AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“No, but I designed it and did some things myself. Like the floors. It took more than a year to get it all done, but it was worth it.”
“I’d say.”
I wasn’t sure what to expect as we drove down the dirt road leading up to his house, but when the log cabin came into view, I swear my jaw dropped.
Rustic. Utterly and charmingly rustic with rough-hewn logs and two stone chimneys rising proudly from the roof.
When thinking of my dream home, I never even considered a log cabin, but then he led me inside, and I was speechless. So simple and rustic, yet elegant and modern. Everything about it—the hardwood floors, the exposed beams, the stone fireplace, the large windows framing everything—was warm and inviting. The overriding emotion I felt was nostalgia. As if I was longing for a time long past and a simpler way of living.
“It’s very private,” I say, looking around. Here and there, you see glimpses of houses nestled in the woods. “Do you know any of your neighbors?”
“Not really. We’re not close enough to bump into each other.”
“Thank you,” I say, giving him the side-eye.
“For what?”
There are many things I want to thank him for.
Thank you for not looking at me any differently. I know once people find out, they’ll have an opinion. Lines will be drawn, and things will change. They’ll feel sorry for me, or pity me, or feel anger. It’s unavoidable, but I just want to be me, Bailey. With Kallan, I can be that.
Thank you for recognizing that the last thing I needed was solitude, even when I couldn’t. The thing about solitude is it’s lonely, so freaking lonely. There’s nothing to fill up the hours and stop your mind from spinning round and round. Nothing to stop the images that creep up in unguarded moments, playing like a movie reel in my mind. I must hate myself because all of them are of them. Of how his body moves over hers. The sounds he makes when he’s completely lost in the moment. His face when he finally surrenders. Words spoken in passion. It’s all the parts of him that used to only belong to me, and knowing that he shared that with someone else is a special kind of hell.
But my heart is not brave enough to say all of that.
“For dragging me out of my apartment.”
“So, how are you holding up?”
I sigh, staring out at the water. “As best as I can, I guess. It just hurts, you know. One day I think I’ve got my life all figured out, and then the next day, it’s just over. Gone. Almost like some cosmic force out there threw a pair of dice and decided my fate.”
He stares at me for a few seconds, debating something, before he starts speaking.
“Remember when I told you that my childhood was part of why I needed a fresh start?”
I nod for him to continue. “I used to be married,” he says, and now he’s the one looking out over the lake.
“You’re divorced?” I don’t know why that shocks me, but it does.
“Widowed, actually. Her name was Josephine, but everyone called her Josie. That was one of the hardest things after she died,” he muses. “mentioning her in the past tense, but it became easier as time went on. I met Josie during a very low point in my life.”
“Is she the person who helped you straighten yourself out?”
He nods. “I was young when I fell in with a bad crowd. The kind of people that operate in the not-talked-about underbelly of Vegas. At first, the jobs were small, but as I got older, they got bigger and more serious. I’ll spare you the details, but it was the kind of stuff that could land you some serious jail time.”
I don’t dare say anything because his words are riveting. It’s a side of life I’m completely unfamiliar with.
“I was cutting across a park on my way home one night, and there she was, sitting cross-legged on the grass, staring up at the moon. At that time of night, the park was always deserted, so seeing someone sitting there was jarring, and it made me stop. I was concerned but didn’t want to scare her, so I kept my distance and just watched her for a while. She must have seen me though because after a while she called out to me. Asked me if I was going to introduce myself. I didn’t know what to make of her. I told her she was crazy sitting in the dark by herself, and she smiled at me and said, ‘Don’t worry. My cancer is going to kill me before someone else can.’ The way she smiled when she said that floored me. There was no bitterness, anger, or self-pity. Just acceptance and joy. And that was Josie in a nutshell.”
“She sounds like she was an amazing woman.”
“She was. She had such a zest for life despite the hand life dealt her. She made me feel as if my problems in life were nothing compared to hers.”
“I don’t think that’s fair to yourself. To compare the two. Your advice to me was not to compare or minimize my feelings.”
“You’re right,” he says, nodding. “But it made me realize that at least I could change my life, you know? I had the luxury of not having to accept things the way they were.”
“We only get this one life. What we do with it is up to us,” I repeat his words from that day at the harbor.
