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Honestly, it’s not even the drive that worries me. It’s how he will react when I get there.
If Everett hates me, then he hates me. There’s nothing I can do about that. His feelings are his own responsibility. Not mine. At least, according to my therapist, who has fielded a few calls from me this week.
But Everett can’t hate Owen. Or resent him. Or be neutral about him. Anything but those three are workable.
Now the question remains, how the hell do I start this conversation? Maybe I should figure out what I want first. And that’s really where I struggle.
In an ideal world, none of this would have happened. So, I can’t really worry about that. It’s happened. Now for the fallout.
What do I want? I want Owen to have a father in his life. A real one. Not just his grandfather. My dad is great, but he’s not there every day, and he’s not going to be around forever. I want Owen to have more of a family life than just me and my folks. Since my sister moved across the country, it’s like she’s not even a part of our lives, so I don’t really count her in this equation. Owen only knows her from pictures.
The most obvious question though is, do I want anything more with Everett than a co-parenting thing? My head says no. This is complicated, and there’s no reason to make things worse. But I still get that low down flutter when I think of more with him.
Probably just residual flutters from our one and only night together, but it’s still a night of landmark, outstanding sex for me. Literally the best I’ve ever had. It’s been a long, long time since I’ve hooked up, so that’s the only reason I keep thinking about it. I’m in a sex drought. Everett was an oasis for me during my last sex drought. Only logical I’d put that onto him.
I blow out a hot breath and fog up my windshield. Okay, maybe that’s not the only reason I’m putting those thoughts anywhere near Everett MacMillan. Hell, I’m fogging up my windshield just thinking about him when I’m alone. If we were in my car together, the heat coming off me would fog up the all the windows.
So what if he’s as tempting as the devil and hotter than hell? It doesn’t matter. I have to be smart about this.
Hooking up with Everett MacMillan would be the dumbest thing I could do right now. I’m not going to do it. I only brought granny panties with me. My legs aren’t shaved, and I’m not even going to think about the waxing situation. There is no way in the world that I’d sleep with him right now. He probably smells like smoke, anyway. I doubt that makes a man all horned up.
Except smokiness is normal for him, right? He probably doesn’t even smell it anymore. And I could ignore the smell, if we were to—
No. I am not going to Maine to get laid. I am going to Maine to sort out my son’s father’s intentions, and that is all.
Isn’t it?
-
22
Everett
In the middle of the day, we fight. In the middle of the night, we fight. In the early morning hours before sunrise, we fight. On and on, until time, nor pain, has any meaning. What I had craved before coming to Maine, I found. The bone-numbing utter fatigue that clears the mind.
Only this time, it cleared nothing at all.
Hacking at trees for yet another fireline, I’m cursing my idiot brain. Why isn’t this working? It makes no sense. There’s no reason for me not to have the answers by now, and I’m frustrated with myself because I can’t conjure an answer out of thin air like I always do.
The fun of being me is that I run away from my problems and I wipe out any kind of resistance in my mind, and boom, I get answers. They hit like lightning. But not this time. Not when it’s something this terrifying and enormous. Not when I need it the most.
Stupid, good-for-nothing brain.
Every part of me feels like a raw nerve. The compression of my gear on my body hurts. When the breeze suddenly hits my back, that hurts, too. The ax handle in my hand wears on my blisters, but I’m so tired I’m not sure if I feel the pain, or if I imagine that I feel it. Shin splints are usually a joke we use to mock each other, but when someone complains about it now, all they get is sympathy. The crew is in the same sorry shape as I am at this point. Each hack is weaker, and it takes more of them to fall a tree. Cursing the pain stopped two days ago. We’re too worn out for conversation.
In my periphery, Cotton presses the walkie talkie to his ear, trying to hear over our work. A moment later, he shouts, “Back to base! The wind changed, and we got a blizzard coming to help us out!”
Finally. We’ve caught a break.
The trudge back to camp isn’t a long one, but it might as well be. We’re an army of the walking dead, lugging equipment and mumbling swear words. I like Maine well enough, but the area we’re in has unpredictable ground, and it’s easy to stumble. Or maybe that’s just our clumsy feet. Miranda catches herself on my shoulder a few times and on trees a few times more. She’s not the only one. But I know she’s as tired as I am when she doesn’t even bother to swear at the ground when she slips.
Can’t help but hold that against Maine. It took the fight out of the one person who never gives up.
Cotton falls back to chat us up, trying to keep morale from sinking further. “We’re at seventy percent contained, you guys. We’re doing good work out here.”
She grunts, and I nod. “This one hits different.”
His hound dog eyes are droopier than usual. “I know. This area hasn’t been burned in a long time. Too much underbrush to carry the fire out for long stretches. Forestry needs to be doing their job, so we don’t have to deal with this shit.”
