by Cynthia Hart
We spent the morning in Dunfair. When we got back to Milford, it was after lunch, and I hadn’t run any of my errands yet. I would leave shopping for another time, but I needed food.
I grabbed my bike and cycled into the center of town. I had my dad’s truck, but I barely used it. I could cycle wherever I needed to and spend nothing on gas.
“Hey, Murray,” I said when I walked into the convenience store on the corner. Murray stocked everything from fresh produce to non-perishables and odd haberdashery things in case you needed to sew on a button or something. I grabbed a basket and started at one end, loading it with what I needed.
When I reached the fridge, someone was already taking out milk. I waited. When the man was done, he stepped back without looking behind him and bumped my basket, pushing me backward. I yelped and swung my free arm.
He grabbed my flailing arm and pulled me upright gain, restoring my balance like it was nothing. Like I weighed nothing. When I looked into his eyes, it was like a jolt of electricity shot through me. They were the color of metal. Sandy hair fell over his forehead in a messy fringe. Muscles bulged under his long sleeve shirt.
“Hello, Alice,” he said in a deep voice.
I blinked at him, slowly putting the pieces together and recognizing him.
“Hemming?” I asked. God, he looked different. He smiled and nodded. “I heard you were in town. I wasn’t sure, though.”
He shrugged. “I guess sometimes the rumors are true.”
I looked him up and down. When I’d last seen him, he definitely hadn’t looked like this. He had filled out, his scrawny body filled out with muscle everywhere. He carried himself with authority rather than arrogance and his eyes… there was something hypnotizing and at unsettling at the same time.
He grinned at me, and I realized I’d been ogling.
“Sorry,” I said, feeling stupid. “You look so different.”
“And you look exactly the same,” he said. I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment. I shuffled from one foot to the other, looked over my shoulder to see Murray. He was watching us. There was always an audience around here.
“What are you doing back in town?” I asked. “I don’t know if anyone told you, but people usually don’t come back here once they’ve escaped.”
He chuckled. “You did.”
I sighed and shook my head. “I never left.”
When I looked at him again, his eyes were resting on my face. They had changed – they weren’t as hard as before – and I couldn’t read his expression.
I cleared my throat, feeling unsure of myself. His stare was unnerving.
“You’re staying in the cottage?” I asked.
Hemming nodded.
“Don’t you remember it’s haunted?” I asked, referring to the stories we’d told as children.
“I’m scarier than any ghosts that are left,” he said and smiled. It was a sad smile.
“Yeah, with those muscles I’ll bet you can beat up anything that gets in your way.”
I felt like an idiot the moment I said it, a blush creeping up from my collar. My ears burned. Hemming smiled, amused. Yep, he was laughing at me. I looked down at my basket, hooked my hair behind my ear, trying to compose myself again. When I looked up at him again, his eyes rested on my face, and that same unreadable expression was on his face. His eyes were drowning deep, and I feared that if I didn’t look away, I would fall into them. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from him, though.
The store fell away, and it was just the two of us. There was something about Hemming that I hadn’t noticed before. Or had it always been there, the reason I’d crushed on him so hard in school, in the first place?
Hemming smiled at me, a slow, lazy smile that gave a glimpse to who he used to be at school.
“I know we just ran into each other again,” Hemming said, breaking the spell. “But would you like to go out with me sometime?” He didn’t look shy or unsure about his request at all. “It will be nice to catch up again,” he added.
We hadn’t known each other very well when we’d grown up. It wasn’t a big town, but kids created their groups anyway, and Hemming had always been out of my league. I found myself nodding, though.
“Catching up would be nice,” I said. My voice sounded breathy. Hemming smiled.
“How does Friday sound?”
I thought for a second and shook my head. “I’m working both shifts all weekend this week. At Hardy’s Café.”
“That’s right, you work there,” Hemming said, and I wished I could be more interesting. “They open at eleven, right? We’ll do it before that. Breakfast, Friday morning? Just after sunrise. You jog that time, right?”
I blinked at him. “How did you know that?” I hadn’t done that as a teenager. I hadn’t done that until after my dad has passed.
“You crossed the field in front of the cottage this morning,” Hemming said.
Right.
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t know.”
He shook his head. “Don’t be. It’s fine. I’ll see you Friday morning, then? Bright and early. I’ll be at your front door just after sunrise.”
He lifted his hand and touched my cheek with his fingertips. My skin was on fire where he touched me, even after he turned and left. I lifted my hand and touched the skin. The gesture had been so intimate and out of place. I watched him leave the shop, only remembering my groceries after Hemming was gone.
I felt his fingers on my skin long after he was gone. Breakfast with Hemming? Boy, did I have some gossip for Dana.
Chapter 3
Friday morning, my alarm woke me up. I’d set it for the time I went jogging the other morning. I put on my running shoes, my sweatshirt and headed out. When I reached the field adjacent to the cottage Hemming used now, I steered clear. I didn’t want to be rude. I kept half an eye on the cottage windows while I ran past. Was he in there, watching me? He’d seen me the other morning. Why had he been up so early?
The cottage was dark and quiet with the same abandoned feel as always. If he was in there, he must have been sleeping.
It was close to sunrise, though. He had to be up if he’d promised me breakfast.
I ran into the forest. I was aware of the time, of the way the light slowly pushed in between the trees. Sunrise would be soon, and I had to get home to change, still. I wanted to look good for our date. Was that what it was? I wasn’t even sure. He’d wanted us to be alone, though. And he’d been willing to work around my work schedule. Of course, if he cared to see me at all that would have to be the case.
It didn’t mean anything.
I weaved through the trees until I found the game trail again. As I ran through the trees, I tried to remember Hemming the way he had been while we were in school together and just after.
He’d been the kind of guy everyone had wanted to be. His arrogance and cool confidence had been almost contagious if you had the same amount of courage to stand up to authority the way he did, but he’d never acted like he was better than everyone else.
He’d been a loner, though. A loner and a rebel. He’d always been different. That was what had made him so attractive. And now? He seemed so different. One conversation wasn’t nearly enough to know how much he’d changed. He didn’t seem like his cocky, arrogant self, but everyone changed. I knew I had.
I stopped in the same clearing I always stopped and caught my breath. I didn’t sit down, though. The air was thick with something I couldn’t see and anxiety clenched in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t have time to hang around here, anyway. I had to get back home. I had a date.
When I finally made it back home, I was hot and sweaty. I’d pushed the last bit, running harder and faster than the rest of my route to be on time. Hemming sat on my porch, elbows on his knees, fingers interlaced. He grinned when he saw me.
“Oh, God, am I late?” I asked.
Hemming stood up, dusting his jeans. He looked at his wrist watch.
“Right on time,” he said.
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“I have to go inside and change. I’m sweaty from the run.””
Hemming nodded. I unlocked the door and invited him inside.
“Make yourself at home,” I said, disappearing into my bedroom. “I won’t be long.”
I was telling a stranger to make himself at home in my house. It was crazy. But Hemming was an old friend. I didn’t know anything about him, but I didn’t feel like he could be something like an ax murderer. Maybe his steely eyes had gotten to me. I was going to take that chance.
I showered in record time and changed into jeans, a tank top and a jacket along with my ballerina flats.
“Sorry,” I said, walking back to the living room. I stopped when I saw Hemming. He stood at the mantelpiece where all our family photos were up. It had one photo of me from ages ago, and the rest were of my father and me as I grew up and he grew older. Sadness hung in the room like a blanket, making it hard to breathe. I felt the weight of it pressing down on my heart. I couldn’t get through without thinking about my dad too much – it hurt every day, but you learned to move on. Now, though, the sorrow was almost suffocating.
“Hemming?” I asked, my voice so low it was almost a whisper. Whatever I felt, he was feeling it, too. His shoulders hung. When he turned around his face was serious, his eyes the color of slate.
“I’m sorry about your father,” he said.
I looked at the picture at the end of the mantelpiece, the last one I had taken of him before he’d gotten so sick.
“Where did you hear?” I asked.
Hemming blinked at me for a moment. “Uh… in town,” he said.
I nodded. News traveled fast, and gossip was easy to come by. I doubted in the four days Hemming had been in town he’d missed anything that had happened around here.
“Are you ready to go?” I asked. I didn’t want to talk about my dad, about what life was like without him.
Hemming nodded and smiled, and like the sun breaking through rain clouds the mood lifted, and the room was light again. It was weird. He gestured with his head toward the front door, and I followed him out.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “There are a few good places around town, maybe even some new ones since you were here last.”
Hemming shook his head. “I don’t really feel like being around people,” he said. “You know how gossip travels.”
I nodded. “I get that,” I said, even though I didn’t get it at all. Did he not want to be seen with me? Would it be terrible if some of the gossip was about him and me? Of course, there was nothing, but did he want to make sure it stayed that way?
“I want to take you somewhere,” he said and walked toward a car parked on the other side of the road. I hadn’t noticed it before. I hesitated before I followed him. Hemming opened the passenger door for me from the inside. I got into the car, and he turned the ignition. The car sputtered to life.
“Nice car,” I said.
Hemming grinned. “We all need a crappy car to start off with, right?”
Was he just starting off? Okay, so I still had my dad’s truck and my bicycle, and it wasn’t much better. But hadn’t Hemming been making a life for himself?
I didn’t ask, though. I didn’t want to be rude and imply that I’d expected him to drive a better car, to be somewhere in life. I was hardly one to speak. Hemming turned the car around and headed back to the forest I’d just come from. He took the dirt road that split off from the main road in the other direction that I usually ran and followed it through the trees for twenty minutes. When he parked, he got out and retrieved a backpack from the trunk.
“It’s about ten minutes’ hike, still,” he said. “You up for that?
I nodded. This wasn’t the way I would have pictured the first date, but it was in nature, and I loved the forest. And Hemming was being unpredictable, which kept me curious.
The forest was steeper, denser, than where I usually run.
“I’ve never been to this part of the forest,” I said. Hemming walked in front of me. I studied his broad back, the backpack clinging onto his shoulders like he didn’t even know it was there.
“No? I come here a lot.” What? “Used to,” he added before I could ask. Right.
“If I’m not mistaken… there it is,” Hemming said, and suddenly the trees cleared onto a small patch of land with a pond in the corner. The whole place looked like it belongs in a fairy tale.
“This is magical,” I said.
Hemming nodded. “It really is.”
I glanced at him. He had that expression all over his face again, the one I couldn’t read.
Hemming walked to the middle of the clearing and produced a blanket from his backpack. He opened it on the grassy forest floor and kneeled. He also took out two sandwiches and two bottles of water.
“It’s a bit unorthodox for breakfast,” he said, smiling sheepishly.
“It’s great,” I said and sat down. Everything about the morning was surreal. Hemming sat down and then leaned his elbow, draped across his side of the blanket. I sat cross-legged. He opened a sandwich packet and handed it to me. I watched him unwrap his own. His fingers were quick and sure. I took the time to study him. He was very different from the boy I remembered. It was like he’d grown up to know exactly who he was and where he belonged. He was strong – anyone could see those muscles a mile away – but it was real, not for show.
His eyes bore into me, and I realized I was staring again. I blushed.
“You do that a lot,” Hemming said.
“What?” Oh, God. He was going to comment on my staring.
“Blush.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about and I relaxed a little. I shrugged.
“It’s just different being around you again,” I said. “You’re… different.”
Hemming frowned. “Different, how?” he asked. He took a bite of his sandwich, his eyes focusing on mine while he chewed. He wanted an answer. What was I going to say? What if I insulted him?
I shrugged. “I don’t know… I guess we’ve all grown up a little, right?” I pulled up my shoulders again and took a bite of my own sandwich, occupying my mouth so I couldn’t carry on speaking.
Hemming smiled and changed the topic, and all the tension slipped away. It was like we’d known each other for years, suddenly. I told him about my life and work – it was a short conversation. When I asked him what he’d been doing, he shrugged and said he’d been traveling.
“I’m jealous,” I said. “You’ve seen the world, and I’m still stuck here.”
“You don’t have to be stuck here,” Hemming said. “Nothing’s holding you back.”
I shrugged again and picked at my sandwich.
“Except, fear?” Hemming asked as if he’d seen it written somewhere and hadn’t expected it. “What are you scared of?”
I looked up. It was like he’d looked right into my soul. It was unnerving. I felt suddenly vulnerable.
“Who says I’m scared?” I asked.
Hemming’s eyes were intense. I had a feeling he knew I was bluffing. The truth was, I was terrified of leaving.
“I just don’t know if I’m cut out for the big wide world out there. I grew up here. It’s all I know. I’d rather not be reminded how small-town I am.”
Hemming reached out his hand and took mine. His skin burned on mine, and I gasped and looked up at him. His eyes widened a little, and he yanked his hand back.
“Did you feel that?” I asked.
He swallowed hard. “What?”
I looked at him. Was he pretending? Or was I just putting Hemming in the shoes of the characters in my book?
I shook my head. “Nothing,” I said.
We sat together in silence for a moment.
“You know, you’re different, too,” Hemming said. I looked at him. His eyes were bright silver, a color so intense it couldn’t be natural.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I’ve been leading the same life for years on end. There’s
nothing special about me.”
Hemming sat up.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” he said.
He lifted his hand and brushed it down my cheek the same way he had when I’d run into him at the convenience store. The same current of electricity ran through me. I looked at Hemming’s eyes, and they were the color of mercury. There was something wild in them, something that should have been scary.
Except, it wasn’t. They were magnetic. I was being drawn in, I was falling.
Hemming inched closer. I didn’t stop him. He rested his hand on my cheek, and I let him come closer and closer. I was falling further and further into those eyes. I closed my eyes and let him catch me.
When his lips touched mine, everything was drenched in light for a moment. I felt like my veins were filled with fire, and for a second I felt like I would explode.
Hemming was in my head. I could feel him. I broke the kiss, pulled away.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
I swallowed hard. “I don’t know what’s happening,” I whispered. Something was wrong. Everything was just a little bit off.
“I don’t, either,” he said. I wanted to tell him he was lying. He had to know what was going on. This… whatever it was I felt, came from him.
I looked into his eyes, and they were like slate – dark and stormy, the kind of gray that spelled danger. Except, I wasn’t scared.
“All I know is that it feels right,” he said. I closed my eyes for just a moment, turning my focus inward. And he was right. Whatever was happening, no matter how bizarre, was right.
Chapter 4
I couldn’t remember when last I had felt like I’d fit in. Hem was different than any of the guys I’d met before, and it wasn’t Milford I could thank for that. He accepted me for my differences, too. I didn’t know how I knew it, I just did.
I didn’t see Hem for the rest of the weekend. I worked my shifts, I went through the motions, but for the first time since my dad had passed away, I felt like I could be happy again.