“This front area is for gear storage,” I narrate, like I’m giving a tour of an historic property and not a five-foot-deep glorified closet. “Through here is the rest. Kitchen. Bed.” I gesture as if it’s anything other than obvious. “There’s a bathroom in the back and more storage in the loft for out of season gear.”
She wanders a slow loop around the room, her gaze landing on everything. Pretty easy to do, as little as there is to see. My place holds none of the life and personality that shines in her bedroom. For the first time since I built it, I wish it did.
Light filters through the faux stained-glass rooster I made, casting reds and greens on her yellow T-shirt and jeans shorts. Colors dance over her skin, begging me to close the distance between us and trace each shimmering pattern.
She daintily brushes a finger over the banana mini-figure keychain sitting on my bedside table. Her gaze skates over my bed, made with the light comforter I need up here even on summer nights. Her mouth tips into a smile when she spots the framed photo of Jovie tucked into a nook. She circles past the kitchenette—scrubbed clean for this event—and back to me.
“It’s nice. No skylight, though. Whoops.”
I take a step closer to her, my gaze pinning her in place. “Tell me what you really think.”
I don’t want filters and politeness from Rose. It’s her honesty I want, no matter how little I’ll enjoy hearing it.
“Itisnice,” she says. “It feels like a cozy retreat.”
A long beat passes where we face off with each other. I’m not ignorant. She has more to say. Fran’s words knock around in my head.I can’t imagine that girl being happy out there.
“But…it looks lonely.” Her blue eyes are gentle as she slices into my beating heart. “Are you happy all alone like this? Is that what you want?”
A year ago, a month ago, I would have said yes. I would have said alone’s what I do best. I am a solitary creature. A Sasquatch, as Jovie would say, isolated from people and reclusive by nature. Content to be on my own. But now, after spending so much time with this woman who practically demands connection and closeness, I don’t know how true that is anymore.
And what I want…
I lift a hand to cup her jaw. She sucks in a soft breath as my thumb grazes along her bottom lip. Her pulse flutters beneath myfingertips on her neck, a flush gently creeping down her chest to disappear beneath her shirt.
What I want is right here, staring up at me.
But I need to know that she wants this, too. Rose has been told her whole life that her needs aren’t important, that her wants should take a back seat to everyone else’s. I don’t want her to ever feel she has to go along with what I want at the expense of her own comfort.
I drop my hand from her face, letting it trail over her shoulder, down the smooth skin of her arm until it links with her fingers.
“Come on.” I tug her toward the door. “You begged me to teach you to fish.”
I grab two fishing poles and a tackle box in the mudroom and lead her outside. She follows, ambling along with her hand locked in mine. The river’s a short walk from my cabin door, crushed volcanic rock leading to a sandy bank perfect for casting a line. I dragged a fallen log out here last summer, and that’s where I set down my gear.
“I like being in the woods.” I open the tackle box and poke around in it, giving myself something to do while I talk. “The peacefulness of being surrounded by trees. The quiet by the river. I need time alone to recharge. You might have noticed in the coffee shop, but I’m not at my best in crowds.”
Her eyes flash with warmth. “I’ve noticed.”
I find a small lure and tie it onto the line of one of the rods. “But to answer your question, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy here.”
It wasn’t meant for that.
I pass her the rod and prepare the other one. “I built it after Brooke broke up with me.”
She said she liked me best when I was gone. So, I decided I’d just stay gone. I put a house in the middle of nowhere and opted to live like a hermit, keeping away from people as much as I could. Including my family, who never deserved that distance. Isank into the thing she hated most, licking my wounds like an angry bear nobody wants to approach.
Sounds like one of Jovie’s toddler tantrums, now that I think about it.
It was working just fine until Harry left me that coffee shop. And then Rose walked through the door and booped the angry old bear on the nose. She crushed my “forever alone” goals into a fine powder from the moment I saw her.
“I usually learn a new craft after a breakup, not buy a house.” She gazes back toward the cabin. “Or a quarter of a house.”
Her small smile shows she doesn’t mean anything by it, and I reflect it back to her. “We all heal differently.”
“You must have really loved her.”
“I thought I did. I wouldn’t call it that now.” I was gone most of the year, and the months we did spend together were more about getting to know each other again than strengthening a solid relationship.
