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I like it anyway. Maybe I like the monotony the most.
After everything that happened before I came back, there is mercy in waking up and knowing what needs to be done. There is mercy in boots by the door, keys on the hook, and a charged radio.
The strange thing is, the more ordinary my days become, the less ordinary my nights feel.
I have the same dream every night. Not some nights, not occasionally—every fucking night. Something chases me in the dream, and I know I should be more afraid of whatever’s behind me, but I’m not.
Every time it ends in the same place. The trees thin out just enough for moonlight to pour down in a wide patch, and I break into that clearing, lungs straining, skin slick and hot. I know that if I turn around, I’ll finally see whatever’s been right on my tail.
I never get that far. I always wake up right before I turn.
Oh, and I always wake up with painful freaking morning wood and the scent of Labrador tea in my bedroom.
It took me three weeks to place the scent, because most people around here wouldn’t know it unless they spent time near boggy ground and colder wetlands farther north.
It’s not the loose, dried kind someone buys in a paper bag from a herbalist, either, but the living plant itself. Leathery leaves, resin, damp soil around the roots, and the faint sharpness that clings to your fingers if you crush it by accident.
The funny thing is, there’s no Labrador tea growing around the cabin, and it wouldn’t grow here, either. It clings to places people rarely go anymore. Old bogs, old clearings, and old wounds in the forest that were trying to heal.
I don’t mention this to anyone, because there isn’t a version of “I wake up with a hard-on, and smell a plant that isn’t there after something chases me through the woods” that makes me sound like I have my shit together.
Maybe heartbreak, a new job, missing persons files, and a traumatized nephew have finally thrown my brain into some theatrical bullshit.
I’m driving home one Thursday evening from the Norton farm when my phone rings, and I already know it’s my ex before I look at her name flashing across my truck screen. Irritation cuts through my exhaustion so fast I nearly laugh.
I let it ring.
She’s been calling for the last two months. At first, she’d leave tearful voicemails, then angry ones. Then reasonable ones, which pissed me off the most because nothing about what she did deserves a reasonable conversation.
She says we need closure and shouldn’t throw away three years. She said she made a mistake, which is a hell of a gentle word for six months with my best friend while cake samples and seating charts sat on our kitchen counter.
The call ends, and I’m about to breathe out a sigh of relief when it starts up again.
I answer this time, my temper getting ahead of common sense. “What?”
There’s a pause on the other end, and I can picture her standing in our old kitchen. “Lucas,” she says softly. “Please don’t hang up.”
“I’m drivin’. Make it quick,” I say while turning onto the gravel road beneath the budding branches.
“I miss you,” she says, and the words land with all the emotional force of a wet receipt. “I know you hate me right now, but I miss you, and I think if we could just sit down without everyone else in our ears—”
“There’s nothin’ to sit down about,” I tell her, keeping my eyes on the road as the cabin roofline appears through the trees. “You fucked Adam for half a year and lied to my face while we were plannin’ a wedding. That didn’t happen because people were in our ears.”
Her breath shakes, and once upon a time that sound would have softened me. Now it just makes me tired. “I made the worst mistake of my life.”
“No,” I say, easing the truck into its usual spot. “A mistake is forgettin’ to pay the electric bill. What you did was a choice, and you made it over and over again until I found out. There’s absolutely nothin’ to work out.”
“Lucas, please,” she begs, and there’s real panic in her tone now. “You can’t just erase me.”
I shut off the engine and sit there in the sudden quiet, looking at my porch. “I’m not erasing you, Hannah. I’m leavin’ you where you put yourself.”
I hang up before she can answer.
For a minute, I just sit there and soak up the quiet. The Norton cattle incident left mud on my pants, soreness in my thighs, and hay stuck somewhere under my collar.
Farmer Norton’s fence came down in the afternoon, and half his cattle took that as an invitation to tour the country. Parker laughed himself sick over the radio when I told him a cow with more attitude than survival instincts was outmaneuvering me. It took three hours, two deputies, Norton’s oldest son, and me slipping in mud up to my knees before we got them back.
I should be exhausted. I should want a shower, have whatever leftover food I have in the fridge, and go to sleep. Instead, all I want is to be back under the trees, without anything between me and the night.
