“Hey!” Lindsay replied with large strained eyes.
She had something to tell me, but clearly, it would have to wait. Jacob nodded his head towards me and continued with his story about a feud with his cable company. Good luck with that. I ducked into the back room and took my time clocking in. I hated nothing more than terrible customer service, and even listening to someone else’s story about it would make my anxiety start to rise.
I peeked around the corner to see if they were done—they weren’t—but a third person caught my eye on the recliner in the corner. I watched intently as it became clear to me that it was Easton. His eyes were sunken and framed with dark circles. He looked unsettled, and I wanted to take it all away. Whatever it was.
I stepped out from the back room and watched as Easton caught my line of sight. Lindsay pointed in Easton’s direction and grabbed my arm, pulling me close.
“He’s been here since my shift started, over two hours ago,” Lindsay whispered. Then, she gave Jacob an exasperated look to continue with his dreadful story. At least she was getting paid to listen to it.
I walked out to Easton. He stood, his eyes bluer than I’d ever seen.
“You found me . . .” I said.
Easton nodded, “I found you,” he mirrored. His face was long, and I could see the pain he had tucked inside.
“Look”—he glanced over at Lindsay and Jacob to make sure we had our privacy—“I know you made your decision, but I can’t help but be drawn to you. I can’t move on from this,” he said.
My body slumped. All of the numbness beginning to wear on me.
“I can, because I know it was in your best interest,” I said.
“It’s not!”
I smiled. “How do we know we’re making the right decision?” I asked.
“I know.” Easton placed his hand over his heart. “With the knowledge of three hundred years, I know.”
The numbness shattered like glass, falling to the ground. I was in. Whatever it meant, wherever it went, I was in. I slammed into his chest, wrapping my arms around him tightly.
Easton pulled me back to look at my face. “Hey, want to get out of here?” he asked.
I looked between him and my manager. Jacob took his apron off; he must have been planning on leaving early due to the slow night.
“Yes!” I said to Easton.
I looked to Jacob, as he secured his baseball hat on his head and walked out from behind the bar.
“Jacob, I’m taking the night off!” I called out to him. He froze. Lindsay’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of us.
“You can’t. I’m leaving, and Lindsay can’t close the place by herself,” he said.
My eyes shot to Lindsay just as she gave me an approving nod of her head. My heart pounded with excitement.
“Then . . . I quit!” I said, wishing it came out more boss than it did. Easton sucked in a breath, and Lindsay’s jaw dropped.
I took off my apron and placed it on the bar, giving Lindsay a wink.
“You can’t,” Jacob started.
“I just did!” I called on my way out.
“Call me!” Lindsay yelled as the door swung closed.
As soon as Easton and I were in the open air of freedom, we began to laugh. I’d never seen him laugh like this; it was beautiful and enormously contagious. We laughed so hard we cried, and I was forced to cross my legs so that I remained a lady. I didn’t know where we were going, but we couldn’t stay, so we crawled into Easton’s car and took off. The laughter faded, and like aftershocks of an earthquake, it would come back now and then.
“Ohhh my God! That was . . . one of the best moments of my life! I feel so . . . free?” I looked to Easton for validation.
He nodded his head. “Free!” he confirmed.
“How should we celebrate my retirement?” I chuckled.
“I know a place.” A coy expression spread across Easton’s face.
“Come on, no secrets this time. Where are we going?”
“We have another bucket list item to cross off. The truck is packed, just in case I was lucky enough to win you over,” Easton grabbed my hand in his and brought it to his lips. He kissed it. “We’re sleeping under the stars.”
“We're going camping?”
“Yup. I have sleeping bags, a tent. Marshmallows . . . And now you.”
Chapter 16
I worried for the vanity of Easton’s BMW as he rolled over thick tree roots and rocks, only wincing when I’d hear the bushes scrape the length of the car. If he cared, he didn’t show it. It was dark out when we reached the clearing. He seemed to know the place by heart and took no wrong turns.
“How prepared are you, exactly?” My eyes tried to stretch the distance but couldn’t see past the glare of the window.
“I know what I’m doing!”
“But it’s going to be cold, and there are probably bears, right?” I asked in a tone of worry as my excitement melted into apprehension.
“Oh my God, Beck! I told you, you wouldn’t like it, but you wanted to sleep under the stars! You romanticized this in your head, and I’ve vowed to give it to you!” Easton reached over and jabbed a few fingers into my ribs, causing me to giggle. “Now get your butt out of the car, bears and all, because we have work to do.”
I opened my door and stepped onto the gravel, afraid of what I couldn’t see. Easton and I met at his trunk, where he pulled a beanie over my head. He had thought of everything.
“Grab the tent and place it in the clearing. You can get to work unrolling it. I’m going to try to get a fire started,” Easton said.
I grabbed the tent and walked out to the beams of the headlights. I unrolled the tent and pulled the corners as far as I could to make a square. Several sticks cracked under my feet, startling me each and every time. I never thought I would die in the woods at the hands of a bear, but the reality was slowly sinking in. Even though I was frightened of the vast wilderness at night, I couldn’t think of a place I would rather be than here with Easton underneath the Milky Way.
A small sense of pride lingered after I completed my first task. I took it one step further and turned the poles into two long straight sticks. Easton had been successful with the fire, and flames jumped, hungry for more dried leaves and deadwood. With his help, the tent went up easy, and I was eager to get the bedding inside and zip up the door, closing out all of the nocturnal eyes.
Once the tent's inside was complete, Easton took four large rocks and placed them by the fire. He pulled bottled waters out of his truck and emptied them into an old beat-up canister that he placed on top of the fire. I smiled at the amount of effort he had put into tonight.
“What if I had said no?” I asked.
“Said no to what?”
“Tonight. Would you still have gone camping?” I huddled in the door of the tent.
Easton laughed. “Do you really think I would torture myself for no good reason?”
“Hey!” I laughed. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
Easton plopped down next to me, resting his forearms on his knees. “Nothing is that bad when I’m with you,” he said.
“But a little bad? You can admit it!” I poked his side.
He wrestled my hand. “Yeah, you’re a total pain in my ass. It’s bad! It’s bad, alright!” he pulled on my hand, drawing me in and kissed me. “I’ve got it . . . bad . . .” My heart sang, my head swam, and my body propelled towards Easton. He barely caught me, and our bodies hit the floor of the tent with force. I struggled to kiss him and rip my jacket off at the same time. He rolled me over, and the weight of his body compressed mine. His woodsy cologne intoxicated me with a desire I’d never felt so sure of. I pulled him in close with the free hand I had, running my hand up into his hair. I tightened my grip on its silky texture—my other hand pinned inside the arm of my jacket. I moaned, lifting my hips into his.
Easton pulled back, both of us out of breath. He stared at me for a moment before whispering sweet warmth in
to my ear. “We have all night.”
His words did nothing to break the urgency I felt. I needed him now. “Isn’t this what you want?” I lifted my head and planted slow seductive wet kisses down his neck.
“Beck,” he said, his voice laced with pain. I pulled away to see his eyes. “You have no idea!” he shook his head.
I was more than surprised when he rolled off of me. He brought both hands up to his head and grabbed hold.
I perched up onto an elbow, “Wha—”
Easton ran his palms down his face and covered his eyes.
“What is it then? I mean, don’t stop on my account. I want to do it! I do!” I begged him to hear my words. I leaned in to kiss him again. This time, he shied away.
“I know, I know. I just, I don’t want to take advantage of you,” he said.
My old friend, anger, began to rumble in my blood. I struggled to keep my voice calm. “Are you telling me . . . that this is a cancer thing? Now?”
Easton pulled his hands away and gave me the full weight of his heavy heart through his eyes.
“This has nothing to do with that and everything to do with me.”
“What, it’s not you, it’s me? That’s the line you’re trying to feed me right now?” I accused him.
“No! That’s not it at all!” Easton studied my face. He couldn’t possibly understand my anger.
“The truth is that I care for you.” Easton shook his head, and the gloss in his eyes sparkled by the light of the fire. “More than you’ll ever know. It’s like I’ve waited my whole life for you. Now, I don’t want you to feel rejected . . .”
I rolled my eyes and looked away. He totally understood, apparently more so than I did, but I was embarrassed that it was as simple as that. Rejection.
“But Beck, I can’t move this relationship any further than where it is. You don’t know me . . . and if you did, I don’t think you’d feel the same way.”
I furrowed my eyebrows. What was he talking about? I didn’t need to know where the guy grew up to know I loved him.
“I can’t do that to you. I can’t have you fall for a guy you can’t know. And, I know how you feel. I see it when you look at me. I feel it too,” he said.
I watched the flames flicker in his eyes, as he watched our water boil and spit out of the canister. Neither one of us cared to remove it from the fire.
My anger fell to the wayside, and I placed my hand on his back, the moment of lust and fury now behind me.
“Tell me?” I asked. I was ready for it. Whatever skeletons he had in his closet, I was ready to meet them face to face.
“I can’t.” Easton shrugged.
“Yes, you can. And I won’t go anywhere.”
He continued to shake his head, his eyes fixated on the boiling water.
“Easton?” I asked, and when he refused to look at me, I wrapped my hand around his chin and pulled his face to meet mine. I placed a soft kiss on his lips and whispered, “I’m falling in love with you. And there’s nothing that you can say that will turn me away. I’m in this for the long run.” I scuffed. “Or my run, however long that may be.”
Easton pressed his forehead to mine and my heart ballooned out of my chest.
“I’ve been falling since the day I met you on the bridge. I’ve never hit the ground so hard, and I’m afraid of what it will do to me when you’re no longer here,” Easton confessed. I nodded. It was what I was worried about for him.
“There are only two options. We do it wholeheartedly, or we don’t,” I said. But there was a third choice that I left out on purpose. The one where we stay together without ever scratching his surface.
“I’ve made my decision. That’s why I’m here tonight. Risking my life with paper thin shelter, and a real chance of being frozen alive,” Easton joked.
“I’m here too. I know it’s the right decision for me, and I really hope that somehow it’s the right decision for you too,” I said.
“It is. You don’t worry about me. OK?”
“OK,” I said.
“Promise?” he asked.
“Promise.” This thing was going to be hard for both of us. But somehow, we couldn’t escape it. We were bound together by a weird and mystical force, unseen by the human eye.
“At some point, Easton, you're going to need to open up to me.”
It took some time for an answer, but finally, he said it. “I know.”
I rested my head on Easton’s shoulder till my heart began to slow, and the tension lifted away. My eyes grew heavy, and the fire died down to ash and embers. I crawled into my sleeping bag and Easton placed the heated rocks from the fire near our feet. I snuggled up to him, lying my head on his arm as we watched the stars twinkle from the top of our tent. We saw three shooting stars that night. And all of my wishes were for Easton’s walls to drop.
I didn’t try to kiss him again. There was a kind of honor between us. He didn’t want to feel like he was tricking me into loving him, but he also wasn’t ready to talk. I had no other choice but to wait. Ironically, time was the only thing I couldn’t give to Easton.
I was no princess, but I sure did feel all the peas lying on the forest floor that night. Worse yet, I heard all of the sounds of the living. And at one point in the night, I sat up and armed myself with a flashlight.
I woke at first light. The bags under my eyes were probably a close match to Easton’s, but I was happy. Waking next to him was a gift, and I felt blessed to cross another item off my bucket list.
“Coffee?” Easton asked as he lit a new fire.
“Please.” My voice cracked, and I coughed the morning phlegm away.
I stood up and stretched, my body ached. I wouldn’t be surprised if I had multiple bruises on my hips and shoulders.
“How did you sleep?” I asked Easton.
His hair was unrulier than I had ever seen it, and that was saying a lot.
“Um . . .” His voice was high enough to tell me it was no walk in the park for him either.
I chuckled. “One and done. Me too.”
Easton laughed. I joined him on a small blanket next to the fire and examined my surroundings. Everything looked different in the light. The birds chirped near and far, and the lush green branches lifted and lowered with the gentle breeze.
“We didn’t do marshmallows last night,” I said.
“Let’s have them with our coffee,” Easton said before getting them out of the trunk of his car.
“Do you have skewers? Or should I find some sticks?” I called out to him.
“I’ve got skewers!”
Easton handed me everything I needed to make roasted marshmallows and then proceeded to pour our coffees. It was quiet until the caffeine brought me back to life.
“If you have time, I would like to show you a great spot. It’s about a forty-minute hike,” Easton said.
“Yeah, that sounds great. It’s not like I have a job to get to or anything,” I smiled.
We finished our coffee and marshmallows before taking down the tent. We packed the belongings into the back of Easton’s trunk, and we set out on our hike. Being amongst nature with his kind soul was grounding. I soaked in everything: his gate, his laughter, and the way the sunlight lit his eyes into a trillion shards of crystal. I took in the green dragonfly that followed Easton like a lost puppy. I wanted to take every morsel of the memory with me so that when I took my last breath, I could come back here, and my heart could smile one last time.
We came upon a large clearing in the forest. One larger than life dead tree overlooked the Truly River before it bled into the New River. It was breathtaking. Easton held my hand and led me to the tree. We picked a spot nestled in its roots, which was large enough to make for excellent seating.
“It’s beautiful. How did you find this place?” I asked.
Easton shrugged, “I’ve been here before,” he said.
He was good at being vague. I wondered if he had come here with an ex-girlfriend, but if he had, I guess I wou
ldn’t want to know. Or would I?
“Have you been in love before?” I asked, still unsure if I wanted to hear his answer.
Easton shot me a look of concern for my well-being. Huh. Guess I shouldn’t have asked.
“I’ve loved before,” he said, choosing his words carefully.
The dragonfly had returned and taken a particular interest in Easton. It must have been attracted to his scent. I couldn’t blame it; I was too. Easton smiled like a child and watched as the insect fluttered around his face. The green exterior glimmered in the sunlight like a magical creature. I think I liked watching his wonder more than the oddity of the flying bug itself.
“Silly thing, isn’t it?” I said.
“It’s quite something,” he replied.
I looked out to the river and watched as a flock of birds swooped down to the water and back up again.
“I wonder what it’s like to fly. Do you think I’ll get my wings when I die?” The flock soared over our heads.
“I don’t know what I think. It’s complicated, I guess. Maybe there are different options?” Easton said.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Easton picked up a small stick and began to draw in the dirt.
Sometimes it was like pulling teeth to get him to talk. I only wanted to know what he thought.
“You know, there’s no right or wrong answer. Sometimes I wonder if blackness is the best option. As much as I fear it, I think I fear the regrets more. You taught me that!” I flicked a pebble at him.
“Hey! That wasn’t my intention. I don’t want you to worry; I just want to help you make the right decisions.” Easton picked the pebble off of his jacket and tossed it aside.
“Easton?” I asked in sincerity.
“Yeah?”
“I love you,” I said, not wanting any more regrets. His face softened, and his eyes lit from within.
“I love you too, Beck.” Easton placed a hand over his heart before leaning over and showing me with a soft and long kiss. He pulled away with a smile so content that I could stay in the moment forever.
“I don’t want you to hide anything from me. I know you said I don’t know you. But I do! I know the impact that you have made on my heart. And there’s nothing you can say that will change that.” I took a deep breath, “Do you believe me?”
The Tethered Soul of Easton Green: The Tethered Soul Series Book 1 Page 11