by KT Strange
In a few short seconds my heart goes from living in the heel of my shoe to surging up into my chest.
That’s why Grady went into town. To get Blueberry for me, and get her fixed… up? I jog over to her. There’s a note attached to the handle.
Fixed it. -G
My eyes mist over for a second. The kindness is too much. And then… all of that stuff on the porch… I…
I turn around and look behind me. He’s not standing there, though. He’s probably gone back inside to eat. With the guys. I’m all by myself.
Just like I was when the wolves were chasing me-
That thought stutters to a stop in my brain.
The only person who I’d even seen that night was Logan. Had he told Grady that I’d lost my bike in the lake? He must’ve.
I’m suddenly exhausted. Too many feelings, and too many thoughts rushing around my head and heart.
I open the door to my little cabin. I’m going to take a long, extended, pre-sleepy time nap. And then later I might head into town so I can ask Kat about Kyron’s lady-killing ways.
And maybe find out if he’s actually a lady-killer… and in more ways than just collecting notches on his bedpost.
12
Cordelia
“Ugh,” I say as I stare at the paperwork that Beau’s left me. Sort through it all. File everything. Alright. I start digging through it with gusto, ignoring Grady at the other end of the room. He’s in the kitchen, doing dishes, and tallying up a list of what more the shop needs to get through the winter.
“You doing alright over there?” He asks, and when I look up, he’s walking toward me with a mug of something in his hand. He sets it down on my desk, and I can’t help but smile. It’s a steaming cup of hot chocolate, and it’s exactly what I need.
“Thanks,” I murmur, wrapping my fingers around it before taking a long sip. It’s delicious, thick and sweet, and fills my mouth before spreading warm into my chest as I swallow.
“Are we okay?” He asks, and I glance up at him. My cheeks are hot from the drink, and I gulp down the last mouthful. He’s dragging his fingers over the edge of the desk, a restless fidget that makes me wonder. “I just…”
“You nearly kissed me after I saw you giving yourself a treat,” I reply, trying not to blush hard and just face facts straight on. “So. I dunno. Are we?”
He glances away.
“I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he says after a few long moments of silence.
“Um-”
“I mean, you’re here by yourself, and you’ve got no one to stand up for you, or punch me out, or-” He’s shifting his weight from foot to foot, and looks like he’s shrunk down, which is kind of hilarious in a man so tall and well-muscled. He’s trying to make himself small, and less intimidating… for me. I can’t help the smile that stretches my mouth wide.
“Maybe I’m okay with standing up for myself,” I say, and he blinks at me, then smiles back.
“So,” he says, stepping closer, reaching for my hand. I hold my breath when his finger-tips drag along the back of it, a shiver blossoming on my skin. “So if I-”
BANG!
Beau comes in through the front door. Grady jerks away, spinning.
“Firewood’s cut,” Beau says. “You stack it, I need a shower-” He stops short, and stares at us both, eyes narrowing suspiciously.
“Thanks,” Grady says, and makes a straight line for the door, not looking back at me. He disappears out of it, taking the little tiny flame that had erupted in my stomach with him. Beau glances at me. I lift up a folder.
“I’ll have this done in a few,” I say, a total lie, “so have more work for me, okay?”
Beau pauses, then grunts, and walks out of sight, down the hall, for his shower.
***
“It’ll be fun,” Kat says, as we stroll down one of two aisles in the grocery store the next day. Fallen Mountain isn’t known for its variety of grocery selections, but what’s here suits me just fine, and I’ve noticed that most people grow their own produce in their back and front gardens, while Kat, the tea shop, and Gato supplies most of the baked goods.
This town is worn down, foxed at the edges, and used to toughing it out on its own. There might be lacy curtains flirting in all the cafe windows, but the people in Fallen Mountain are hard at the seams.
Hence the bonfire night. Something I’ve never even heard of before, or gone to, in Twocities.
Kat turns to me with a liquid smile, her eyes bright.
“You’ll love it,” she promises. “Everyone gets in their best plaid, brings blankets, and we all sit around bonfires right on the edge of the lake.
The lake.
Its water fingers are reaching toward me from beyond the main street, and I try not to shiver.
“I don’t know,” I say. Kat gives me a sly, side-long look.
“Mmm. Thought so.”
“What?” I ask, reaching for a plastic-wrapped loaf of bread blindly, ignore the fact I’ve already got two more from Lena and Val in my cupboard back at the cabin. “What’s that look for?” It’s nice, bumping into Kat, feeling a little less lost in the big woods, so to speak.
“You don’t want that,” she says, reaching into my basket for the loaf of bread and popping it back on the shelf. “C’mon.”
We’ve paid, old Adam snoring softly behind the counter, and we’re outside. A rare pour of sunlight is melting over the street, baking the pavement in a weird late-autumn heatwave. It warms my bones and I turn my face toward it.
“So which one is it,” Kat asks, turning to me, her shopping clutched in her arms.
“One?” A slowly creeping realization is coming down over me. The guys. She thinks?! No. “Oh! Oh no. Noooo. No.” I shake my head. “The answer is none. Not one. Noooooone.”
“Mmhmmm,” she says, suspicious and full of smirks as she turns, walking toward her cafe. “C’mon. Let’s go talk about this none over coffee.”
“Tea’s fine for me,” I say, catching up to her. The groceries are heavier than I remember after only a few steps. What the hell had I bought? Kat’s so distracting like that, always flitting from one subject to the next, first it was asking me what I was making for dinner, and did I know to rinse the chicken down and pat it dry before putting it in the oven? And then the invite to the bonfire party at the lakeshore.
Which I am not going to.
I am fine staying fifty feet or more away from that lake at all times for the rest of my life.
Thankfully that’ll be short.
And in the next life, who knows? Maybe I won’t be so cursed.
Maybe I’ll be reborn as a fish, gliding through the waters, and I can swim as far away from the beaches as possible, right out into the deep, inky seas.
“You’re not paying attention,” Kat says, snapping her fingers under my nose. “I want gossip, and hot beverages, like now.” She shoulders me along, like a herding dog nipping at my ankles, until I’m settled into her cafe by the windows, my bag of groceries nestled at my hip beside me. I gaze longingly outside. Days like this are hard to come by in Twocities, if the sun breaks through the smog at all, and even out here with the clean air, well… it’s cold. And shadowed by mountains.
Thump.
Kat sits opposite from me, after putting down a pot of tea for me. She wraps her long fingers around her cup of coffee, the roast bean scent curling its way toward me.
“So, really, none?”
I stare at her and say flatly,
“If you think I am dating any of them, then you’re wrong. I’m just a lodger. That’s it.” I peek under the lid of my teapot. Water’s still translucent. It needs too steep longer.
“Oh, no, I don’t think you’re dating them,” she says with a derisive laugh, waving her hand in the air. It hits me wrong, and I blink slowly, trying to formulate an answer to that and also explain to myself why I’m suddenly offended.
It’s not like they’re my best friends. I barely know them.
The flicker of memory interrupts me, of Grady’s hand wrapped around his cock and I stare down at my empty teacup. Of his fingers on my hand. And then, like that, I slip into that half-dream-world, of watching him jerk himself off while he laces his fingers with mine, pulling me close, and near to him.
“Oh my god, you’re blushing,” Kat murmurs.
“It’s warm in here,” I say, the back of my neck itching and prickling. She purses her lips, chews them over to one side and then reaches over, pouring me a cup of tea. I automatically go for the sugar, but she puts her hand over the little pot, shaking her head.
“Sweetness ruins it, trust me,” she says and when I raise an eyebrow at her, not believing her in the slightest, she smiles, trying to entreat me into seeing things from her perspective. “I am the absolute goddess of tea. I know my herbs and my liquids. Ask me about any aromatic in the book,” she says.
“Book?” I ask, glancing around. She laughs, the sound shrill for a half-note, before she slaps her hand flat on the table. “Back to the topics at hand, because those three are more than just a single topic combined-”
“I really appreciate them giving me a place to stay,” I demure, because I’m not going to tell her how I feel… mostly because I don’t know how I feel. Something feels off right now in this moment, and I can’t quite figure out what. Maybe it’s my throat, parched and tight. I reach for the teacup, intent on getting some of that liquid in my mouth, but it’s so hot that the warmth radiating off of it warns me.
“Do you have an ice cube?” I ask, glancing at the tea.
“Hot and bothered? Which one? Beau? Nah, he’s such a dick. Kyron’s a complete nightmare. He goes down to the motel and picks fights all the time. But Grady? He’s one of those, ramrod-spines, stick-up-the-ass types… bet he’s crazy in bed. All the women in town say so. We’d like to be doing the walk of shame down that road for any of them, but Grady- like, I just bet-”
“The tea’s too hot,” I explain, because sweet god almighty, I want her to stop talking about Grady in bed. And even the mental image of Kyron going to a random motel to pick fights… simultaneously I want to know more and don’t want to know at all, but that is sorta, well, hot.
What is wrong with me?
Kat lets out a hissing breath as she waves her fingers over my tea-cup.
“Yeah that’s a little steamy. One sec.” She slides across the bench seat on her side of the table, and disappears into the back of the kitchen. I hear her yelling at someone, and a bang, which makes me glance away. Apparently there’s no scoop for the ice, I guess.
Mrowwwwwwllll…
A familiar noise invades my space, which should be impossible, there is no way Gato could ever be inside the restaurant-
Except he is. He’s right there, his little gray ears peeping over the back of the booth, his face appearing, his eyes narrowed.
He looks enraged, and I freeze in place. How did a cat get into the cafe? His ears flatten and he hisses so loud that I jerk, rocking back against the padded rest behind me. In the next second he streaks up and over the bench seat, jumping onto the cafe table and I bang against it as I stumble out from behind it, backing up into the diner stools at the bar.
Rrrrooooooow, Gato says, explaining his passionate feelings about me for everyone in the room to hear. It’s quiet, my attention focused on the very angry feline who looks like he’s about to swell to three times the size and eat me.
“What the-” Kat’s confused voice echos off the kitchen tile as she emerges from the doorway.
“I’m gonna, uh, go, yeah,” I say, backing up, toward the door, as Gato hisses again, “thanks for the tea,” I say, as if that explains it all, and I turn and bolt. He lets out an unholy shriek and I barely make it out the door before he blisters right at my heels, and then runs past me, bounding along the sidewalk.
He darts under a bush, and disappears.
My heartbeat, having made an appearance in my throat at some point during the last few minutes, does not vanish so quickly.
Kat is outside in an instant, confused. I feel like my legs are going to give out from under me, and I turn to her.
“I’m sorry-”
“Come inside,” she says, her expression concerned. “You should sit down.”
“Gato! What on earth?” I hear Val’s voice echo down the street, and she’s looking at me, shaking her head. I can see Gato slinking across the street, back to his namesake B&B. Val jogs up to us.
“Your cat is chasing off my customers,” Kat says cooly to Val, crossing her arms over her chest and looking a little bit like an irritated feline herself.
“Jeez, I’m sorry about that,” Val replies, and if I’m not completely mistaken, it almost, almost, sounds like she isn’t actually sorry at all. But when I look at her, her expression is calm, if concerned, with no hint of the mild dislike I swear I just heard in her tone. It must be me. I’m feeling winded. My legs tremble. “Cordelia,” Val says, reaching for my shoulder. I give her a weak smile.
“It’s just been… I’m okay,” I say, before giving Kat an apologetic glance. “I’m going to bike home, if it’s all the same to you.”
Kat’s eyes flicker and then she nods.
“Let me get your groceries,” she says, and disappears inside.
“What happened?” Val asks, and I let out a shuddering breath. “Never mind, tell me as we walk to your bike.” When Kat re-emerges, Val takes the bag of groceries from her.
“Bonfire,” Kat says to me, unblinking. “Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” I answer back, people-pleasing out of habit.
“Hmm,” Val says, as she steers me around, and back up toward the grocery store, and my bike. “So what happened?”
“Gato really hates me,” I say, “I’m sorry.” Val laughs, but it sounds empty, almost thin.
“He doesn’t usually go into the other shops,” she says, “I think I might keep him in for a few days,” she continues softly. “And maybe it’s something you’re wearing. A perfume?” She gives me a once-over. “I’m not trying to victim-blame, just… animals are animals. They don’t really hold opinions on whether people are good or bad. Just usually on whether they’re a threat, or not. Did you look him in the eye? Give him the stink-eye?” She’s cajoling a laugh out of me.
“He came out of nowhere,” I admitted. “I wasn’t really feeling like tea anyway, so I’m kind of glad-”
“Speaking of not feeling it, the bonfire, the one Kat mentioned,” Val says, as we reach my bike. She settles my groceries into the pannier and wraps steady fingers around one of the handles as I swing my leg around to mount it.
“Why does this sound like a conversation my father would have with me?” I ask. Val laughs, but again, it’s without her full body, like she doesn’t really have her whole chest in it.
And that worries me.
In the short time I’ve known her, all she does is fully embody life, and living, and sunlight seems to shine out of her pores.
“I’d warn you off, but I’m not your dad,” she amends. “But if you do go, take one of the guys. Not Kyron. He’ll just cause more trouble.”
“Is it that bad?”
“What? Kyron? Or the bonfire?” She asks with a quirk of her head, warmth touching her lips in a slow smile. “It’s just… there is a lot of energy in this town with not much place for it to go. People turn to things they shouldn’t when they have nothing else to do, no dreams to live for. You’ll see a bit of that down at the bonfire if you’re not looking, and way too much of it if you are.” She purses her lips. “You’re too nice to get mixed up in either ends of that spectrum.”
My mind veers off in one direction, then the other.
“I said I’d go,” I reply. �
�I don’t… I think Kat was sad we didn’t get girl time to talk, so I think she’d be mad if I didn’t show up.”
Val nods, the movement slow and syrup-like.
“Right,” she says, “well ignoring the fact you’re an adult and can do what you want, just take Grady. Or better yet, Beau.” She chews on the inside of her cheek, as if thinking. “Definitely Beau.”
“I didn’t realize you knew them that well,” I reply, and she wags a finger at me.
“Don’t imply things you’re not willing to defend in a fight,” she says, but she’s teasing. “I love Lena with every single bit of my heart, and my third kidney.”
“Third kidney-” She holds up a hand to stop me.
“You don’t want to know. Alright, forest-girl. Beau. Don’t forget.” She steps back as my little bike hums to life, and I release the brake.
“Thank you,” I call as I start to roll away.
“Sorry about Gato,” she calls to me, and it’s too late to do anything but wave in response.
The ride home is nothing to write home about, not that I have anybody to write to, but it is what it is, and I’ve got my groceries stashed away, and nothing to do with myself for a few hours before I decide if it’s better to not show to the bonfire and piss off Kat, or to show up to the bonfire and piss off Beau by asking him to go with me.
As what. My chaperone?
And how bad could things be out here, where the taint of life in Twocities hasn’t quite reached? I’m standing in the doorway of my cabin, debating just going to the bonfire by myself, for at least ten minutes, and if I hang around any longer, I’m either going to get bitten by a bunch of mosquitos, or a strong wind is going to come along and slam the door shut in my face.
There’s hazards to hanging out in doorways, between two places, and often, you don’t see them coming.
It’s the universes’s way of telling you that you’re overthinking things, because when I walk into the main cabin to ask Beau, Captain of Foul Moods, he’s not there, and Kyron tells me both Beau and Grady have gone into the city and won’t be back for the rest of the day.