It took three days after that for her mom and Gary to finally leave the house. She had stayed in her room that night feigning sleep when they left. Hearing the loud vibrating rattle of his motorcycle start and eventually peel away, Alessia grabbed her already packed things. They would be gone all night and until the next morning, hopefully giving her plenty of time. Opening the door to her room, she paused and considered turning around for one final glance. What for? All the good memories of that place had long since tarnished.
Swiping the car keys off the counter, Alessia walked outside and unlocked the shed. Knowing Gary owned some extra dummy license plates, she grabbed some and commenced to changing out the plates for the car. She had every intention on ditching the car long before Gary had time to call any of his cop buddies, but she didn’t want to take any risk. Swiping a few of Gary’s tools from the shed, Alessia replaced the license plates she just took off the car back into the pile with the others. Throwing her things into the backseat, she rolled the car out of the shed before getting out and re-locking the beat-up shed door. It was probably pointless, but Alessia could only pray that they both came home so drunk that they wouldn't think to look for the missing car keys. Hopefully, by the time Gary thought to open up the shed to see his car missing, she would be long gone.
She drove for hours, looking over her shoulder. It wasn’t until she was walking away from a large thicket of trees where she stashed the car did she allow herself to smile. Shifting inside her sleeping bag, Alessia turned off the light and closed her eyes.
~*~
Waking up in complete freedom felt unreal. Every movement seemed as if she was in a strange dream. Light shining through the green material of her tent gave the inside a spacious, cozy feeling. She was tempted to just stay in there all day, but she was eager to get to know her surroundings better. Grabbing a canvas satchel she had folded at the bottom of her camping bag, she stuffed it with a few items before exiting.
Following the map on her phone, Alessia found a narrow winding stream just as her battery warning alert popped onto the screen. Keeping a vigilant look of her surroundings, Alessia rummaged through her bag with one hand feeling for the square charger. Clipping the charger to the outside of her bag, she plugged it into her phone. A solar-powered charger, probably her smartest purchase out of everything. After twenty minutes of walking, with only a few heart-pounding pauses with her hand on her knife at the random sounds of twigs snapping, she eventually made it to the lake.
It wasn’t a very big lake. Alessia could clearly see all sides of the oval body of water, but its absolute beauty made up for its lack of size. As still has a pane of glass, she could see the dark shapes of the surrounding trees reflect along the outline of the water's surface. Inhaling the cold, clean air, Alessia felt as if she had entered some sort of portal leading into a serene pocket of radiant peace. Sitting down on a nearby fallen tree, she let her feet dangle from the high perch as she pulled out her metal thermos and toothbrush. Brushing her teeth, she stared at the lake's reflection of the sky.
The feeling of nothingness…no, that wasn’t correct. There was definitely something here, it was the feeling of utter stillness. An absence of edgy turmoil that dogged her every breath for the past couple of years was indescribable. Pulling out her laptop, she ate one of her granola bars as the device powered on. Opening a blank document, she thought of what to say. The last time she updated her blog, she told her tiny group of followers that basically, she couldn't endure it any longer and she was leaving. Alessia never told them when, how, or exactly what she planned to do.
“I didn’t even know what I planned to do,” she whispered aloud. Her voice sounded hoarse to her ears. When was the last time she spoke? The diner in town, she thought to herself, recalling those wonderful pancakes.
The tiny group of followers on her blog all urged her to either wait until she could save up for a vehicle or go to a shelter. Well, she tried to go to a shelter and that was a terrifying and humiliating bust. She had no family to turn to and the idea of waiting around to hopefully squirrel enough money away from her dead-end job for a vehicle was just too dangerous. Living under the same roof with Gary had become a ticking time bomb. Every brush of his wandering hand, every resentful stare from her mother was cutting closer and closer to the bone.
Looking back up to the lake, she shoved the memories away. Today was the first day of her new life. Remembering something, she put her laptop to the side and stood up. Grabbing the ring of keys from her bag, Alessia walked to the lake's edge. Mud squished around her boots as the water lapped against the thick rubber soles. Holding the keys up, the sun shined off the silver keys as she dangled them in the air: her trailer key and Gary's prized mustang's key. Pulling back her arm, she tossed the keys as far into the lake as possible, plopping into the water with a tiny splash. She hoped he never found that car. She hoped she was right and if her mother did bother to search for her suddenly absent daughter, she would look to the bigger cities like Seattle or Portland. She highly doubted Diana would care, though. But regardless, Alessia had no use for them anymore, because she would never set foot through that door ever again.
Chapter 3
Exhausted, Jax sat down heavily against the corrugated metal of his roof. The soft crooning of music hung in the air as he grabbed his canteen next to his radio. Relaxing the muscles in his back, he leaned against the cold inclined metal while his feet propped him securely to the lip of the roof's eaves. With the sun setting well below the trees, it was too dark to continue to work, thankfully, he just installed the last inverter. Technically, only one inverter to his solar panels went out, but what was the point of climbing all the way up onto the roof to fix just one when he could just replace them all. Smirking, Jax couldn't help but think of his dad's voice at that moment, “never do a half-ass job son, all it does is bite you in the ass later.” His old man, Mississippi born and raised farmer, probably had a hundred or so of those sayings.
Murmuring from the radio mentioning tomorrow night's rain-filled forecast brought him out of his reverie. Reaching over, he clicked the radio dial to "off” as he stared at the clear dark sky. Not for the first time, Jax seriously allowed the idea of plans for a roof-deck addition to steal his train-of-thought. Man, that would be a lot of work, though.
A cool breeze flew through the trees and Jax’s eyes snapped open. Sitting up quickly, he got to his feet. The loud thumps of his boots against his metal roof disturbed the night as he climbed further up to the roof’s peak near the chimney stack. There was an undertone of smoke on the breeze. His fires were out in his house, so it wasn’t coming from him.
Narrowing his gaze, he scanned the forest from his vantage point. Someone else was out in his woods.
~*~
Poking at the fire with a long stick, Alessia sucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she sat on the edge of her tent, doing her best to avoid staring out to the darkness. The sun had dropped a few hours ago and for the first time in her life, she was introduced to the true meaning of darkness. A deep, inky black nothingness that surrounded her from all sides. If she were to stand up and yell into the void of darkness, would the sound of her voice even carry on, or would it just be swallowed up by the depths of darkness?
Wide-eyed, she sat there stiffly for a second before releasing a large breath with a shaky laugh. Okay, now she was just being melodramatic.
But still, it was really dark out. Even if she was back home in her room with the door shut and the lights out, it couldn't compete with this level of darkness. Somewhere there would be one inkling of light fighting its way through the darkness. Not here, though. Poking at a few sticks at the side of her rock-lined fire-pit, she watched the flames slowly creep across their lengths.
A sharp crack in the woods startled her.
Sitting straighter, she clutched at the hilt of her knife at her waist as she stared unseeingly into the dark. Her heart was pounding so loud she could barely hear anything over the sound. It was probab
ly just a small animal. If it was a bear, she probably would’ve heard more noise than that—she hoped. Relaxing after a long few minutes, she breathed a sigh and leaned back into her open tent and clicked on her headlamp. Pulling her book from her bag, she opened it up to her bookmarked the page and kept a cautious ear out for any more sounds from the dark.
~*~
Standing a few yards away, Jax watched the girl from a tight cluster of trees as she lay down next to the fire reading her book. From his roof, he had spotted the faint glow in the distance. It took him no time at all to slide down his ladder and grab his rifle by the door and set off into the forest. Jax was expecting to find some dumb campers or hunters who made the unfortunate decision to make camp near his land—a decision he was going to personally set straight. What he did not expect to find was the vagrant girl, from the diner sitting in the middle of the forest, stoking a fire.
What the fuck was she thinking? Didn't she know there were wild fucking animals out here? Wolves, bears, and not to mention cougars roam prevalently in these parts. And that tiny hunting knife she clutched onto when he purposely broke the branch next to his feet wouldn't do shit but piss off those predators even more so. Patiently, Jax stood there amongst the trees, concealed in their shadows as her fire slowly dimmed. Eventually, her headlamp clicked off and she pulled herself fully into the tent and zipped herself inside.
This wasn’t going to work, she couldn’t stay here in these woods. Not just for the obvious reasons, but for his own selfish reasons. He did not need the authorities traipsing through his land and beating on his door for questions when the idiotic girl inevitably turned up dead. He also didn’t like the thought of some random young woman wandering aimlessly around his property. He had come out here for seclusion from the world and its fucked-up problems. How was he supposed to go about his day when he knew she was out here?
Turning his back to the lone green tent, he headed back to his cabin. The decision was made, she was leaving by morning.
Chapter 4
The next morning was thankfully warmer than the preceding morning, which made it the perfect time to wash her hair. Alessia could not and would not let her personal hygiene slip while she was out here. Horror stories of other people’s experiences and similar off-grid lifestyles kept themselves on repeat in the back of her mind. Every day, she would follow the routine she planned for herself. First, she would do her morning stretches, take her daily vitamins, drink plenty of water, and most importantly, bathe.
Sitting in her designated spot by the lake, Alessia checked her phone again as she idly stoked the small fire she made. A small black cast-iron pot sat on top of the charred sticks, slowly heating the water inside. The signal bars on her phone were empty, with a white X on top of them. When she first walked into the forest, there was a little bit of a signal near the road. She had two blog posts that really needed to go up. The few followers she did have expected weekly posts, and Alessia was not in the position to risk losing them. The tiny flow of donations she received from her followers was absolutely vital. It was how she was able to keep her phone on and buy herself the occasional meal. As long as she kept posting the pathetic and sometimes tragic details of her life, the followers of the appropriately titled blog “fuck my life girl” would hopefully keep donating. She was just going to have to walk up to the road to get them posted.
After the slow process of washing and drying her hair, Alessia dropped off her supplies at camp before heading through the dense trees back toward the highway. Fifteen minutes later, she finally stopped a couple of yards from the road. Leaning against a nearby tree, she uploaded her posts.
Pocketing her phone, Alessia smiled as she thought of her followers’ reaction to the news that she finally left and even more so when they found out where she was now. Slowly, picking her way back to camp, she avoided the tangled clump of bramble as she thought about one follower in particular and her most likely worried reaction. The woman always gave her long lectures and advice on what she should and shouldn’t be doing. It wasn’t hard to imagine the level of motherly-like worry that she was going to be hit with the next time Alessia logged on. Although, in some way, Alessia liked the idea of someone worrying about her, it gave her a little bit of comfort. Brushing a low hanging branch away from her face, Alessia nearly let out a snort in disgust as she tried to imagine Diana's reaction to her own daughter's disappearance.
She was about to break through a cluster of bushes when she caught sight of the figure ahead of her. Looking ahead to the small clearing where her tent was located, Alessia saw a man crouched down in front of it, holding the flap to her tent open as he peered inside. Holding herself in a motionless half crouch—half stooping position, Alessia tried to calm her breathing as she stared at the stranger. He was big, she could tell that much just by his relevant size to her tent. Next to him, the extra-large one-person tent seemed like something for a child. Slowly, the man stood up to his full height with his back still towards her, he was wearing thick worker grade jeans and a thick brown canvas coat. The man held a long rifle slung across his back that set Alessia’s nerves on edge. Was he some hunter who came across her camp?
From her hidden position in the brush, she couldn’t clearly make out his face when he turned and looked toward the river. But she could see his thick brown untrimmed beard and pulled back hair he kept in a bun low at his neck. Why was there some grizzly mountain-man looking through her stuff? Couldn’t he just see it belonged to someone camping there, why couldn’t he just move on? Unless…
A trickle of cold dread ran across her heart and pooled in her gut. Unless he wanted to harm her. Maybe he was some sort of hunter who didn't like other hunters poaching on his self-proclaimed territory. Alessia had read about things like that online. Dread escalated to icy fear as another thought played out in her mind. Could he be someone working for Gary?
The thought should have been immediately dispelled the moment it came up. Her rational side should have told her that the idea was preposterous. Gary didn't have the money or strong enough connections to send anyone after her. There have been several occasions where she had overheard Gary talking to whom she could only assume were his superiors in his gang. Gary's reticent tone told her just exactly how high his position was in the organization—not very high at all. But right now, through her fear-laden mind, none of that mattered, all she could focus on was the worst.
The sound of buzzing vibration from her pocket trembled the silent air around her hiding place.
A cold empty feeling stole the air from her lungs as the man’s head whipped around in the direction of her hiding place in the brush. Black eyes cut through the bramble with laser precision and found her wide eyes staring back. She didn’t allow him to react first.
With every ounce of her strength, she launched from her spot and took off running. Blood pounded in her ears as she kept her eyes on her immediate path, sidestepping various hanging branches and hurdling fallen debris. Alessia could swear she saw movement to her left, which only made her heart beat faster and threaten to explode in her chest. After what felt like several minutes of running, Alessia slowed her pace looking in every direction. No flashes of brown from his coat, no snap of twigs or rustle of dead leaves, only the gloomy silence of the forest. Trying to suppress her labored breathing, she backed herself against a thick tree. Taking deep breaths, she wiped her sweaty hands down the front of her jeans. Remembering her knife on her belt, she quickly unsheathed it and held it tightly in her fist. Minutes ticked by and she heard no movement. Cautiously, Alessia took a step out from behind the tree and looked down the direction she came. Nothing, there was no one there.
She needed to get her stuff and get out of here! She didn’t know where, but she could worry about that once she was far away from here as possible.
Quietly, she walked the same direction in which she ran back towards the camp. Occasionally, she would stop and listen for any sounds. A scattering noise to her right made her whirl around wi
th her knife still drawn. The sudden overwhelming presence enveloping her froze time and space around her. Everything happened so fast, her scream didn't erupt from her throat until it was all over. His hand came around her and grabbed her fist, holding the knife, just as his other thick arm barred her underneath her chin. Alessia could do nothing with the knife as she watched the man's large hand closed over her fist and take control of her arm. With one powerful thrust, he directed her weapon to jab deeply in a nearby tree, impaling the knife almost to the hilt into the bark. Using his barring arm, he grabbed her opposite shoulder and spun her roughly away from him, letting gravity and momentum do the rest of the work for him. Screaming, she landed on her butt in the leaves.
Ignoring her scrambling away from him to stand up, the man crossed his arms over his chest and gave her a hard glare. “Now that I’m certain you can’t stab me, tell me what the hell are you doing out here?”
With her heart still slamming against her chest, Alessia kept her knees slightly bent as she stood up a few yards of away from him if needed, she was ready to bolt at any given second. Ignoring the dead leaves and dirt falling off of her where she had hit the ground earlier, she kept her eyes focused on the man in front of her as if facing off with a wild bear.
At All Cost: A Mountain Man Romance Page 2