The Hot Guy in the Woods

by London Casey

  I smiled. “I’ll make this simple. I’m moving out.”

  I zipped up another bag and threw it on the bed.

  My mind was racing. I felt crazy. I quit my job. I gave up my apartment. I had nothing and nowhere to go. Except to the cabin with Osiris. But I wouldn’t put that on him. It was time to figure it all out. Forget Thad. Stop relying on Kim and her family to pick up the slack I left behind.

  I sat down and grabbed a notebook and pencil. I put my financial brain to use for once and started to jot down a basic budget. I could get a small loft somewhere. No cable. Just internet. My cell plan was already basic. I could trade that in and go really back in time and get a phone and buy minutes. Whatever it would take. I could grab a waitress job or a bartending job. Find a place I liked to work at, start at the bottom, and work my way up.

  I wasn’t going to be trapped anymore.

  I looked at the bags on my bed and smiled.

  I was free. Finally free.

  It was a beautiful thing, right?

  For years, trapped at a desk, convincing myself I was doing right. Coming home to hope Thad was around. Forcing that life where I wanted the career, then the house, then the kids, then give up the career, raise the kids, Thad loving me until we died. But it didn’t happen. So fuck it. And the hours I spent watching his life continue while mine stopped. Watching Lenore get bigger with their baby. Having the baby. Feeling that pain, guilt, jealousy.

  And, yeah, maybe there was a sense of me that was sort of happy he was hurting her, but I hoped he would come to his damn senses and realize he had a family now. And if he decided to take off for good, then Lenore would have to learn to live with the life she created.

  It wasn’t my problem.

  I was free.

  I wrote that down under the messy budget I created. Right under it. Everything was messy and would be messy for a long time.

  But I was…

  “What the hell?” a voice called out from inside my apartment.

  I threw my notebook aside and jumped up.

  I hurried to find Kim standing in the middle of my apartment, hands up.

  “Kim,” I said.

  “What. The. Hell.”

  “What?”

  “I leave to do something and all hell breaks loose,” she said. “Thad showed up? Percy threatened him? And you quit?”

  “Yes, yes, and yes,” I said.

  “What?”

  I laughed. “It’s crazy. And then Lenore called me.”

  “Lenore… wait…”

  “Yeah,” I said. I gave her the ten second story of what happened.

  Kim’s jaw dropped. “He’s a piece of shit. A real piece of shit.”

  “I know he is,” I said. “But I don’t care anymore. I really don’t care anymore. I gave up this apartment, too.”

  “What?” Kim yelled. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Starting over,” I said. “From nothing. That’s what I want. Nothing.”

  “You can’t just quit. My parents love you.”

  “I love them.” I walked to Kim. I grabbed her arms. “I love you, Kim. But I’m not going to lean on anyone anymore. You were there for me. I thank you for that. Your parents helped me. I’ll always thank them. I’m not going anywhere. I’m not running away. I’m just doing something different.”

  “Good,” Kim said. “Last thing I need to hear is that you’re packing your bags and going to that cabin.”

  I didn’t respond.

  “No,” she said.

  I still didn’t respond.

  Kim pushed me out of the way and ran to my room.

  She screamed when she saw the bags.

  I stood in the doorway when she turned around.

  “Lara,” she said.

  “I’m not moving in with him or anything. I’m just packing stuff up. I need to figure out what’s next here.”

  “And you think some guy in a cabin is that?”

  “I love him,” I said. “We understand each other. I’m not saying we’re getting married and having mountain man babies.”

  “Ohmygod,” Kim said. “Did you really just say that?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m following my heart in a different way for once. What’s the worst that could happen? I end up dead broke? No job? Nowhere to go? Fine. It’s better than living here and being fake.”

  Kim reached for a bag and lifted it off the bed. She shook her head. “I think I rubbed off on you too much over the years.”

  “Maybe so,” I said. “Way to go.”

  “Bitch.” She held the bag out. “Where are we putting these?”

  “I guess my trunk.”

  “Then let’s get packing,” Kim said. She walked to the door and then stopped and looked at me. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Yes I am,” I said. “But crazy is going to save my ass once and for all.”

  That… and Osiris’s wild, mountain man heart.

  29

  You Never Said Goodbye

  (OSIRIS)

  “I’m going for a ride,” Dane said.

  “What?”

  “You fucking heard me. I can’t watch this shit yet.”

  “Dane…”

  “No, Osiris. No.”

  Dane walked out of the garage and got into his truck.

  Then I was alone. Standing in the open garage of Dane and Michelle’s house, waiting for Michelle to come back with Adley. It was all so fucked up. I should have just stayed away. I didn’t want this. I didn’t ask for any of it.

  I felt strange going into the house but I did it anyway. I grabbed the drawing Adley had made for me. I looked at the innocent picture. The lines, messy coloring, everything that made it so perfect. It would look great in the cabin on the fridge. But then what? What would happen with Adley?

  It all started to weigh on me. The first time I met her was right after she learned to walk. She was an early walker, too. Having Mila tell me she had a young daughter. Christ, Adley wasn’t a young daughter, she was an infant. A baby.

  I was so taken aback by it all that I wasn’t even able to hold Adley. I didn’t want to, actually. I didn’t want to scare her, confuse her, anything. It took me a couple weeks before I held her. I explained to Mila that it was weird but I was okay with it. And I fell in love with both of them at the same time. It was actually a night I slept at Mila’s apartment. One of our first overnights together with Adley home. Adley had a really rough night of sleep.

  Mila kept apologizing to me about it. She finally took Adley to the living room on the couch. I watched from the hallway as Mila walked about ten miles in the living room, back and forth, getting Adley comfortable and back asleep. Then I made some coffee and we stayed up, sitting at her small kitchen table, talking and trying our best to hide our laughter.

  When Mila fell asleep right as the sun came up, Adley woke up.

  Instead of waking Mila, I took things into my own hands. I got Adley her bottle, watched some cartoons, played with toys.

  Thinking about all of that. Shit, I started to get all worked up.

  And that’s when the kitchen door opened again.

  And in came Michelle…

  … with Adley behind her.

  I dropped to one knee as the emotions got the best of me.

  She was Mila.

  A spitting image of Mila. The hair. The eyes. The face. The baby was now a little girl. A beautiful four-year-old girl standing there, staring at me.

  We both had the same look of shock on our faces as though we weren’t sure the other person was there.

  But after just a few very long seconds Adley broke from Michelle and ran to me.

  The second I felt her little arms go around my neck, my heart exploded.

  “Adley,” I whispered.

  “Syi,” she whispered back.

  That was a little twisted, to hear her say my name. I remembered her saying my name so many times when she was really little. She used to say it like sky or like pie. And then f
or Father’s Day one year she called me Daddy. Mila had taught her to say it.

  But here she was, smart enough to call me Syi again. Because I wasn’t her father. I wasn’t her Daddy. I hadn’t acted like it in a long time.

  I broke the hug and smiled at her. “Adley. I love this drawing. You really made this for me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I did. I have lots.”

  “I would love to see them all. I’m… I’m really sorry I was gone, Adley.”

  “But he’s back now,” Michelle said, giving me the wide eyes. “Right, Syi?”

  “That’s right,” I said to Adley.

  Adley smiled big. “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Are you going to live here?”

  I laughed. “No. I can’t live here. You have Michelle and Dane here. You know how lucky you are?”

  Adley shrugged her shoulders.

  The kitchen door opened and Dane was there.

  Adley stared right at me, though.

  I took it all in. I swallowed hard.

  “You know, we have a lot to catch up on,” I said. “But I want you to know how much Michelle and Dane love you. And how lucky you are to live here. This house is amazing. I mean, it’s a mansion.”

  Adley giggled.

  “I live in the woods.”

  “Like camping?” Adley asked, scrunching up her nose.

  “Sort of,” I said. “I have a house in the woods.”

  “We tried camping,” Dane said. “Didn’t work out, huh, Ad?”

  She looked at Dane. And the look on her face told me everything. The way her eyes lit up. The way she smiled.

  Dane was her everything. Her protector. The true father figure in her life.

  I slowly stood up.

  Adley looked up at me. “Whoa. You’re a giant.”

  “Why don’t you get those drawings you mentioned,” I said. “I would love to see them.”

  “Can you help me?” Adley asked Michelle.

  “Of course I can. Do you want to give Syi the tour of the house?”

  “Yeah!” Adley yelled. Then she looked at Dane.

  She was worried.

  Dane stepped forward. “Well, this is the kitchen. And we have the dining room, living room, but I think we should start with the toy room.”

  Dane nodded to me.

  I nodded back.

  When we finished the tour, Michelle made coffee and I sat at the table in the kitchen with Adley and her drawings. The house was beautiful. The perfect house for Adley to grow up in. She had a good life. Probably one better than I could provide. Hell, probably one better than Mila could have given her, too.

  Which was a sad thought to think.

  I looked at every single drawing Adley had in her giant art box. She loved frogs, rainbows, and making little towns out of construction paper and gluing them to another piece of construction paper.

  I lost track of time until Michelle said to Adley, “Why don’t we start cleaning up here? It’s almost dinner.”

  “I better get going anyway,” I said.

  “Back to the woods?” Adley asked.

  “Yeah. I have to get to my cabin.”

  And saying the word cabin made me think of something.

  The only time Adley had been up on the mountain was the day Mila went missing. She never saw the cabin. She was just in the backseat of the car. Waiting for her mother. To be found by me. And then all hell broke loose.

  I turned and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  There were wounds still bleeding all around us.

  “Osiris,” a voice said.

  I looked and Dane had the door open. He motioned for me to come out to the garage.

  “I’m glad you came,” he admitted.

  “Thank you for letting me be here.”

  “It’s fucked up.”

  “It’s really fucked up, Dane.”

  “I wish I could fix it.”

  “So do I. I’ve been trying. Like an idiot.”

  “I’d do the same thing if something happened to Michelle,” Dane said.

  “You’re a good man, Dane,” I said. “A really good man. You probably don’t get an ounce of fucking credit because everyone just assumes it’s going to be taken care of.”

  Dane raised an eyebrow. “Are you kissing my ass?”

  I laughed. “I don’t kiss ass, Dane. I say it as it is.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m going to say it as it is. You’re not going to like it.”

  “Try me.”

  “When the fuck are you going to let go?”

  I curled my lip. “What?”

  “You know she’s gone, Osiris. I know she’s gone. We all know. But that little girl in there, she’s not sure what’s going on. She knows her mother is gone but doesn’t get what that means. I know I’m going to have to explain things one day. But you know what? I don’t want to. I want you to. You know more than I do. But you can’t talk to her unless you understand what happened.”

  “Fuck off, Dane,” I snapped. “You’re not going to talk to me like some therapist.”

  “Right. You haven’t even gone to see what we did for her, have you?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Because you won’t let go. You won’t say goodbye.”

  “You just fucking said a minute ago-”

  “I know what I said,” Dane said. “I meant it. But if you go there, see the memorial, maybe it’ll…”

  “Help me?” I asked. “Right? What do you want me to do? Shave my beard? Cut my hair? Sell the cabin? Go back to driving that expensive car?”

  “No, not at all,” Dane said. “You were an arrogant prick then. I like this version of you. You just need to give your mind and heart a chance to survive this.”

  The door opened. Michelle stood there. The tension in the garage was suffocating.

  “Adley wanted to say goodbye to Syi,” Michelle said.

  “Of course,” Dane said. He walked to the door and rubbed Adley’s head.

  I knelt on the bottom step of the kitchen door to the garage and still towered over Adley.

  “Hey,” I said. “You have a good night. I’m going to take this drawing home and hang it up. Anytime you want to talk to me, you ask Michelle for her phone. I promise I will answer. And I promise I’ll be back soon. Maybe we can work on a drawing together.”

  “I love you, Syi,” Adley said and jumped at me.

  I held her. I stood up and spun around once. She giggled.

  I put her down and Michelle sent her inside.

  Then I stood there and looked at Michelle. She put her lips tight together and smiled just a little.

  I started to cry.

  30

  Just Hanging on the Fridge

  (LARA)

  I dove into his massive arms like I hadn’t seen him in years. He held me, squeezing me, stealing my breath. He turned me, put me on the porch of the cabin, and then touched my face.

  We kissed.

  My body instantly went on fire.

  “I quit my job today,” I said. “I saw Thad. I talked to Lenore. And I gave up my apartment.”

  Osiris’s eyes went wide. “I went to see Michelle. I punched Dane in the jaw. I hung out with Adley. Then I cried like a baby in front of Michelle when I was leaving.”

  “Holy shit,” I whispered. “Syi…”

  I started to smile.

  He kissed me. The kiss broke. I grabbed for his beard.

  “Talk later?” I asked.

  “Fucking right,” he growled.

  Osiris turned and took me into the cabin. He took me right to the bedroom. He tossed me on the bed and I hurried to jump back off. I ran to him, my hands clawing up his shirt. I had this fantasy of just ripping it open, sending buttons everywhere.

  I pulled and nothing happened.

  Osiris started to laugh.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You wanted to rip my shirt, huh?”

  “Stop.”

  “Did you bring s
ome clothes?” he asked me.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Why?”

  He got this wicked sexy grin on his face. He grabbed my shirt and pulled, lifting it over my head. Then he grabbed the front of my pants and opened them. Pressing his body to mine, he knocked me back and down to the bed and stripped my pants off my body.

  I felt my toes curl as I watched him work.

  Then he put his massive hands on my panties.

  “This is how you fucking do it, sugar,” he said.

  Like they were made from paper, Osiris ripped my panties from my body. Ripping them down the middle. Then ripping the sides. Pulling them off of me in pieces.

  My jaw dropped, but more importantly, I was ready for him.

  His hands touched my inner thighs, opening my legs, and he came forward.

  It was unexpected.

  I felt the roughness of his beard against me a moment before his tongue flicked against my soft wetness. I tilted my head back and let out a long sigh of relief. But that sigh wasn’t good enough for Osiris. He wanted more. And he got just that. The tip of his tongue slid down and thrust forward, entering me. I gasped and grabbed for the sheets. As quickly as his tongue entered me, he eased out, up, and curled his tongue around my clit. His lips came together and he started to drink me. Suckling against my wetness.

  “Fuck,” I growled.

  That was the last word I’d get for a few minutes. The harder he sucked against my sex the less words I knew and the less air I could find.

  My back arched and then slammed down to the bed. My legs pulled against the edge of the bed as my ass lifted up. Osiris slid his massive, strong hands to my ass and squeezed tight, pulling me against him even closer.

  I couldn’t think straight, at least not until I started to come. My hips rocked up and down, working against the movements of his tongue, making everything feel even better. I moved my hands from the bed to Osiris’s shoulders, trying to grab them, but there was no use.

  My hands fell to the bed again, and I was just there. All his. The deepest parts of my core throbbing, pulsing with my racing heart, my desires coming to life, a wild sense of relief pouring through me. And at the same time there was a devil resting alongside me, wanting more.