by KT Strange
My heart stops when he howls, a feral, exuberant noise that escapes him like a gale. He stops abruptly and leans forward. I hold my breath, my lungs aching.
In the distance, the sound he made echos back to us, and the hair on my arms starts to stand.
“It bounces off the mountains,” he says, and I shiver.
“That’s eerie.” I shift my weight from one foot to the next, wondering what it’ll feel like to get sand between my toes.
“You afraid?” He challenges, smiling back at me over his shoulder. “C’mon and shout at the mountains with me.”
“Is this how you treat all your guests? No wonder they don’t come back for round two,” I grouse as I roll up my jeans, and leave my shoes and socks behind. I hover my foot over the water, and exhale as I plunge it into an inch. “It’s cold!!!” I exclaim, glaring at him with accusation. He laughs and bends again, scooping water at me. I get hit with freezing droplets, and jump away.
“Yeah, no shit, it’s a glacier up there, past the mountains, the valleys are so high up they never shake their snow-pack.” He’s laughing at me even harder, taking steps back, ever deeper into the water.
A scowl contorts my face. I’m not taking this from him. I’m not afraid of cold water. I’ve just never felt it before. I’m in up to my ankles in a heartbeat, my feet freezing. It’s so cold. Grady beckons to me with one hand as he keeps walking, the water brushing his knees, and then the edge of his jeans where they’re rolled. I follow, but wander off to the side a bit, so I’m not directly behind him. I don’t want him to think that I need him to show me where to go. I’m city, born and raised, but that doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself.
“Are there fish in here?” I ask, as something brushes my ankle. The water is pretty clear though, despite my feet kicking up puffs of dust under the surface. It’s a branch, from one of the willows, it’s leaves fluttering in an invisible current.
“Yeah. We do a lot of fishing, and smoke what we catch for winter,” he says. “There’s been plenty of times where there hasn’t been a delivery from the city to town, and we don’t like going hungry.” He bends down, running his fingers through the water, splashing it over his hands and up his arms, like he’s cleansing himself.
“Three guys in one house, you must eat a lot,” I tease and he snorts. I glance over at him and catch him looking at me.
Looking at me like… he’s hungry. It’s gone in a split second though, and I think that I’ve imagined it.
“You wouldn’t believe it,” he replies. “Your feet cold enough yet?”
“No, I’m fine,” I lie, because my toes are starting to go numb and tingly. Oh well, if a fish nibbles at them, at least I won’t feel it. I take a few more steps. I’m almost to the edge of where the willows stop bleeding their leaves into the lake, and I can see the mountains beyond, spearing up along the far shore. “Can you see the town from here?” I ask as I take another step. The ground is firm and fudgey under my feet, and I like the sensation. My legs are cold, but I think… I think I could get used to this. It wouldn’t be so bad, really, to go swimming in a glacier-fed lake.
“Yeah, but-” Grady’s words disappear as I go to take another step and the ground isn’t there to catch me. I plunge forward into the water, my toes searching for purchase, for surface, and finding nothing. A gasp escapes me just as the lake closes over my head. I float, for a second, and then the panic sets in, my eyes wide, the world murky and green. My arms thrash; my whole body is freezing cold, the shock of it making my limbs clumsy.
I wanted to die somewhere pretty. But not like this.
Thick arms encircle my waist and yank me upward. I break, the air filling my lungs to bursting as I inhale. Grady’s chest is bright warm against my back as he pulls me backward, through the water, my legs stumbling to keep up with him, and then just dragging through the wet and sand. We hit the beach and he holds me tight, breathing hard behind me.
The coughs come, shaking up my spine, spreading fire along my ribs and I bend over. He holds me as I go, supporting me easily as I choke on air, the feeling like I can never fill my lungs up enough to exist consuming me.
“It’s okay, you’re good, you’re fine, you’re safe,” his voice buzzes in my ear as he bends with me, warm, and present. “You just hit a sink hole, I was gonna tell you there was an edge, but-” Guilt eats at his words and he falls quiet. A long minute of choking breaths pass and finally, finally, I get myself under control, my lungs no longer spasming so badly. My chest rises and falls, trying to expand ever further.
I stumble away from him, shivering and cold, and feeling like… feeling like something I can’t quite figure out.
“Hang on,” he says, and disappears to the truck, pulling out a rough blanket from behind one seat. He secures it around my shoulders and rubs it over my arms, chafing the skin. Regret lines his face, his eyes downcast.
“I’m fine,” I croak, my throat sore. “It’s not your fault.” That seems to be what he needs to hear, because he lifts his head and sighs.
“Do you want to get changed here,” he asks, “it’s not like anyone’s around, and I’ll stay on the other side of the truck while you do.”
A small breeze, so cheerful earlier, makes me shiver.
“Yeah,” I say.
“We’ll head right back after,” he assures me, “I don’t know what I’d do to myself if I lost someone so quick at the lake.” His face turns rueful, a small smile on it.
“You’d be a piss-poor deep woods guide, that’s what,” I say, managing to find humor in the situation. I walk to the truck and grab some dry clothes out of my bag in the back, and Grady walks around the other side so I have privacy, true to his word. I can see the back of his head through the window as he leans against the front door. My fingers are cold and stiff, but I get dressed, my wet things drying in the truck bed. Grady doesn’t even seem to notice he’s soaked too, even when he gets in the truck and the denim of his jeans looks chillingly unforgiving, and his shirt is plastered to his body. His seat is going to be sopping wet by the time we get back, but he doesn’t take the blanket back when I offer it to him.
“Well,” he says, pausing, his hands on the steering wheel. “So that’s the lake.” He grins at me and I laugh, the sound chasing the chill from my lungs. As we turn and leave the small, sandy beach, I can’t help but look behind me at the flinty waters, and feel like somehow… the lake is waiting for me to come back, and make another misstep.
Only next time Grady might not be there to save me.
6
Cordelia
My hair knotted into a bun at the back of my head, and my whole body shivery and cold from my plunge into the lake, I drag my suitcase along the clearing as we walk toward my new, hopefully permanent, home.
“Sorry about the welcoming committee,” Grady says over his shoulder and he slips his key into the door, pushing it open. “I hope Lacey didn’t get your hopes up, it’s not exactly the Bilton Hotel or anything.”
“You know the Bilton?” I ask in surprise as I peek inside around his broad shoulders. It’s pretty much exactly as Lacey described. No, it’s nothing like the Bilton, but that’s a six diamond hotel in the city. Celebrities are always having scandals and dying of drug overdoses in the penthouse suites there.
It’s weird to think that I’ll die here, but for totally different reasons.
Breathe.
“This is good, perfect even,” I say as we step inside, me trailing him by a few feet. It is a single room cabin, with a small closet and a bathroom just like Lacey had said. The kitchenette is tiny, but perfect for me. I don’t eat that much anymore anyway. The illness robbing me of life, has been robbing me of my appetite as well. The curtains are homey, faded plaid that match the main building up front, and the door is split, the kind that I can keep closed on the bottom but the top swing out for fresh air and sunshine.
As much sunshine as the deep forest gets, anyway.
“Back here you’ll probably see so
me deer out the window early in the morning,” he says, pointing to where the double bed is nestled under a window on the back wall. It’s not made up, but a set of sheets are waiting at the foot of the bed to be spread over it, along with a quilt that’s seen better days.
There’s an older leather couch, and a bookshelf, a wood stove for warmth, and a tiny table with two chairs for eating at, and that’s it.
This’s my whole world for the rest of my life. I sigh and look around.
“It’s perfect,” I say, and Grady gives me an evaluating look, like he doesn’t believe me and he’s weighing my words for sarcasm. “It is,” I insist. He puts my backpack down on the couch. He flicks the light-switch.
“We’re off grid out here, so all our power comes from a waterfall up the way. Sometimes if the power goes out we have to hike up there and make sure no animals have knocked over stones from the dam. But we’ll take care of that if it happens while you’re staying here-”
“I really want to,” I say, turning to him fully, my hands clasped in from of me. “I mean that. I want to stay. There’s nothing left for me in the city-” I swallow and put on my best please please pity me face. “My aunt died, and she was the only family I had, so… this is it. I’ll work really hard for you. That front porch was pretty dusty, so I can start today even, sweeping and maybe cleaning the windows, make it seem friendly for people who come around. I just want a place to stay.”
Grady looks taken aback, and uneasy. He glances away, not meeting my eyes.
“It’s not really up to me,” he starts, hesitating, “I mean, heck, I’m not against someone staying here, I guess, but it’s gotta be worth it, y’now, we rent this place out from time to time to guests and all that.” He’s waffling though. I can feel it. He wants to say yes. I want to know how to get him to yes.
And yes… yes… for other reasons too. My treacherous thoughts skip happily back to the sight of him, shirt plastered to his hard body, outside the lake. For someone who’s dying, almost-dying really revved my engine. I’ve got no idea why. I haven’t felt attracted to anyone in the longest time. It’s almost like, knowing that there was no point, I’d shut off that part of myself, locked it away. Why fall in love if you’re just going to leave them in the end. If I was still bothering to go see my doctor in the city, I’d ask her if being suddenly attracted to someone, if that was, well, normal. Maybe it’s the whole him-saving-me-thing. That’s two for two now. From the driver, and then the lake.
Say, Doc, do your terminal patients suddenly develop an appetite for wild animal-like sex with men who are total strangers?? Do tell, Doc. Lemme know if that’s a side-effect or something.
“You’re one of the Raven Brothers, right? Well it’s your name out on that sign too,” I point out. I can feel him caving, a little, and he wavers before giving me a gentle smile.
“Why don’t you get unpacked,” he says, “and I’ll rustle up some food for your fridge.” He knocks on the doorframe twice as he leaves, maybe for luck, and I watch him go before closing the door. It shuts out the noise of the forest around me. I close my eyes.
“Please let me stay here,” I wish to the universe. It’s a good sign he wants to feed me. Taking care of people makes them crawl under your skin. Maybe I’ll get under his skin. I turn to my bags. Better get unpacked. The more I enmesh myself here, the better.
***
Groceries appear on my doorstep later that day, and a note telling me to take a few days to myself to get settled. It seems whatever I’ve said to Grady has made him convince the other guys to let me stick around, for a little bit anyway. I don’t see them for three whole delicious days of reading quietly in my cabin and enjoying the silence, before I run into Sir Grumpsalot, right outside my cabin. It’s early morning and I pull open the curtains, hoping to see some (yet to appear) deer. Instead, Beau is standing there, right outside my window, staring in at me. The noise I make is completely unladylike, and I’m just grateful I sleep in an oversized shirt or he’d have gotten an eyeful.
I throw open the front door, feet shoved into my sandals, and stalk around the back of the little cabin.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” I demand, caught between outraged and embarrassed and a little… shyly curious. Beau stands there, unrepentant, and ignoring me. His hands are on his hips, looking up at the overhang of the roof and where it meets the wall. He holds up a hand to shut me up and I growl. “Why are you spying on me?” I ask, stepping closer.
“Stop right there,” he orders, and I’m about to disobey him and take another step when he moves lightning-fast. He wraps a hand around my wrist and yanks. “Run!” He grunts, and drags me around the corner of the building. One of my sandals goes flying, and the hard, twig-and-branch littered ground eats at the bottom of my foot. He glances down, and makes an annoyed noise, scooping me up around the waist to tuck under his arm in the most ungraceful move ever. I’m dangling like a rag-doll, whole body jostling as he sprints across the clearing to the main cabin, each stride he makes squeezing the air from my abused, and broken, lungs.
This is what kittens feel like, the removed part of my brain says, when their mothers are carrying them around.
He skids to a stop in a spray of gravel and dust, setting me down in the next split second, so fast that I nearly fall over, dizzy and oxygen-deprived.
“Wha-” I gasp, bending over and bracing my hands on my knees.
“Wasps,” he says, terse as usual. I cough, a hacking noise that comes from deep inside my body. That’s when he glances down me. I’m still in my pajamas, just a long shirt, and only one sandal. The other one had fallen off. He sighs.
“Hang on,” he mutters, and goes stomping off. My face is hot, and I feel like I’m going to be sick, my head swimming as I struggle to breathe. I close my eyes and inhale as deep as I can, getting control back over my body, inch by inch.
“Doing your calisthenics?” Kyron’s sarcastic drawl breaks through the quiet and I lift my head to look at him, still hunched over. He’s got a mug of coffee in his hand, and a bottle of beer in the other. He grins at me, and winks, before pouring one into the other. He takes a long sip of his beer-laced coffee and sighs in contentment. Ugh. So gross. Too bad he’s got a grin that won’t quit. I turn away to ignore Kyron’s… flexing. He’s stupid and shirtless, and it looks good.
Beau jogs back to us, shaking his hand off with a frown. I see a buzzing insect around him that he swats at, a wasp, and he tosses my abandoned sandal at my feet.
“We got visitors,” he says to Kyron, ignoring me as I stand there, crunched up like an accordion. Kyron offers Beau the coffee mug, and Beau wrinkles his nose.
“Fucking disgusting,” he says, with a shake of his head. “Take care of the hive.”
“Aw, fuck, why? Why me?” Kyron asks. Irritation is growing in my gut, warring with appreciation that Beau had cared enough to get me out of harm’s way when I’d interrupted him scoping out a wasp nest… and not my bedroom window like I’d thought.
If I wasn’t struggling so bad to breathe, and still half-asleep, the whole situation would be a lot more… intriguing.
As it is I just shove my foot in my sandal.
“Is it safe to go back?” I ask. Beau ignores me, while Kyron gives me a look.
“You deaf?” He asks. “Wasps. Mean little shits with daggers for assholes.” He gives a wiggly shudder. “I hate them.”
The sound of wheels over gravel interrupts whatever else he’s going to say, and I turn. A large truck, its sides plastered with police decals, pulls up through the trees. I sense, more than see, the guys stiffening. The truck rolls to a stop, and the man inside, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses, throws the door open.
Two heavy boots, black and polished, thud to the ground.
I feel naked. I’m almost naked.
“Morning,” he says, with that false cheer of you murdered someone and I’m gonna find out all about it in his voice that all cops seem to have. He’s youngish, younger t
han most police I’ve ever seen, in his mid thirties, maybe, clean-shaven and casual light-blue shirt crisp, like he ironed it. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a leather folio-
“Officer Bradshaw,” Kyron says, sipping his coffee like it’s not half-alcohol this early in the day. “I didn’t think you liked the deep woods. You want a tour? I never see you around here anyway.”
The officer smiles, as crisp and folded as his shirt.
“I thought I’d get around to visiting you all today,” he says, his gaze sliding over me slowly. “Didn’t know you had an out-of-towner.”
Beau steps forward, not quite in front of me, but definitely putting physical space between me and the cop. That’s curious.
“New hire,” Beau says, “trial run. We’re seeing if she works out.” His words thrill me, and but when I look at him, the profile of his face, his expression is flat, like either he doesn’t care for me… or he doesn’t care for Officer Bradshaw. “We need a receptionist without how busy we’ve been.” Beau’s flat out lying, and from the look of the officer as he scans the clearing, a sneer turning up the corners of his lips, he knows Beau’s shitting through his teeth.
“Seems like it,” Officer Bradshaw comments. “Well… I hope she’s got better luck then, since the last person you had helping you’s been gone a week now, without a trace.”
A dagger of cold, frosted fear stabs right up through my gut and into my heart.
“You boys,” he drawls, the word painful and derogatory in his mouth, “got any news on the whereabouts of Lacey Patton?”
My eyes widen, just a little, and I freeze in place. The officer’s neck muscles twitch, and I can feel him looking at me, watching me for my reaction.