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“Hey, I was hoping to catch you alone,” she said, giving me a soft smile.
“Oh, have the dogs been bothering you or the chickens?” I asked, having seen them sniffing around the coop, but I was pretty sure they’d been behaving themselves.
“No, no. They’re angels. It’s just… I have something for you,” she said, reaching into her pocket, and pulling out something on a dainty chain, then holding it out to me.
It was a necklace with an assortment of little round beads in the front.
“To keep you safe,” she said, giving me a smile I didn’t know her well enough to interpret.
I didn’t really know the woman, but I got the whole hippie-earth-goddess vibe from her, so I thought that maybe she meant it was going to keep me safe in, you know, a woo-woo sort of way. Like maybe there was some sort of spiritual significance to the stone or something.
“Thank you,” I said, meaning it. I mean, I didn’t remember the last time someone gave me a gift.
“Try to wear it all the time,” she suggested. “Just not in the shower.”
“Okay,” I agreed, already pulling it down over my head. “Thank you so much. I love it.”
And I did.
And I maybe loved her a little bit because of it too.
It was new to me, the strength of connection I was starting to feel toward all of these people.
Delaney, with her sweet baby and her devoted husband. Crow and Morgaine. Coach with his quiet sort of wisdom. Slash with his strong, stoic vibe. Nyx, with her confidence and outspokenness, and her absolutely ridiculous pregnancy cravings.
And Sway.
Sway, of course, above all others.
I tried to tell myself that it was simply because I’d known him the longest, that we’d shared a bit more with each other.
It was more than that, though, and I knew it. I was becoming more sure of it with each passing day.
We’d fallen into a comfortable rhythm, the two of us. Waking up at the same time, taking turns showering. Whoever got done first grabbed a coffee for the other.
We took long walks through Shady Valley with the dogs, or along the mountains out back, usually talking about the town, about how it had faded, then slowly started to come back to life.
He filled me in on the cast of characters around: from the Irish mafia with, ironically, the last name Murphy, to the Bratva and some newer guys named Erion Kadare and Czar Petcova.
I even found myself intrigued by the stories of the more normal people in town. Dr. Price and Jack at the motel and the older lady at the grocery store named Betty who everyone swore had been there forever.
There was just… connection here.
I always thought I didn’t want that.
I’d grown up without much of it, save for the connection I had with my father and our mutual interests. But there had never been anyone else. No other family. No friends. No community.
I figured that was just… what I was into.
So it was how I continued my life well into my adulthood.
Never craving more because I never really knew what there was to feel like I was missing.
Everything about Shady Valley, though, felt like it was connected, like there were strings tying everyone together.
Even if I hadn’t met most of the people Sway told me about, I felt oddly invested in them and their stories. I wanted to know more. I wanted to meet them.
“You okay?” Sway asked, and I could feel his gaze on the side of my face as I stared out the front window, looking at the town below, thinking about all those people who all pretty much knew each other.
“Yeah,” I said, exhaling hard. “Just thinking about the town,” I admitted.
“In a good or bad way?” Sway asked, following me as I went to the kitchen for another refill.
I needed to get back to work. But I’ll admit that I’d been distracted. Not by the looming threat of Cain Roth, not by having to run away from my whole life again, not even by the jobs I knew I needed to be working on.
No.
I had been distracted by thinking of odd things.
Like what it would be like to live somewhere that people knew me. And not just the person who made my coffee every day. Or the pet store because they loved my dogs and therefore, by extension, had to interact with me.
What would it be like to have everyone know me by name, wave when I passed, ask me how I was doing?
Even more so than that, what might it be like to have close connections? People to always share meals with, to spend special occasions with, to swap gifts to?
And, yeah, okay.
I was also wondering what it could be like to be with someone. Really be with someone. Day in and day out, waking up together, going to bed together, building a life with each other.
