Deep Woods

by Newbury, Helena

  I only had one chair, so I gave that to her and leaned against the edge of the table. As we ate, my mind was turning. How the hell am I going to make this work? Already, she was getting too damn close. She trusted me...liked me even. Thought I was a hero. I couldn’t let her get close enough to find out the truth.

  I was picking up her empty dish when she said, “Cal? What are we going to do?”

  I looked at her and, in a heartbeat, my own problems were forgotten. The fear in her eyes made me want to just grab her and pull her into my arms.

  “They know my name,” she continued. “They know where I live. I can’t go home.”

  My hands actually twitched, I wanted to hug her so much. “I don’t know,” I told her. “But I know you’re safe here. And you can stay here as long as you want.”

  She bit her lip, her eyes going moist. She started to thank me and I just nodded quickly and looked away. Anymore looking into those big, brown eyes and I was going to fall right into them.

  A little later, as I cleaned the dishes, I heard her yawn: the poor thing was exhausted. She’d probably never walked so far in one day in her life, and she’d done it all without complaining. For a city girl, she was tougher than I could have believed.

  The yawn woke Rufus from his nap and he trotted over to Bethany and butted his head against her, then rolled on his side, demanding tummy tickles. As she obliged, she gazed out of the window, just...listening. For a while, I tried to figure out what she was listening to, because I couldn’t hear anything. Then I realized she was listening to the silence. She’d never heard it before. God, she was so far out of her comfort zone, here. Was she going to be okay? City folk need people around them, they need to chatter. It’s okay for people like me. I do just fine on my own.

  Right?

  Bethany yawned again and looked around...and then she just went still. I frowned, wondering what she’d seen...and then I followed her gaze to the bed.

  The only bed.

  She looked up at me and then back to the bed and then to me again and I saw the math going on in her head. Is that why he took me in? Is it a deal? Room and board in return for—

  Her lips parted in shock. Before she could say anything, I stepped forward and put my hands up, dish suds dripping from them. “No! No.”

  We stared at each other. She nodded. She believed me, but….

  But I could feel how hot my face had gone. Just the thought of the two of us...God, I was rock-hard in my jeans. “I’ll sleep on the floor,” I said firmly.

  She swallowed. Held my gaze almost defiantly.

  I caught my breath. Dammit, the temptation to just crush my lips down on hers and run my hands all over those fantastic curves….

  A woof made both of us jump. We looked down to see Rufus looking up at us, concerned. Then he trotted across the room, jumped onto the bed, and sat down very firmly. Okay, but whoever’s sleeping in the bed, I’m sleeping with them.

  I started grabbing blankets to bed down on the floor. When I turned back to Bethany, she’d stripped down to the t-shirt—on her, it was more like a nightshirt—and was slipping between the covers. Rufus pushed up against her legs, snuggling in for the night.

  I turned down the lantern and lay down on the floor. But even with my back turned and my eyes closed, I couldn’t forget she was there. Her dark curls spilling across the pillow, her full breasts pushing out the front of the soft white t-shirt…. And I was going to have days, maybe weeks of this. Living in a one-room cabin with a woman I was crazy about and could never, ever have.

  What the hell am I going to do?

  22

  Bethany

  I WOKE FROM SLEEP so deliciously deep, so silent and complete, that I had to haul myself up hand-over-hand through the layers of wakefulness until I finally opened my eyes, a big, goofy grin on my face. I couldn’t remember ever having slept so well.

  I was used to jumping out of bed as soon as my phone woke me, racing against time to get to my shift. Here, I’d woken naturally. I could hear Cal moving around but he didn’t seem to be in any hurry to get me up. I could just stay there, warm and snuggled. The freedom of it was glorious.

  I was going to get up, though. I was curious: I wanted to see the outside of the cabin in the daylight. I wanted to see what life here was like. And I wanted to help. But first: I sat up, lifted my arms overhead and gave a fantastically satisfying yawn and stretch, arching my back and looking up at the rafters.

  When I looked down again, I saw Cal standing across the room, those blue eyes catching the light as they watched me. A hot throb spiraled down my body and detonated in my groin. I was suddenly very aware of my breasts, under the soft t-shirt, and how the stretch had made everything lift and move. My hair was tangled, I wasn’t wearing any make-up...and from the look he was giving me, it didn’t matter at all. I swallowed. “Good morning.”

  He just nodded, his eyes eating me up. “Breakfast’s done,” he said at last. “If you’d like some.”

  Breakfast was thick slices of salty bacon, carved off a slab and fried in the skillet. There were eggs, the yolks richly yellow and sticky, and hunks of his crusty homemade bread to mop them up with. We ate outdoors, sitting side-by-side on the front step of the cabin, looking out at the forest. I couldn’t get over how clean the air tasted.

  After breakfast, he collected the dishes, like the previous night. But I stopped him on the way to wash them. “I want to help,” I said. “There must be stuff I can do. Chores.”

  He blinked at me, then looked down. I realized he was looking at my hands, so soft compared to his. Like he thought I was some sort of princess who shouldn’t sully herself with such things. “I can do it,” I insisted. “I want to do it. I need to...pay my way.”

  His eyes caught mine and for just a second, they sparkled and went molten with lust. My face flushed hot as a vision seared my mind: Cal’s big body between my thighs, his hard ass rising and falling as he drove into me—

  Both of us looked away. Of course he didn’t expect me to pay with my body. Cal was the most honorable man I’d ever met. But underneath, I could tell he was thinking about it, fantasizing about it...just as I was.

  “I can do chores,” I said firmly, my face scarlet.

  He nodded slowly. “You can feed the chickens. Toss them a handful of corn. Bucket’s in the barn.”

  I found the tin bucket and walked over to the coop. There were six chickens, some rust-brown, some gray and cream and some a mixture, all with bright red crests on their heads. I unlatched the gate and slipped inside the coop. “Okay, now do you get some each or do you all—”

  They swarmed me, clucking and squawking and circling my legs. “Wait! Okay, okay, it’s coming—” I dug my hand into the bucket but before I could throw some, they were pecking it out of my hand. Others had their heads in the bucket. Another one had thrust its head into the rolled-up cuff of my jeans and wasn’t going to stop hunting until it found the piece of corn that had dropped there. Six chickens felt like fifty. I was being overrun! I panicked, tossed a handful of corn to the far side of the coop, and, as the chickens raced to get it, I made my escape.

  Through the window, I could see Cal watching as he did the dishes. It looked like his shoulders were shaking with laughter. And I smiled too. I wondered how long it had been since he’d laughed.

  There was a lot to do. He showed me how to haul water up from the well and then we spent the next few hours weeding and watering the vegetable garden. There were carrots and potatoes and cabbages, beets and squashes and pumpkins. Raspberries and blackberries grew on canes and there were bushes full of plump, succulent blueberries. “How long did all this take you?” I asked in wonder. “How long have you been here?”

  “Six years.”

  Six years?! He’d been out here, living completely by himself, for six years? Why? My chest contracted in sympathy. But I didn’t push. I had to hope he’d open up, given time. “What next?” I asked instead.

  “We need some milk.” />
  Still in city mode, I prepared to run to the store. Then I followed his gaze to the cow, who’d been let out to graze.

  The cow looked at me suspiciously as we approached. I gave her a scratch behind her velvety ears and she snorted, dipped her head and nuzzled my palm. I felt myself grin. You can’t have a cow nuzzle your palm and not grin: it’s physically impossible.

  We led her back to the barn and Cal set two short, thick logs down on their ends to serve as stools. From down there, the cow looked enormous. “She’s a thousand pounds,” said Cal. “She could break your foot if she stepped on it, so be careful.”

  “Gotcha,” I said nervously. “What’s her name?”

  He frowned as if he didn’t understand. “She...doesn’t have one.”

  I stared at him. He’d stripped life down to just the practicalities, with no time for sentimentality. And yet he’d still gone out of his way to help me.

  He shuffled our stools closer until we were shoulder-to-shoulder and almost underneath the cow. Then he showed me how to gently wash and dry the udders and nudge against them like a calf to get the cow to let down her milk. He taught me how to strip each teat, squirting the first few ounces onto the ground in case it was contaminated. Then he put a tin bucket underneath and started milking the front two teats, alternating his hands in a steady rhythm. Warm milk hissed into the bucket. He nodded towards the two rear teats. “Now you try.”

  I hesitantly wrapped my fingers around them and tried to squeeze the way he had. A few drops of milk fell, then nothing. The cow gave a moo that might have been despair.

  “Almost,” said Cal reassuringly. He leaned closer and then his big, warm hands were encircling mine, gently pressing to show me. I went a little heady. “Relax when you get up here,” he said, “to let the milk in.” His lips were right by my ear, his voice a warm rumble, and I could feel his beard brush my ear lobe, the hair softer than I’d imagined. “Then squeeze down,” he said, doing it. “Then back up….”

  I swallowed and nodded. Milk hissed into the bucket. “There,” he murmured. “Good.”

  He slowly released my hands. I took a deep breath and tried to ignore my racing heart and the tingling, sensitive skin all the way down the side of my neck where his warm breath had blown. I focused on keeping a steady rhythm. After a few moments, I settled into it.

  “There. You got it,” he told me and I grinned, pleased.

  When we were done, we took a mid-morning coffee break. The coffee beans were hand-ground in the all-purpose grinder in the kitchen, the water was from the well, heated on the stove, and the milk was rich and creamy, still warm from the cow. It was the best cup of coffee I’d ever had and drinking it outdoors, leaning against a tree, I felt like an actual farmer, ready to take on the world. What would I be doing, if I was back in the call center? I’d be on my twentieth call of the day, mentally and emotionally exhausted and counting the minutes until the end of my shift….

  I sipped at my coffee and listened to the wind in the trees. I could get used to this.

  * * *

  The days fell into a routine. I’d start the day by feeding the chickens and milking the cow and goat. We’d tend the garden together, then he’d either go hunting or chop wood. It was peaceful. I couldn’t forget about the men looking for me, but I was sure they wouldn’t find me: we literally didn’t even see another person.

  I was amazed at how little went to waste. Every food scrap that could be composted went on the compost heap and the rest went to the pigs. Back in Seattle, I’d tried to save the planet by buying reusable coffee cups and tote bags...which I kept losing. My old life suddenly seemed crazily complicated and wasteful.

  There were things I missed, like the internet. But there was plenty to make up for them. One night, I was just about to get into bed when I glanced out of the window...and then ducked down and craned my head so I could look up in amazement. “What?” asked Cal when he saw me.

  I ran to the door and stumbled outside in just the t-shirt I’d been planning to sleep in. The night air was shockingly cold against my bare thighs but I barely noticed. I was looking at the sky.

  The clouds had cleared and above was a midnight blue bowl dusted with a billion shining stars. I was used to seeing maybe one or two in Seattle. This was something else: clusters and constellations and the broad sweep of the Milky Way. Every star was so clear, so bright, that they felt like real places, not just abstract dots in the sky.

  I became aware of Cal, beside me. “I never saw them before,” I mumbled, still gazing upward. What I couldn’t wrap my head around—what was heartbreaking—was that this had been there my entire life. It had just been hidden by the city’s glow.

  Cal said nothing. But a moment later, he returned with a blanket he wrapped around my shoulders and we sat together on the front step, looking up at the stars, for over an hour.

  * * *

  Two weeks passed, with no sign of the men from the club. Cal had been right: we were too deep in the woods for anyone to find us. But I was only safe as long as I stayed there and I couldn’t stay there forever...however tempting that was becoming.

  After the second week, the temperature started to drop as fall took hold. The nights became colder, the days shorter. But we were cozy and warm in our little burrow.

  Cozy...and close. The cabin was small and Cal was big. However careful and polite we were, accidental touching was inevitable. And the more we brushed ass-to-groin while putting away dishes, or turned around and found ourselves chest-to-chest, or went to reach for something at the same time and touched hands, the more the tension rose. We were like two charged particles, bouncing around in a confined space, with every brief contact making us buzz louder and attract each other more.

  Sometimes, we’d swap ends of the room, passing in the middle, and as we approached it got harder and harder to stay on course, as if I was caught in his gravity.. As we passed, at the second I got so close to him that I could smell his scent and feel his warmth in the air, the urge to veer off and just press myself up against that huge, hard body was almost overwhelming. It went beyond lust. It felt like I fitted there, like my head’s natural resting place was between his pecs, the softness of my breasts pushed up against the hard muscle of his chest and his arms folded around me. At the last second, I’d control myself and walk on, my steps shaky, my heart thumping. This is crazy, I’d tell myself.

  But he felt it, too: I saw the way his hands twitched when we touched, like he was having to force himself not to grab me. Heard how he inhaled, whenever my hair skimmed his face. Most of all, I felt his eyes on me, whenever my back was turned. I’ve never been someone men look at but whenever he got the chance, Cal’s gaze would soak into me, heating and heating me, until I turned around...and then he’d quickly look away and I’d feel that silver guitar string drawn breathtakingly tight. After two weeks of this, the tension was almost unbearable.

  I told myself the attraction made no sense: we were as different as two people could be. He lived in isolation; I lived in a city surrounded by millions of people.

  And yet...both of us were lonely.

  He gradually started to talk more. He still wasn’t a big talker but the words started to come more easily. He still wouldn’t talk about his past, though. All I knew was that something terrible must have happened, to make him want to isolate himself out here. Something that still caused him pain, something that sometimes made him wake in the middle of the night, sweating and wide-eyed. I’d lie there in the bed pretending to be asleep and wishing he’d let me help him.

  One morning, I woke to the sound of rain drumming on the roof. I half sat up, nudged the curtains open an inch, peeked out...and stopped.

  Cal was out there, standing in the rain. Naked.

  He had his back to me and he was lathering himself with a bar of soap. The rain was washing the suds down his body and I followed them, transfixed. They slid over the huge, caramel bulges of his shoulders, then sped up as they slid around the islands f
ormed by the muscles of his back. They followed the V-shaped form of him in towards his waist, then slowed as they crested his ass and trickled down over hard, perfect cheeks loaded with power.

  I dragged my eyes away, flushing...and then stopped, my eyes locked on Cal’s upper arm. There was a tattoo there, an eagle curled protectively around a globe with an anchor behind them. I was too far away to read the two words above the image, but I knew what they said. One of my flatmates had once had a boyfriend with that exact same tattoo. The words were Semper Fidelis.

  Cal was a former Marine.

  23

  Cal

  WE NEEDED to go to town. Normally, I could have gone another couple of weeks but we were getting through things faster, with her here: coffee, sugar, spices. Plus, she really needed some proper clothes and some boots that fitted. “We need to make a list,” I told Bethany. “And it’s got to be a really good list. Everything we need, and I mean everything.”

  She nodded, her eyes big. I could see it was sinking in: this wasn’t like getting home from the grocery store and realizing you forgot the milk. If we forgot something, we’d just have to do without it for another three or four months.

  She was assuming I made the trip so rarely because it was a long hike. But that wasn’t the main reason. Going to town means people.

  Together, we went through every damn thing in the cabin that could run out, everything that was broken and needed replacing, every job we needed to do that was waiting on a nail or a screw, wrote it all down and then checked it. Twice. Doing it on my own would have been a royal pain in the ass: I’d rather be swinging an axe or hunting or, hell, doing just about anything other than writing lists. But Bethany actually seemed to relish it and doing it with her was almost...fun. She thought of some things that I wouldn’t have remembered and she added one or two things that we didn’t strictly need but that sounded good. Like chocolate. I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d had chocolate but now that she’d suggested it, I couldn’t wait.