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He brushes the bark from his hands, and throws the ax over his shoulder and ambles over to me.
"So, I guess you weren't lying,” I say.
A question skitters across his forehead. "Lying?"
I point to the ax that he’s propping by the side of the cottage. "Ax. As opposed to butcher knife."
It takes a moment to register and then he laughs.
"Ah, yes. The trusty ax in my trunk. Keeping me safe from you."
"I thought you meant you were keepingmesafe from you with the ax."
He joins me on the deck, listening to the kettle stumble and gurgle to boiling point. "You never needed protection from me, Luna."
"We remember things a little differently," I say, and pull my cardigan tighter around me, wincing as my new scars tug.
"Hey, hey." He reaches over for his jacket hanging on the back of a chair and drapes it around my shoulders. "You need to stay warm." Pulling the sides of his jacket tightly around me, he leansin, reaching around to flip the collar up, blocking me from the wind.
Sweet oak and freshly split wood.
Fresh mornings and the coming of spring.
Blue mountain skies and river spray.
He steps back, his fingertips ghosting my cheek, but never quite touching me.
"No, Luna. I was always the one who needed keeping safe from you. I was always the one in danger. It was always, always you who had the power to tear my heart to pieces."
Today we change our walking route.
I choose a different turn and we find ourselves down an alley with shuttered windows, and only a single shop open with a kaleidoscope of barrels of boiled sweets and Swiss chocolate spilling from a fountain. The shopkeeper waves to us, handing us each a wooden spoon, and gesturing for us to stick the spoon under the fountain. Then, miming the movements, the shopkeeper pulls his invisible spoon out from the fountain and acts out feeding each other our chocolate covered spoons.
Awkwardly laughing, I shake my head and walk away.
The shopkeeper chases after me, touching my air and pulls me back to his doorway, pointing at Kingsley, saying ""Mais, Mademoiselle, il a l'air si triste!"But, Miss, he looks so sad.
Kingsley laughs and then turns the corners of his mouth down, holding his spoon out, forlornly.
It's so pitiful, so surreal, that I hold my spoon out. His frown turns upside down into a silly grin and he holds his spoon out to me.
Simultaneously, we wrap our lips around the spoons, eyes locked.
Sweetness explodes in my mouth, and I let go of my spoon and reach for the one trapped between my lips. But he doesn't let go.Fingers tangle with fingers, and he holds tight until I suck the spoon clean and pull my mouth off it.
Reluctantly, he releases the spoon and grabs the one in his mouth.
"Tasty," he says, clearing his throat, with a nervous chuckle. It's the first word he's said on any of our walks, always giving me the space I need, never taking up room or silence that I wasn't ready to give.
"Should we buy some?"
He gives me a wink. "I think we probably should, or he might follow us home."
I stifle a laugh, and busy myself with choosing a few packages of the chocolate chips, feeling my cheeks burn, remembering a time not that long ago when he'd dripped melting chocolate on my bare stomach and licked it off, and wondering if he remembers it too.
He pays for and then carries the bags of chocolate back to the cottage, propping them up on my pantry shelf, standing back to survey the collection of local products I've accumulated over the last few weeks.
"You look well stocked."
