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“Sawyer’s a veterinarian… I’m sure he could keep an eye out on me…” Ford added.
I’d met Sawyer. The guy was gorgeous and very much into men. I didn’t want any of his body parts on Ford. But I knew I couldn’t tell Ford no because it wasn’t my right. He was a grown man and I was pretty sure he spent most of his days being ordered around. No way was I going to be added to the list of people who treated him like that… I’d already pushed the boundaries with my behavior thus far.
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t come up with a creative solution that would satisfy us both…
Chapter Eight
Ford
The cold air stung my cheeks as I stepped out of the small animal building and began walking along the path toward the barn where I was supposed to meet up with Cam and Sawyer as they finished with the evening feedings. I had to give Cam credit for his creativity in getting what we both wanted, though I still hadn’t quite managed to figure out why it was so important to him that he keep an eye on me. He’d said it was because it was his job, then he’d mentioned doing it for Walter. But that didn’t really explain why he’d gone through so much trouble to comfort me when I’d told him about my experience with Fright House when I’d been a kid.
I really shouldn’t have let him hold me like he had, but it’d felt so good to just lean back against him for those few minutes and let him share that night with me. No one had ever asked me what had happened at Fright House and Jimmy hadn’t volunteered the information either before or after I’d been found. My parents still had no clue how close I’d come to dying that night. In fact, they’d accepted Jimmy’s explanation that I’d wandered off on my own while Jimmy had been at home doing homework. There’d been no mention of Fright House or what Jimmy had done to me there. Uncle Curtis had backed up Jimmy’s story by saying my bruises had likely come from me breaking into the woman’s greenhouse. Apparently, the idea that a thirteen-year-old kid could walk more than ten miles from home in the dead of night in the woods and not die of exposure was completely plausible.
As was the fact that said kid had ended up with two fractured ribs and a host of bruises all over his body, all from breaking out one of the greenhouse’s panes of glass and reaching an arm in to unlock the door from the inside.
I’d been grounded for a month and the money to fix the broken glass had been taken out of my allowance. It’d been the endless nightmares that’d nearly had me telling my parents the truth, but Jimmy’s fists had quickly dissuaded me of the notion. I’d spent the better part of a year reliving that moment in horrific detail night after night. And while my plan to use one memory to cancel out the other had sort of worked when it came to accepting that Fright House wasn’t any more haunted than my own house, there’d been no way to forget every sight, sound, and emotion that had followed when I’d been running through the woods to escape Jimmy.
Or the stark terror that had come with realizing there would be no one coming to pluck me from that frigid water.
But my brain had somehow eventually managed to box up that night and store it in a spot in my mind that I never went to. In fact, how I’d dealt with the memory of Fright House had worked so well that I’d started doing it with other things. Yes, I still remembered every detail of all the events and emotions I’d put in that box as if they’d happened seconds ago, but I also spent a hell of a lot of time working to keep the lid on that box locked up tight.
Unfortunately, wading into the water in Walter’s basement and revisiting Fright House had started to punch some holes into the box, and that scared me to death. Not to mention the fact that I’d so willingly let Cam have a little peek inside.
I sighed and shook my head. I just needed to pull myself together. All the mental chaos was happening because I hadn’t been able to get to my studio as much to work. Between taking extra shifts at my job washing dishes at one of the few restaurants in town that didn’t close for the off season, and the volunteering I was doing at the wildlife sanctuary, I hadn’t been able to paint or even put bids in on any custom art projects. While my regular job covered the rent and household bills my parents expected me to pay for, as well as the money Jimmy took from me to support his habit, selling my artwork online and doing custom projects for people like Maddox Kent was what let me rent the small studio space above a warehouse near Pelican Bay’s waterfront. Fortunately, the owner of the warehouse that stored boats for the winter didn’t live in Pelican Bay, so no one besides Maddox and Isaac knew about my artwork and the fact that I had a secret studio.
