by Eva Luxe
I drop my ax and run for the trees— or, more accurately, for her, on the other side of them. It might just be my eyes — the change in the evening light as it goes from dusk to night — but it looks like she’s wobbled forward, leaned closer to pitching herself over the edge, and I’m not gonna have that. Not while I’m around and can do something.
After all, there’s no such thing as an innocent bystander. Just a silent accomplice.
“Hey, miss!” I shout, hoping to get some attention. Some response. “Don’t stay like that. You might fall!”
Even at my semi-loud bark — the tone I used a lot when I wanted to get my fellow SEALs’ attention — the woman doesn’t respond. She just continues to face out toward the horizon, toward the drop off below, like she really is a ghost. Like she really isn’t here anymore.
When I get within arm’s reach, I think I see her starting to pitch forward again. And that’s when I make up my mind: whether she hears me or not, I’m going to let her know I see her. I’m going to snatch her from the precipice, before she does something she can’t take back.
I put my arm around her small, frail body and pull back.
And that’s when my ghost girl decides to come to life.
Chapter 2 – Juliet
From my daze — my willful and mindless descent into my inner world where there is nothing and no one to break my heart — I’m suddenly yanked back. Pulled away from my bleak interior. One that matches the steady, skeletal horizon. The foggy, impure light of the twilight amongst the trees. The darkened edges, tugging at my heart.
But those are nothing compared to the strong, capturing arm I feel wrapped around me and pulling me away from the cliff. Away from the edge. In that moment, all my instincts kick in. All the ones my dad taught me.
Sweetie, while I hope I’ll always be there to protect you, God knows I may not be. So, you’ll have to be able to protect yourself. Stand on your own two feet. This is a world run by men, sweetheart, and not all men are kind. Not all men are so service minded like myself. They will serve themselves and use and abuse you if you let them. Especially the lonely ones.
Now that someone is pulling me, I can’t help but think, It looks like one of these men you mentioned might’ve found me, Dad.
Despite the welling tears I can feel starting in my eyes, I immediately struggle against him. Slam my elbow into whatever I can reach fastest — his chest or his stomach — and hope something lands. It does, but it doesn’t do anything, except make this stranger grab ahold of me even tighter.
“Hey, hey!” says my assailant, “I’m not trying to hurt you. I was just asking whether you were okay.”
Despite his words, I’ve already been kicked off into my “zone.” My fight or flight mode, which Dad built into me, and which only makes me fight harder. I turn — twist — in his grasp, so I can land another hit on him. This time, I go for his arm. The thing gripping me.
I punch at it the way none of the girls I grew up with would have the strength — or the guts — to do. It’s hard. Fast. Merciless. “Let me go. I’m fine!”
As I say this, I’m practically screaming. Following the wired feeling in every nerve, every muscle, preparing to go over the cliff with him if I have to. Though I wasn’t ever thinking of jumping, like he obviously thought I was.
I punch again, though this one sloppier. “If you don’t let go of me, I’ll bite you. I’m not kidding!”
The third time’s the charm. As I strike his arm again — channeling all my energy into his elbow/forearm area — he lets go, though I’m not sure whether it’s from any actual pain I’ve caused him (that arm looks big and bulky enough to rival an elephant’s trunk or leg), or because he wants to avoid an incident. Whether that incident would be me putting my teeth in him, or calling the cops, either one seems to be enough to scare this deep-woods creeper.
With him no longer holding me back, I turn the rest of the way, determined to get a good look at him. Mostly for ID purposes. Especially if he turns out to be anything but my Savior. More like my worst nightmare, maybe.
“I’m fine,” I say again, looking at every inch of him. His tall bulky frame. Arms and chest muscles so thick and toned, it’s obvious he doesn’t spend time with people. Social people don’t have muscles like that.
His dark, unruly hair strikes me as intimidating, but not immediately a threat. His hazel eyes, looking like two polished pieces of obsidian in the light, are warm. They soften, like two burning coals under something he sees in me.
He is hot. I can’t deny it. His body looks like he spends hours every day in the gym, but it’s probably the result of chopping wood and moving rocks or something. His chest, which is peeking out through the opening in his unzipped winter coat, is chiseled. From what I can see of his arms under the jacket, they look muscular and strong, like he could just pick me up and throw me over his shoulder, even though I’m no dainty petite girl. I remind myself not to get distracted by his looks.
“You looked like you were about to take quite a dive there.” His words are soft, though heavy. Edged with a sorrow I can’t quite place, and a history I don’t care to know. If he’s out like this in the woods, it can’t be good. “Didn’t want you to do something permanent in a world of temporary,” he whispers.
“Just leave me alone,” I say, feeling chilled by both the air and his words. I hadn’t had the intention of throwing myself off the cliff, but I suppose I’m in an abyss. I have been since that day. Since those people showed up on my doorstep. “I’m fine,” I add, but I know I’m not fine. I will never be fine.
Thing is, I will never be fine. Not after what happened to my world.
Something I’m not going to share with Lonely Guy, I think, folding my arms over my chest, and making plans to get around him and escape from this once-special spot. I used to share it with my dad, but now Lonely Guy’s fucking it up by being in my space, with his stalking of me, which he must’ve been doing for quite some time to think I was about ready to commit suicide over the cliff.
“Thanks for nothing,” I say, letting them hear my feet on the pebbles. The loose rocks. Dad and I collected these things when I was little. Agates.
The thought is as fleeting as it is vicious, mostly because my unwanted Savior pipes up with another offer. “It’s almost nightfall,” he says, “it’s gonna get cold. Well, colder than it already is, and I don’t want you wandering around out here without someplace to go.”
As he speaks, I can hear him fussing with his big coat, zippering it. His blue roly-poly sleeping-bag winter jacket. “Do you live around here?”
I don’t answer. Another thing dad taught me. Don’t volunteer information to someone you’re not sure is a friend. And even then, keep one or two cards to your chest. Giving people too much information is dangerous, because they can use it as a weapon to hurt you.
I take my dad’s advice. I don’t fall for this stranger’s bait. I just keep walking in one direction. I think it’s the way I came in, and I should know because I used to go all the time with Dad when we came here. But my mind feels chaotic and confused, so I’m not exactly sure.
“If you have somewhere that you live close by, that’s fine,” says Lonely Guy, following after me. Still, I hear him fiddling with his coat. But it doesn’t feel real to me anymore. Just a distant buzzing. Warm, fuzzy static. Which isn’t all that different from what I’ve been dealing with lately.
“I’ll gladly take you home if you’ve got somewhere else to go that’s warm and safe,” he says. I hear more footsteps behind me. “But I’m not letting you alone until you tell me something about what your situation is.”
I slow down my pace. I stop, but I don’t answer. Instead, I just hang my head, tense my shoulders. Let my once happy and vivacious hairstyle ebb around my face and eyes like all the tattered memories— parts of my personality I’ll never get back.
“If you don’t have a place nearby, or it’s not a place you want to go back to right now, I understand,” he says
gently, stopping just short putting his hands on me again. “I won’t ask you why, but as a man with a nice warm cabin a little ways away and an extra room, I can’t in good conscience let you fend for yourself or stay out in the cold, no matter what you’re going through. It’s not my way. Now how I was raised.”
Something about his words bring a swirl of emotion into a space I’ve been trying to keep vacant, featureless and faceless since that day, but he’s cracked it open a little. And now I’m not sure what I feel. Scared? Desperate? Happy? Swaying on my feet a little, I feel something I’m not expecting. Warm need. Horniness. But in a vacuum. In a place that might simultaneously explode and implode, if he came too close.
“Do you wanna come to my place?” Gently, he brings the tips of a few fingers to my shoulder, but only enough to make sure I know where he is— so as not to surprise me, though I still flinch under his touch. My muscles tighten, preparing to go on the attack, the offensive. Unlike last time though, I manage to control my impulse. Not all the way, but enough to keep from slamming some part of my body into his again.
“Just for a night?” he asks me. “Just until the morning, when it’s warm and you won’t risk freezing to death?”
At “freezing” and “death,” I shiver, feeling all of the coldness I’ve absorbed — all the frost I’ve been out in, and have had buried in my soul — rush forward, consume me. And it’s at this moment I feel truly weak. Unable to fight as much as I was trained to.
I’m not sure what I do, exactly, but I must do something that gives him the indication that I am okay with his plan of going up to his house, because he starts to lightly guide me with him— up and away from the cliff, and toward a line of trees, thick and bushy.
“Here. Take my jacket. You can’t be warm at all in that thin T-shirt up here,” he says, placing the coat around my shoulders. Or tries to. The moment I feel his hands — and something fabric and meant to enclose — come around me, my fight kicks in again, and I start trying to buck him off. I kick and punch at him, though I was fine with him a few seconds ago.
That doesn’t matter now. My mind has decided he’s the enemy. The enemy with the straitjacket, not the winter-weather one.
But he’s not impervious to my blows the way he was the last time. I hit an arm of his, and he actually jerks back out of pain— actual agony, not surprise or in response to a verbal threat. He cries out, gripping protectively at that arm. When he does, I see he has scars all up and down it. Nerve and tissue damage, and something that looks like shrapnel or burn marks. Or both.
“Damn,” he hisses, gripping at his skin. His elbow. “I forgot how bad that could hurt. Excuse my language, please.” He grits his teeth, shoving down another sound of pain. “I… Don’t get a lot of company out here, you know.”
He tries to laugh, but it’s more painted than anything.
And that makes me feel more than I felt in the last few weeks. Month, maybe. Overwhelming guilt.
I’ve been in so much pain myself, I’ve forgotten I can inflict it on others. Until I see his arm again. The way he’s holding it. Nursing it.
“Sorry,” I murmur, deciding to take the jacket he’s put on me, and put it over my shoulders. “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“Nah.” He tries to wave me away — the pain I’ve caused him — but it’s halfhearted. “Don’t worry about it. This old boy’s numb most of the time, so I forget what it feels like to feel anything. And when I do, I’m more sensitive than most people. More intolerant, at least on this arm.”
He massages it a moment before letting the arm drop to his side and coming to join me to one side. Not too close to me, like he’s suddenly understood how skittish I am around him.
And he’s right to be more cautious. I still don’t trust him. I may have taken his coat, used it to warm myself up a bit, but I’m still prepared to run. To kick him in the balls and get the fuck out of here, if it turns out that his “cabin” is a horror story out in the woods. God knows there’s been enough of those.
“It’s a bit of a walk to my house, but it’s not far.” As he speaks, I can just barely make out a few little lights through the thick tree cover— warm squares of yellow and copper light. “We can get you there and get you warm. Get some food, if you want.”
I nod, bringing the coat closer to myself. As I match his steps, follow his lead through the woods, the path he’s following without needing to see — almost like he has night vision goggles — I really begin to feel how traumatized I am. How fucked up my head and emotions are. How not like myself I’ve been.
But that doesn’t make it right. I bring the jacket up over my ears, in close to my cheeks and chin. If the guy wanted to do me wrong, he would be trying to fuck with me now. He wouldn’t be waiting to get me to his house. Offering me food and the right to leave in the morning.
Still, even with these thoughts, I feel my body avoiding being too close to him. But I fight through it, telling myself that I need to get through the night without attacking him again.
After all, he’s a good enough guy to try and help me. To realize I’m in trouble, even when I don’t know it myself.
Chapter 3 – Brandon
As I guide my mystery cliff-gazing woman through the trees and toward my cabin, I’m still concerned for her. While I’m happy that she’s agreed to come stay in my place for the night (and not be stubborn enough to get herself killed because of the near-freezing temperatures at this time of year), I’m concerned about all that fight in her.
I’m trying to figure out why she feels the need to strike out at me that way. It’s very similar to the way some of my SEAL buddies became after too much combat—after too many bad memories and experiences.
Part of me wonders whether she’s a survivor of domestic abuse or assault. Could be. But with the way she fights? She appeared more likely to swing back, but, I know that abuse isn’t always that simple.
Covertly, I gaze at her as we make our way through a particularly gnarly patch of wooded forest, which makes a barrier of sorts before the “clearing” that is my lot. She’s looking dazed. Confused. But determined. Wary, somehow, as if she can’t quite tell whether she wants to “check out” or be over-the-top vigilant.
I watch her arms. Her feet. The way they are held at attention and wired for action. No normal woman naturally knows how to fight like that. She’s been trained. Maybe by someone in the Army or Navy as well. That instinct of hers? That’s not hardwired. That’s learned.
I bring my eyes away from her a bit, thankful that she’s at least taking my coat as a sign of kindness, rather than as an attempt to capture or kidnap her, like she had first been thinking it was. Which is why it would be good for me to learn something — anything about her. I flick my gaze near her again, watching the mechanical way she seems to move. Though I don’t know what, if anything, I’m gonna get out of her.
I decide to walk a little faster, a little ahead of her. The house is closer now. I can see it through the trees. And I don’t want those trees taking a big old chunk out of her face because she’s not really looking where she’s going.
I move ahead of her, just in time to move some tree branches up and away from her face. She notices, but just barely. As I fall back in line with her step, I decide that it’s worth a try. If she needs more than just a warm place to stay after tonight — like a therapist or something, I need to know about it. I should know about it. Especially if she gets out of control.
I don’t like this thought at all. I don’t like the idea that this poor girl is gonna lose her head while she’s with me. Do something that’s gonna fucking force me to protect myself and her. But she’s already flown off the handle. She’s already attacked me two times in the few short minutes we’ve known each other, and it could happen again. I need to know what and who I’m dealing with. Basic Navy training right there.
“So” — I clear my throat — “I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you have a name?”
I pause, hoping agai
nst hope that maybe she’ll open up— maybe pull the jacket away from her face and answer me — treat me like I’m more than just background noise. But my hopes are dashed immediately. She just continues onward, but I don’t think she’s even “here” anymore. I doubt she even sees the house. Or the fact that we’ve stepped onto my property. The open bit of forest floor right outside my cabin.
“I’m Brandon. Brandon Whitley,” I say, hoping that by me volunteering information, she will feel encouraged to as well. My mom always said never to make someone do something you aren’t willing to do yourself— and especially not to ask that of a lady.
Unfortunately for my mom’s advice and for me, though, she doesn’t throw me a bone. Nothing. The only thing she does do is stop moving. She stands still, as if she’s finally noticed we’re out of the woods. Either that, or she’s suddenly across an invisible wall.
I stop, deciding on another course of action, another series of questions to ask, since it doesn’t seem like she’s willing to disclose anything so personal. I ask these as I begin to walk up the stairs to the porch of my cabin.
“What are you doing out this way, anyway?” Luckily, my wordless woman follows after me. I don’t have to encourage her up the stairs. Or try to guide her. She might just think I’m trying to attack her again. “Do you live around here?”
Again, there’s no verbal response from her to any of these questions, no sense that my presence means anything to her. There’s just a glaze in her green eyes, a loneliness she won’t let me penetrate, not even if I tried. I take a look at her clothes.
A thin, haphazardly decorated T-shirt. It probably would’ve looked cool and trendy at one point, but it looks tattered and confused now— much like her face. And the fabric is much too thin to be wearing in the mountains, which is another reason I sensed she hadn’t planned to come here and could be in the middle of doing something irrational.
Her sweatpants are a little better, but not much. They have holes in them. And even with the thicker fabric, they will do little against hours of exposure to the elements. Her tennis shoes and socks are looking as well and beat to hell. They’re definitely not suitable for any kind of hiking, if that’s what she was doing, which I doubt.