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“You ready to fold yet?” He asked, gazing directly into my eyes as if he could read my thoughts.
I would never give him that satisfaction, I reminded myself, raising my chin several inches stubbornly. During my career, I had faced down misogynists, naysayers, and rude humans in droves. Easton might think he scares me and could get me to bend to his bidding, but he was a big teddy bear compared to some I had previously managed. The fact that he was also big, strong, and the object of my lustful thoughts right now was also a factor in how much I wasn’t going to leave without a fight.
“Nope, I’m good. What’s next?”
He gave me a knowing smile. “Come learn to cook over a campfire,” he responded, not missing a beat.
“I can’t even cook at home,” I admitted like I was confessing to a crime. “I’m sort of the queen of takeout and pasta.” Honestly, I could just about make pesto pasta and mac and cheese, but I wasn’t going to further humiliate myself with that information.
“Pasta works,” Easton replied. “Though I think you will be pleasantly surprised at what we can manage tonight.”
Soon we were working as a team with ten other individuals to get the site ready, dinner done, and just sustain ourselves. It was the most low-key and amazing day I had experienced in quite some time.
As the moon hung overhead and we sat with coffee a couple of hours later, I felt the most relaxed I had in probably a decade. There was no traffic out here; the only external noises were a few animals. The stars seemed much more distinct and hung in the clear sky tonight.
“I really can’t believe how weird this feels,” Bob, one of the participants, a middle manager at the technology firm hosting this weekend, spoke first.
“I would agree,” Annie, another of his colleagues, offered up. “I keep looking for my phone or wondering if I should go check my email.”
“Right?” Grace offered up a quick chuckle. “I don’t think I realized how tuned in to all that noise I was before. The entire ride up here this morning, I just had my thoughts to occupy me. It was amazing.”
“Yeah, maybe not amazing,” Bob said as his face suddenly downturned. “I think that my divorce is finally hitting me up here. You both know how busy I’ve been staying since Sally left me. I honestly believed I was coping pretty well until today,” he sighed and shook his head.
“You were so sad those last few months,” Grace said. “It was such a shock to the team when you came in to announce your marriage ending,” she said reverently in a quiet voice as if someone might overhear that shouldn’t. “We are glad things aren’t acrimonious but also worried about you. I’m glad you decided to come here in the end, and I hope that this helps.”
“What about you,” Annie offered. “How are you doing?” She asked, turning her eyes to Grace. “I know that this year with employment numbers tight, projects through the roof, and everything in the office, you have barely taken a day off, including weekends. The company's growth rests on the back of you and so many others. Are you finding constructive ways to manage that?”
“No,’ Grace replied.
I just sat there taking it all in, and suddenly I understood something so clearly. The lives we all go about leading in the city get stripped down pretty bare here. This was therapy without the couch and the stranger asking you about the problems you were experiencing. With camaraderie and nothing to interrupt them, these people were baring their souls and getting some of their heavy burdens lifted.
I couldn’t help but look across the fire at Easton, who I found staring at me. Now that was a man with some secrets, and I wondered what they might be. No one that looked like him, and had the decorated career he had, based on stories I’d been told, would hole themselves up on a ranch in Wyoming and not let anyone in without good reason.
I stood and walked to his side. He was sitting back just a touch from the group and, for a moment, didn’t say a word.
“I can hear that busy brain of yours moving a mile a minute,” he grumbled. “What are you concocting now?”
“Why do you stay in Wyoming? And why don’t you want the world to ever interfere with you?”
He turned to me and gave me the oddest look I had ever seen. It was as if he was trying to figure out some puzzle that just did not compute for him. It was laced with tiny amounts of confusion, but I allowed him the space to work through it and didn’t offer anything in return.
“You didn’t look up my story?” He asked finally.
“No,” I shook my head. “Here is the deal, unless you permit us to come into your life, that is not my style. I know it is very un-journalistic of me, but not everyone wants a camera in their world. Everyone deserves privacy.”
“Huh,” he muttered under his breath. “If you had, you would have found that my mother, brother, and grandmother were shot dead by my father when I was ten. I was out riding my bike and, for some reason, spared. There was a manhunt that lasted six days before they cornered him,” he whispered quietly for my ears alone.
I could honestly feel his raw pain even at a distance. No one could fake that soul-scaring kind of expression that he was now wearing on his face. I reached out a hand and laid it over his gently.
“I’m sorry, Easton.”
“The news was relentless. They showed up at the funerals and my school, and then when he was caught, it got worse. The trial was terrible, and it was the one thing that everyone knew me for. The second I was eighteen, I enlisted to get away from foster care and the merry-go-round of the do-gooding families that never truly cared about anything but their ten minutes of fame,” he sighed.
“Well, that would be a good explanation of why this is hard on you,” I said, glancing around. “I’m sorry, Easton. Did Randy know this before he sent me here?” I was so confused about why my boss knowing how difficult this was, would have perpetrated this whole situation.
“Yes,” Easton remarked. “Randy would have known. Have you not been able to talk to him yet?”
I shook my head. “The man texts me day and night about every detail of shows and films we have done together. Then he sends me to Wyoming and you all, just to go radio silent,” I shook my head thinking about the irony of that choice. “Trust me; we will be having a strong conversation when I get back about this.”
