Wayward Secrets: The Raven Brothers of Fallen Mountain

by KT Strange

  Grrroooooouushhhhh…

  I turn as a streak of gray edges my vision. Gato is under a shrub, growling at me softly.

  "I get it, I get it, you hate me, and we'll never be friends," I mutter to him. "I'm heartbroken over it, really. I'm going, okay?" I wheel the bike out of the front garden and onto the street. There's a few cars parked, but it's quiet, with no people around. Are there normally more tourists? I don't know why the brothers are looking for a receptionist to book tours for them, if this is how dead the place is. It's cute, multiple little store-fronts lining the main street, with that coffee shop I'd seen the night before. There's also what looks like a diner. I'll have to check it out later.

  This town is the perfect mountain getaway for the richer set of Twocities, the upper-middle-classers, who don't want to keep their kids in the smokey air over the weekends. But nobody is here.

  I swing onto my bike and start peddling, grateful when the engine kicks in quietly, and takes over for me as soon as we get to the edge of the cobbled street and onto smooth pavement. I don't have the energy to bike all the way to where the Raven Brothers have their little wilderness retreat.

  Watching out for traffic that never appears, the silence on the road washes over me as I get further from Fallen Mountain, and start to climb the first hill that I'd crested with Grady the day before in his truck. At the apex I pause, foot propping me up on the ground as I look behind me.

  The lake stretches toward the mountain still, although now the sun is directly shining onto the trees, and glittering on the water. It looks so cold and… I'm struck with the sudden, intense urge to go swimming. I haven't brought a swim costume or anything, but maybe one of the shops will have one for cheap, given that it's a lake-side town.

  With a sigh I push off again, the forest closing up around me, and swallowing any view of the town and mountain behind me.

  My bike is near-silent, only the flap of the breeze on my clothes, and I can easily hear the birds chirping overhead, and the hum of insects in the brush. And the smell… I wish I could take deeper breaths. It's woody, heady, clearing out a life-time of gunk from my chest as I inhale breath after breath of it.

  It's so enthralling I nearly miss the dirt-road turn off, skidding to a stop, and cursing quietly as I steer the bike around in a big semi-circle.

  While not the neatly paved road that I was just on, once I turn left and toward Raven's, at first, at least, the dirt road is smooth enough, and there's no downed trees to skirt around.

  I'd imagined something overgrown and tangled, half-covered in brambles. Instead there is lots of open space between the trees, and the ride is pretty. I coast along, the faithful bike's engine making the trek easy.

  The road curves after several minutes, and I slow as I see the sign that Val mentioned.

  RAVEN BROTHERS OUTFITTERS is carved on the swinging wooden sign, hanging from a tree. Three ravens are painted beneath the words, their eyes dark and ominous. I pass under it, glancing up as I do, and the first cabin comes into view. It stretches out in a clearing, a good thirty feet long, with a low porch a couple of steps up that ends in a ramp at the far side. The roof overhangs the porch, covered in moss pushing up between the shingles.

  My bike slows to a stop and I flick the kickstand with my shoe, sliding off the seat. Glancing around, I try to rub the crack of my butt without being obvious about it. I'm sore from the ride, as short as it was.

  The windows are dark, curtains pulled, and even though there's three trucks parked off to the side, and an old car that was seeing better days a few decades ago, it doesn't look like anyone's home. I tenderly mince my way up the stairs. Two rocking chairs make friends with one another on the porch, their wood weather-beaten and pale.

  I lift my fist and knock on the glass pane set into the door. The curtains behind it flicker from the percussive banging.

  "Hello?" I call. "Lacey, it's Cordelia Stone!"

  My voice rings out in the woods, but nobody answers. The curtains remain unmoved. A noise of frustration grumbles its way out of my chest. I knock again, harder this time, slamming my fist on the wood for greater impact.

  And I'm a tiny bit afraid that the glass will shatter and splinter all up my hand. It's not likely, but I'd rather not risk it.

  "Grady?!" His name comes out of me as a yelp, because great crashing noises in the bush behind me have me whirling around.

  There stands a shirtless man. Definitely not Lacey. Not Grady either. He's got dark hair, close cropped, and dark eyes to match as he pushes his way through the brush. A pair of dirty jeans cling to his hips, and he's bare-foot.

  Bare-foot in the woods, of all places. He's got a frown that's slipping into a grin though, when he sees me on the porch.

  "Hey stranger," he calls from across the clearing. My heart flutters in my chest. I hope he's a Raven brother and not some kind of murderous lunatic. You know what they say about the woods, and the men who lurk in the bushes. "Can I help you?"

  He stops by one of the trucks and grabs a pair of boots out of the truck-bed, shoving his feet in them as he walks over to me. I'm not sure why he's bothering. I already have seen him without shoes, and it's not like… that's distracting or anything.

  Not like his shirtless chest, the ripple of muscle under his pale skin. As he gets closer, the kiss of freckles over his shoulders and across the bridge of his nose resolve and sharpen. He towers over me after he clumps up the stairs.

  "We weren't expecting a guest today," he says. Relief fills me.

  "I'm Cordelia," I explain, "I'm here about the job, and the cabin? Lacey hasn't been getting back to me, and I met, I guess, one of your brothers, yesterday, Grady, he gave me a lift into town, and he never told me he was a Raven, and I'm so sorry, but I really-"

  "Whoaaaaa, whoa. Whoa. Whoaaa." The guy holds up his hands to stop my waterfall deluge of words. "Yeah, Grady told me that some crazy lady that was running through the woods had told him she thought she had a reservation to stay here-"

  Anger sparks off in my chest and I glare at him.

  "I, was not-" I sputter, "I was not running in the woods."

  He's covered in dirt, I realize. It's not just freckles on his skin. His forearms, and hands are streaked with it, his nails black along the edges and cuticles, like he's been digging around in the dirt, gardening out in the woods.

  Or burying bodies, in graves he dug by hand. Maybe he's not a Raven after all, and he's going to murder me- I give my brain a sharp smack. No, he's grinning now, like an idiot, smug for having set me off. My aunt always told me I had a wild imagination. No, this guy is just a jerk, yanking my chain.

  "I'm not crazy," I say, before reaching into my pocket, for the bulge of papers I'd printed out before heading to Fallen Mountain. "Lacey wrote to me, and told me I had the cabin, if I wanted it, as long as I worked, and I'm here. To work." I flick through the papers as the guy leans against the wall of the cabin, crossing his arms over his still very shirtless chest.

  He looks like he thinks this is a big joke, that fat grin on his stupid handsome face, and just because I'm mad at him, doesn't mean I can't appreciate that he's got the bone structure of a young god. Because he does. But he's also a jerk, so that makes him like, fifty minus points in the attractiveness department.

  "Kyron," someone yells, deep voice echoing through the woods. The guy jerks upward from leaning, and jumps down from the porch, onto the packed dirt of the clearing, without so much as an excuse me. I turn to follow him, but two more men are coming out of the woods, shirtless, in loose jeans, and bare-footed.

  Both see me. One narrows his eyes. One blanches, if that's possible, under his tan.

  The second one, the rapidly pale-ing one, is Grady. I glare at him, and cross my arms over my chest. His eyes dart to Kyron, then back to me, then Kyron again.

  He looks nervous. Good. Not being honest with me yesterday was rude, and I'm about ready to let him know exactly what I think.

  I want the cabin though. And I want this job
. I need a place to stay. I can't go back to Twocities, and this, Fallen Mountain, is where I want to spend the rest of my life. So I bite my tongue and try to smile instead. It comes off as sort of a grimace, but the thoughts there.

  Stepping down the stairs, I unfold my papers and hold them out.

  "Here," I say, "Lacey emailed me, and said if I wanted the job, I could take it." The man behind Grady, as the two of them approach, scowls at me.

  "We're not hiring," he says, voice clipped. Grady looks at him, his mouth quirking down. Kyron snickers.

  "Lacey said-"

  "She was mistaken," the unnamed asshole growls at me. Cool washes down my spine and I stare at him. She can't have been. We'd gone back and forth for weeks discussing it. I blink back tears. I am not going to cry… in front of these three shirtless, dirty, beggar-looking men with ridiculously unacceptable abdominal muscle definition.

  I have no where else to go.

  "Does it look like we need a… phone girl?" The guy asks, waving his arm around the clearing.

  "Beau," Grady mutters under his breath. Beau ignores him.

  "Well given the welcome committee you have, I'm not surprised people aren't tripping all over themselves to go out in the woods with you." I wrinkle my nose. "You look like you've been out there digging graves for the unsuspecting victims of your camp cookouts. Maybe I ought to call the police on you to do an investigation."

  Beau blinks slowly, and the three of them are quiet, and then Kyron laughs, nearly doubling over.

  "Holy shit," he breathes between peals of laughter. Grady glares at him to, trying to grimace at both him and Beau at the same time without going crosseyed.

  Beau just looks at me, his frown-lines receding, like he's trying to figure me out and can't. I need this place. The Gato ate into my precious savings already, and it was just one night. I've got my things packed up and waiting for me back at the B&B, and all I need is that cabin. I look around the clearing, and spot it, there, a good hundred yards back, nestled right in the trees. It's small, just as Lacey said it was, but it's four walls and a roof.

  Even if my neighbors are lying, deceitful little jackholes.

  Play nice, Cordelia.

  I smooth my face into a neutral smile.

  "What I mean to say is, you look like you could use a little assistance in the customer interfacing area. I could've been a paying customer, come to buy…" I glance behind me. Lacey had said they sell all sorts of camping gear, and the like. "A sleeping bag."

  "A sleeping bag," Beau comments drily, folding his arms over his bare chest. "You know lots about sleeping bags, huh?"

  "It's a bag. You sleep in it," I snip before catching myself. "There's the talking points, pretty much exhausted."

  His eyebrow twitches. Grady mumbles something under his breath. Kyron is barely recovering from his laughing fit.

  "I need a shirt," he says, walking up the stairs and pushing the door open. "C'mon in, lady, let me get you a drink. Do you like beer?"

  "Kyron-" Beau's voice is dangerous, warning. Kyron flips him the bird over one shoulder and disappears inside. Grady shoots Beau a placating look.

  "It can't hurt for a few days. Someone to answer the phones? Be here in case-" He pauses and Beau's expression changes from one of irritation to outright fury. I nearly take a step back from the power of it.

  "Whatever," Beau spits, the venom curling his lips. "Don't wait up," he says to Grady, and without another look at me, he storms off, his bare feet kicking up puffs of dust.

  Me and Grady are quiet, still, until Beau disappears around the corner of the main cabin. Grady shoots me a long side-ways look.

  "I'm sorry," he says without prompting.

  "For?" I ask, pointed and determined. I get that they didn't know I was coming. They don't want me here. That's fine. But they don't have to be rude to me. It's not my fault I took Lacey at her word, her many words, over the weeks before getting here.

  "Not telling you who I was," he half-mumbles and then sighs. "Beau's just Beau. He'll cool down and be fine by nightfall."

  "Beer!" Kyron calls from inside.

  "It's a little early," I say, biting the inside of my cheek. I hate to ask the favor, but I'm going to need the help. "You know yesterday, when you helped me with my things?"

  Grady looks like he sucked on a lemon and then he smiles tiredly.

  "Alright," he says, "let's go get your stuff."

  5

  Cordelia

  “So, cats hate you, huh?” Grady asks, his eyes on the road as we take the short trip back from town to their outfitter camp. He got to see first hand what happens when me and cats get close. Gato had launched himself at me, climbing my leg and howling at the top of his little lungs, until Lena had wrapped her hands around his furry body and pried him off me, taking him to the kitchen and locking him in there.

  It had been an ‘exciting’ goodbye to Val and Lena, and as an apology, Val had packed up a bag filled with stuffed pastries she’d made that morning. I still had the lunch she’d packed me too. My stomach was starting to grumble. I was ready to eat.

  “Kittens are alright. Until they grow up and learn better than to trust me,” I reply with a smile. “I like them, they just don’t really have any fondness for me.”

  “Ah, well,” he says, like it doesn’t matter, but he’s trying to be sympathetic and doesn’t really know how. “Out here we don’t get too many domestic cats. Just the occasional bob-cat, and they don’t bother us. We only catch them on the trail cameras once in a while.” He pauses for a moment. “This is gonna sound awkward-”

  My nerves jump. What… what’s he going to say? I try not to hold my breath, but I can’t help it. I’m not dead yet, and Grady is pretty, well, pretty hot. And pretty. He’s blond and tan, and so tall, and if he were back in Twocities for sure he would have been a model, or a front man for one of those fake bands the record labels were forever putting together that would become wildly popular over night and then disappear the next week, only to end up in drug and scandal, and there’d be a secret baby, and at least one person would die of a drug overdose and-

  “I think we need to give them a little more time before we head back,” Grady says, dashing all of my excited, fluttering nerves at once and turning them into sulky angry bees in the pit of my stomach. I swallow down my disappointment.

  I was sure he was going to ask me out.

  Are you kidding? He doesn’t even know you. He doesn’t even want you around.

  “Oh,” I say. Grady makes a hesitant noise and then sighs.

  “Beau and Kyron just need to work things out before we get there. Kyron’s probably already half-way to drunk, standing at the edge of the trees yelling Beau, and Beau’s off in one of his blinds, pouting cause he didn’t get his way,” Grady rambles a bit and I glance at him from under one frizzing curl that won’t stay tucked behind my ear.

  “Sounds like you’ve been through this before,” I comment drily. Grady snorts.

  “Only every day of my life,” he replies. I wonder how their parents feel about the pack of guys, rambunctious and wild. Raising them must have been hell. “Hey, wanna see the lake?”

  I’ve never seen an open body of water. Twocities is far enough off from the Nowhere, the dangerous and tormented sea that borders our nation across it’s entire length, that my aunt had never taken me. The lake at Fallen Mountain was one of the reasons I picked this place. Eventually I want to learn to swim, even. The closest to water I ever get is a deep bath tub, and even those were rare occasions. Our home, my aunt and mine’s, had only had a stand up shower.

  “I’d love that,” I say and Grady lights up like I made his year. He grins and slows the truck, doing a tight u-turn in it that has me admiring his handling skills. I’ve never driven, either. Maybe… maybe here, I can learn.

  In what, the six months you have left to live, maybe a bit longer? The thought bites at me like a rat sinking it’s teeth into the base of my spine. I do my best not to show it, and pas
te a smile on my face to match Grady’s.

  “We won’t go the main route,” he says, taking a turn off I hadn’t noticed, at the edge of town. The road was gravel, at one point, but now it’s all dips into the bare earth and big pot holes with rocks sticking out of them. I cling to the side of the truck. I almost prefer the electric bike I’d borrowed from the Gray Gato earlier. It’s so bouncy on this road, the truck bucking and swaying, but when I look over at Grady, his face is bright with a grin like he’s enjoying himself.

  “You like punishing me like this? Why didn’t we take the main road?” I demand, and he laughs, speeding up. My eyes widen and I velcro myself backwards against the seat. Minutes pass, long, bouncing, jolting minutes, and we turn a large towering bush, and it’s there. The truck stops and I breathe, my chest feeling bunched up and tight.

  Glancing through the windshield, I see the lake, up close and personal for the first time.

  “Oh,” I murmur to myself, and Grady gets out of the car, stretching his arms up to the sky with a sigh.

  It’s beautiful. The trees aren’t coniferous down here, but willows that weep their branches into the water’s surface, and a gently sloping bank ends in sand that the lake wavelets lap at. A breeze lifts my hair off my shoulders when I step outside and I wish that I was wearing shorts. The sun pours down over me from between the leaves, freckling my skin with shadows.

  “Worth it,” Grady says. “You can’t get to this side of the lake from the main road.” He walks right to the edge, kicking off his shoes and rolling up his jeans to over his knees. He wades right into the water, as it splashes up around his ankles, and then his calves. I try not to look.

  Those legs of his are pornographic. It’s really not fair. He’s lean and muscled, and he turns back to me with a wild grin on his face.

  “C’mon, it’s perfect,” he taunts, bending down to skim his fingers through the water, splashing it toward me. The droplets land in the sand, making tiny dark spots in their final resting places.

  “It looks cold,” I say, walking to the edge, but not toeing off my shoes. I’ve never so much as dipped my feet in water like this in my whole life. Grady turns away from me, toward the mountain, puts his hands on his hips and bends backwards, his head tipping to the sky.