Page 27 of Rebel Moon

“Thought they might be a better choice than my pumps. For this month anyway.” I put up a hand. “And I don’t want to hear anything about my poor choice of footwear. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“Good call. You could wear them sledding tomorrow,” Knox said.

“Sledding?”

“That’s tomorrow’s activity. Ivy says we’re supposed to partner up for it. If you wanted to be mine. No pressure.”

“You don’t have to do that. You’ve been paired with me enough times already. You shouldn’t be tortured further. But thanks.”

His expression shuttered, just like that. “Okay, then. I’ll see you around. Have a good rest of the day.”

He walked away without turning back, and I had to tell my feet not to run after him. It was better this way. No more entanglements with Knox Hartley. They were proving to be much more complicated than they should be, and I flew solo. If last night had given me anything, it was that. I was better off alone. Otherwise I woke up feeling like I wanted to die because a man I wanted desperately to kiss didn’t want me.

7

KNOX

The evening after the trip to town, I decided to have dinner in my room. I told myself it was because I was tired, which was true enough, having been up most of the night before. Also, I assured myself, I’d been around people every waking hour for four days straight and a man needs a night to himself. This was true. But down deep I knew the real reason. I couldn’t face Madeleine. Everything had gotten way too tangled between us. I couldn’t stop thinking about her, even after she clearly rejected me earlier with the excuse that we’d been partnered enough. That hurt.

Just my male ego, I told myself. Nothing real.

You shouldn't be tortured further.

Or did she mean she was the one who had been tortured?

One of the staff dropped of a boxed dinner, with a ham and butter baguette, chips and fruit. I built up a fire, then stood at the window eating my sandwich, watching snow fall.

As I was finishing my sandwich, Madeleine walked up the steps of her porch and went inside her cabin, carrying the same sandwich box I had. She'd skipped dinner too. Was she still feeling sick? Or was she avoiding me?

I closed my curtains but stayed by the window, peeking through a slit to watch her like a total stalker.

She shrugged out of her jacket, hanging it on the hook over the door, then sat in the armchair I’d occupied earlier, shoulders hunched over, pulling out the items in her box—sandwich, chips, and finally the small container of fruit. She opened her sandwich and took out the ham, tossing it back into the box before taking a bite of the soft baguette.

She looked small and sad sitting there, eating all alone. What did she think about when no one was around, when she could let herself just be without performing? In those moments, did she still feel like the girl who had taken care of her little sister while their mother was at work? Maybe with a kernel of dread always alive in her gut somewhere, waiting for the next bad thing to happen. Perhaps that’s why she was so good at mitigating disaster for her clients. She was always a step ahead of chaos, managing it like someone stuffing a naughty genie back into his bottle.

Was I the genie?

For some reason, I’d never thought about any of it from her perspective. I acted out at times, always justified in my own mind, like the burning of the merch, for example. However, she was the one who had to make sure my actions didn’t hurt Jack or the rest of the band.

I should tell her how sorry I was about the times I’d made her sweat on our behalf. I wanted to do it right now. The urge to go over there was so strong, my feet had already turned in the direction of the door.

But no. I couldn’t do it. She was having a private moment. The last thing she’d want was me barging in on her, making my agenda her agenda. That’s what I’d been doing for years now. All in the name of art. Or was it just my ego again? Was I simply resentful that it took her and Rhett’s careful strategy to make us all rich instead of the God-given talent and craft we’d all worked so hard to nurture? Was that what truly bothered me? When I thought of it that way, I seemed like a petulant boy instead of a grown man.

And it filled me with shame.

I thought about my father. How prideful and full of rage he was. Angry because he was poor. Angry because he felt his country had betrayed him with false promises of a piece of pie for everyone. Angry because, no matter what he did, he couldn’t pull his family out of poverty.

Generations of angry men. That was my legacy.

Yet, I didn’t have anything to be angry about. I’d made it. I was rich. I traveled the world with my best friends who were like brothers. I had the freedom to write songs and play guitar for the biggest country music star of our time. What in the world did I have to be angry about?

I walked away from the windows, as if seeing her like that was the reason my thoughts had turned self-reflective. Moving to the fire, I watched the blue flames flickering, breathing in the scent of woodsmoke that reminded me so much of home. Of Gramps.

My mother's father—Gramps He'd not been angry like the rest of the men I'd grown up around. For whatever reason, he’d not allowed bitterness or resentment to be his guiding forces. Instead, he had a code he lived by, one rooted in pride and integrity. He was constantly giving me advice about how to live right while leaning against his truck, or up to his elbows in a carburetor, or cleaning fish at the lake. I’d not realized at the time how much he would influence my life.

My chest ached thinking about Gramps. I missed him as much today as I had since he died when I was fourteen. What I wouldn’t give to see him one more time and show him who’d I’d become. But would I want him to see me as I was now? Would he see how I’d failed to live like I should?

Gramps died on a Tuesday with his truck half-fixed in the yard. His death had gutted me like the fish he loved to catch and clean for supper. I was still a boy with no way to cope with the loss of the person who knew me the best and loved me anyway, so I’d made his wise sayings into rules that I hoped would keep me safe. He’d said to me, keep the world out of the place you rest. I’d turned it into my rule about no hats on beds. I didn’t fly because he had told me to stay where my feet could touch the ground. Don’t be bragging on yourself, son. I’d transformed that to my ritual about never saying a show went well. My rituals were borderline OCD designed to make me feel safe. I knew that intellectually, but part of me still believed they actually kept me out of harm’s way. If I kept to the rituals, the world couldn’t hurt me. No one else would be taken from me. But the rules hadn't kept me safe. They'd just kept me numb and immature and slightly apart from those I loved best.