. I just wanted to get a feel for who you were. And I could just tell how scared you were."
Lex let that sink in for a moment. "You're a sucker for a lost cause," she said, sadness in her eyes.
"I don't think you're a lost cause." Owen said. He reached up with his free hand, and gently grabbed a few strands of Lex's almost dry, but now wavy, blonde hair. "I just understand things that others don't."
"What do you understand, Owen?" Lex asked, not wanting to break the flow of things, but still not understanding.
"I understand the raptors." Lex's jaw clenched unconsciously. "I also understand what post traumatic stress is like." Lex searched Owen's face.
"I did a couple tours in Afghanistan," he said.
"I thought you were in the Navy?" Lex asked, confused. She bravely took Owen's hand that was gently tousling her hair, and took it in her other free one.
"I was a corpsman. Corpsmen are the medics for the Marines." Owen pulled one of Lex's hands to his lips and kissed the back of it gently.
"So I understand what it can be like," he said, taking his hand from hers, and running the back of his fingers down the length of her jawbone. "Other guys had a worse time of it, but I know things can get in your head and stay there. And maybe with anything else I might not be able to help, or make a difference, but because I understand… them… I feel like I'm responsible for helping you."
Lex felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. "Does helping me include this?" Lex asked, referring to the situation they found themselves in.
Owen laced his fingers through Lex's hair, stopping at the top of her neck. "No," he said, pulling her closer, and she, letting herself be led forward, "this is for purely selfish reasons."
Owen brought Lex's lips to his gently. The first kiss was chaste, exploratory, and meant to test the waters. When Lex didn't pull away, Owen deepened his kiss, and plied her lips open with his, his tongue gently teasing her bottom lip.
Lex felt all the blood in her body rushing, adrenaline coursing through her, heightening every sensation. She exhaled, fell deeper into Owen's arms, and let the world around her fade.
Author's note: WOW, so many new followers, and new favorites. Thank you guys so much for being so enthusiastic about the story. I just wanted to post this chapter really quickly. I do plan on posting another one later this evening (July 16th), but just a heads-up on what's going on that might infringe on my rate of publishing. I'm going away for my bachelorette party this weekend, and will be getting married next week, and going on my honeymoon after that. So with that in mind, being that it's a pretty important time in my life, I will understandably be unable to update as often as I have been these past 2 days, BUT I love this story so much that I promise to you I will write as often as I can and update when I get free moments.