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“I’m sorry, buddy,” I told him. “You’re going to need to tolerate me being a mess for a while,” I said as I moved to stand, attaching his leash to his collar, and taking him outside.
It would help having him, I knew.
But I couldn’t shake some guilt I felt at forcing him to live this existence with me. No way to socialize him, with funds being tight, and not to mention having to go through a miserable summer with no air conditioning when the time came.
It wouldn’t be forever, I reminded myself silently as I hooked up the long lead from tree to tree, looking a lot like a clothesline, but a leash would hang from it, allowing Storm to move around freely while my hands were too busy to hold his leash.
I hoped to have him trained eventually so that leashes wouldn’t be necessary, but I couldn’t risk him running off and getting lost in the meantime.
With him secure, I started to move some more of the firewood inside.
It was on the third trip back outside that my gaze fell on it.
The shovel.
The one I’d used to dig a grave.
The one a stranger had used to fill said grave in when I couldn’t do it myself.
A hiker or camper or something, likely using the trails that belonged to the parks system.
But there’d been something unnerving about his presence.
Not just because he was absolutely absurdly handsome.
Tall and thin, but strong, with these gorgeous stormy blue eyes that fought for attention in his handsome face. Handsome in a kind of rugged way, a wide jaw, a stern brow.
He didn’t strike me as a man who smiled easily or often. He hadn’t even given me one of those tight smiles we offered strangers, letting them know we were friendly, that we weren’t a threat.
Maybe he was a threat.
No.
I shook that thought off, refusing to let it plant, take root, grow into something I was going to obsess over endlessly for days or weeks, jumping at shadows, overanalyzing every noise I heard.
He was just a guy who got turned around. Who offered a woman clearly in need of it some help.
I was just wound up, seeing the worst in everyone.
Because, well, of the reason I was in this cabin in the first place.
Then, of course, we couldn’t forget the mysterious stranger with the graves and body bags.
As if things weren’t already crazy enough.
But, I reminded myself, guys who buried bodies in the woods definitely didn’t come back and potentially lead others or the police to them.
Right?
I mean, I couldn’t even find the graves today. I’d done a little looking around, but there didn’t seem to be any fresh earth around anywhere.
I could almost convince myself that I’d seen things, that my trauma and overactive imagination had painted memories that didn’t really exist.
Almost.
But I was too damn rational for that.
There was no way I’d imagined that. No matter how exhausted, traumatized, and terrified I was at the time.
