Into The Light (Three Rivers #1)

Epilogue

FELIX

T oday was a rough one.

With Bear officially my new crew foreman, I now have a bit more free time. What do I decide to do with it? Buy a handful of acres a few miles north of town and build myself a house.

It's something I've been meaning to do for a long time, and I've had the acreage picked out for at least two years. I just haven't had the time to do anything. There hasn't been anyone I trust enough to run the crew in my absence, so I’ve had to be on-site for every build as well as splitting my time checking on the other builds in progress—I spend the bulk of my time at the newest build, leaving the finishing crews to wrap things up without me—cabinet pulls, outlets plates, appliance installs, paint, easy shit like that.

Now that Bear has a full year on the job as my apprentice plus a good three months performing probationary foreman duties without any mishap, I'm feeling comfortable finally taking a day off here and there.

I splashed out for the acres a week ago, signed all the closing paperwork, and I'm now the proud owner of ten point four acres of land—it's mostly dense pine forest, with a nice little natural clearing near the middle, and a slice of the Michigami River running through the back. The clearing is around three or four acres of rolling meadow, with a perfect spot for a walk-out build. I've had the basic design finalized for over a year, and now I'm almost ready to start breaking ground.

Aside from the peaceful beauty of the property, buildable location, and proximity to town, the other major factor in purchasing this particular parcel is the fact that it already has utilities run to the very spot I plan to build on—someone in years past must've planned to build, got started, and then had to abandon the project and try to sell. It's been for sale for over five years, so I got a sweet deal on it, leaving the bulk of my saved cash for the build itself.

Today, I staked out the build site and got started clearing the driveway; it'd go faster if I hired a tree removal service, obviously, but that would cost a small fortune, and I'm in no hurry, so I borrow the Bobcat from the yard, load up chains, a chainsaw, and some other equipment, and get to work.

Tree clearing, without the fancy machinery, is a hell of a lot of work. I mark the path with stakes and flags, and then start at the edge of the clearing and work my way toward the road.

Fell the tree, de-limb, and buck into fourteen- to eighteen-inch lengths, which I then stack; later, I’ll gather up all the stacked logs and move them to the site for firewood.

Each tree I down takes a long-ass time, which means it's gonna be a month of days off here and there spent just clearing the trees out of the driveway path. Then I’ll have to break the ground, clear the grass and dirt, grade and level, and spread the gravel. Only then will I be able to get the heavy machinery back in there so I can break ground and start on the foundation.

I expect this project to take a couple of years at least, but I'm excited about it. It's been my dream since I was a teenager just starting to work for my dad on the framing crew—buy acreage and build my own house from the ground up with my own two hands.

I've spent every waking minute of my life learning the skills, building the company, and saving every dollar I can, all for this dream.

And now it's finally starting to come true.

So by the time the sun is starting to set, I've made a decent dent in the trees, and I'm sweaty, dirty, exhausted, ravenous, and ready to kick back in my condo and watch ESPN until I fall the fuck asleep on the couch.

I'm only partially paying attention to the road as I head back toward town—I'm on a narrow dirt road a good mile or two from the highway in an area that sees little to no traffic. I mean, there’s nothing out here. The dirt road heads east away from the lake for a good fifteen or twenty miles before simply dead-ending randomly in the middle of nowhere. Most of the land around the road is either state-owned parkland or giant swaths of acreage privately owned as hunting grounds for down-staters. So, I don't expect to see anyone.

I'm zoned out, my bro country playlist blasting, windows open, driving on autopilot. A little too fast, maybe. I dunno, like I said, I’m not really paying attention. There's no one out here.

I round a long, sharp, blind curve; a blur of bright orange in the middle of the road has me shouting a surprised curse as I stand on the brakes, my truck fishtailing wildly in the dirt before coming to a halt in the swirling dust.

My bullbar rocks less than six inches away from the vehicle stopped in the center of the road…and the woman bent over with her head in the engine compartment.

I shove the shifter into Park, muttering curses under my breath. A gust of wind rifles through the trees and clears the dust, giving me a better view of what, and who, I almost just hit.

A violently orange vintage VW bus plastered from bumper to bumper with stickers. The front end is pointed west, away from me, the tail and the engine compartment in the rear facing me. Bent over, head and shoulders in the compartment, is a woman.

I mean, all I can see is her ass, but Good Lord above and all his precious saints, what an ass it is. Full, round, taut, and firm, it’s spread in a beautiful curve as she hinges at the waist to get deeper into the engine compartment, swaying and jiggling as she bends her knees and twists and flexes in an attempt to reach something. She’s wearing an ankle-length skirt of some thin, slippery material that clings to her ass, stretching around the lush curves of her hips, thighs, and butt. The skirt is royal purple paisley, the comma-shapes of the paisley pattern in every color under the sun. She’s barefoot in the dirt, and I can see her toes digging and flexing as she reaches for whatever is giving her fits in the engine compartment—each of her toenails is painted a different color.

Even though all I can see is her lower half, I can tell she's pretty short.

I get out of my truck and head for the van. She doesn't seem to have noticed my last-second stop or my approach on foot. Is she deaf? Or maybe has earbuds in?

I rap my knuckles on the side of the VW and step back, so as to not crowd the woman and scare her.

At my knock, she jerks backward, cracks her head, and emerges more carefully, cursing floridly.

"Goddammit, motherfucking piece of shit, that hurt you ass-fucking pile of moldy dicks…" The stream of creative invective continues until she’s fully upright.

My heart stops beating entirely, my mouth goes dry, and swallowing becomes impossible.

She's the most gorgeous creature I've ever laid eyes on.

Barely over five feet, maybe five-three or -four at most, she's all soft, luscious curves. That incredible ass is just the beginning. The wind swirls, lifting her thin skirt up around her hips, baring momentarily short, thick legs. She’s wearing…I don’t know the word for it. It’s not a tank top or tube top, but something like it. A band of stretchy fabric around her chest. That’s it. It covers her boobs, but that’s about it. And those things are…fuck. I can’t rip my eyes away. The white fabric strains in a futile attempt to contain her enormous, perfectly teardrop-shaped breasts. Her nipples are pert and obvious, poking against the fabric, stiffening as the wind knifes past.

With a shake of my head, I force my eyes shut to break the spell and then open them again to get a look at the rest of her. Her belly, waist, and upper torso, bare, are tanned to a dusky golden brown—the color of naturally pale skin that's been tanned from long hours outside under the sun. She has a glittery purple bauble piercing her belly button, with thin gold chains wrapped around her waist, connecting to the piercing and vanishing up under her top to loop around her throat, a few inches of chain hanging down her chest, another smaller purple pendant dangling just above her cleavage.

Bracelets of infinite variety are stacked on both wrists halfway up her forearms—jelly bracelets, Pandora bracelets with dozens of charms, hand-braided friendship bracelets by the dozen in every possible color and pattern, jangly silver and gold hoops, some with dangling charms and some without.

Her hair is white-blond—not dyed platinum but rather so naturally pale it's nearly old-person white; it's been done in a thick, elaborate braid that wraps around her head like a crown, with feathers, charms, and beads worked into the braid. Gold hoops line her ears from tip to lobe, and a third purple piercing glints on the left side of her nostril.

Her eyes…fuck me.

Silver.

I mean, technically, I suppose you'd call them extremely pale hazel, but the downrange effect is silver. Shocking, vivid, piercing. Assessing, intelligent, wild, proud…

And full of sorrow.

And anger.

Her face is heart-shaped, with high, sharp cheekbones and plump, kissable lips with a pronounced Cupid's bow. Not a speck of makeup, her lashes are as white as her hair, her lips naturally pink, her skin golden and smooth and clear complected.

"What the actual fuck, dude?" She glares at me angrily, her voice too loud—she does have earbuds in her ears.

I point at my ears, and her eyes fly wide.

"Oh shit! Forgot I had them in." She plucks the earbuds out of her ears, tugs her top away, and drops them between her breasts. Her eyes finally go to my truck, angled across the road, less than a foot from her, and understanding washes over her expression, swiftly changing from anger to mortification. “Oh. Um. My bad?"

“Yeah, your bad," I snap. "I almost hit you. Parked in the middle of the road at the top of a blind curve? To quote you—what the actual fuck, dude ? ”

Her expression goes back to thunderous. "Okay, well, a couple of things here, Kayce Dutton on steroids—one, I’m not parked , I’m stopped . As in dead. It just conked out and died, and I couldn’t even get it to the side of the road. Which leads me to point number two: Do I look like I can push this thing to the shoulder by myself? Number three, this road goes from nowhere to nowhere, and there’s not so much as one actual house on it, so I wasn’t expecting some bro in a jacked-up truck to come flying around the curve like an asshole."

Kayce Dutton on steroids? The fuck?

"I'm not on steroids." Stupidly, it's the first thing that comes out of my mouth.

Her lips thin and pull in as she bites down on a laugh. " That's your comeback?"

"Don’t know who Kayce Dutton is, either."

She gives me a puzzled, disgusted look. "Yellowstone? Luke Grimes? You look like him, just bigger and beefier and bro-ier."

"Bro-ier is not a word."

A roll of those intoxicating silver eyes, and a shrug that does downright hypnotic things to her gigantic tits. "It is now, bro .”

I close my eyes to rip my eyes off of them, and then find her eyes. "Cool." I jut my chin at her van. "Need a hand?"

"You an expert in VW engines?" she asks.

I shrug, shake my head. "Not especially, but I know my way around an engine." I hold up my hands. "Just offering assistance. You don't want it or need it, cool. I wasn’t making any assumptions. Just tryin' to be nice."

She looks away, her beautiful face going through a range of emotions—her face is incredibly expressive, her feelings obvious and easily readable: annoyance, embarrassment, and then resignation.

She holds out a wrench. "Fine. I can't get the fucking bolt free." She turns and leans into the engine compartment. "Stop staring at my ass."

Guiltily, I jerk my gaze away, because I was staring. "Sorry."

She snickers. "You're not subtle about the staring, in case you weren't aware." Her voice is muffled, and I hear metal on metal. "You stared at my tits for a solid thirty seconds."

She emerges again, straightening, and rubs at her cheek, smearing grease on it.

“Hard not to stare at perfection,” I say, and then bite my tongue—she gives no sign that she heard me.

I wedge myself into the engine compartment, finding where she'd put the wrench—it's at a really tough spot, with no leverage and very little room to work. I grunt through gritted teeth as I strain at the wrench—after straining till my arm and shoulder shake, I feel it starting to slip.

“Come on, you bitch ," I snarl, and then the bolt comes loose all of a sudden, smashing my knuckles and ripping my skin. " Mother fucker."

I finish removing the bolt, and I see the issue she's working on—a snapped belt.

"Got the replacement?" I ask. "I'll swap it out while I’m in here. Unless you'd rather do it yourself."

A pause. "Fine. Thanks. Here." I feel a tap on my right shoulder, I worm a hand out, feel the new belt hit my hand, and then spend the next several minutes replacing it.

When the repair is done, I work myself out and straighten. "All set."

I glance at my knuckles—the skin is torn, blood coating the back of my hand and mixing with grease and dirt.

Her eyes go to the cut, and she frowns. "Let me help you with that."

I shrug. "Meh. It's fine."

She frowns, annoyed. "It's not. It'll get infected. Just get your big macho ass in my van and let me doctor your little boo-boo, okay? It's the least I can do as a thank you for fixing my van."

"Uh, sure. Yeah. Okay." I follow her around to the passenger side.

She tugs open the sliding door, revealing the interior—it’s been retrofitted from the skin out, transformed from a ‘60s passenger van into a miniature RV, with the newest fittings and furnishings to make it into a home on wheels.

A tiny kitchenette takes up half of the wall behind the driver’s seat, with a bed in the rear and storage between the tailgate and the sliding door.

She steps up into the van and points at the bed. "Sit."

I stay on the ground. "I'm filthy."

In the process of rummaging in a cabinet, she pokes her head out and assesses me. "Oh, yeah, you really are. Nevermind. Just…just sit there." She points to the lip of the door.

I sit, and she sits beside me with a first-aid kit on her lap. She uses a wet wipe to clean my hand of dirt, grease, and blood, and then pours isopropyl on the cuts, adds a dab of Neosporin, and then Band-Aids across each cut.

While she's doing that, I examine her bus.

It's obvious she lives in it. A sports bra hangs off a cabinet, a mint green lacy one hanging over it. A pile of folded clothes sits on the bed. A wooden box sits on the floor at the foot of the bed—it's the size of a shoebox and looks handmade, overflowing with jewelry. A suitcase lays open on the floor as well, overflowing with skirts, shoes, tops, leggings, underwear, bras, bandanas, and who knows what else. The kitchenette features a small two-person booth, and bowls are stacked in the sink.

In the front passenger seat, I see a cardboard box overflowing with clothes—men's clothing. I can almost make out the writing on the side— DONATE .

She glances at me, following my gaze. A pulse of energy comes off of her—sorrow. Her eyes mist over, and she blinks furiously, swallowing compulsively.

A moment later, she eyes me curiously. "Not gonna ask?"

I shake my head. "Not my business. You wanna tell me, I'll listen."

She stares into my eyes. "I respect that answer. Thank you.” Her chin lifts, her deep, beautiful silver eyes clearing of the sorrow. "I'm Ember."

"Ember?" I ask. "Like Amber, but with an E?”

"Yeah. Ember, as in a spark from a fire."

"Beautiful name," I mutter. "For a beautiful woman."

She goes blank. "Thanks." A glance at me, not exactly disinterested, but cautious. "And you are?"

"Felix Crowe."

She smiles at me, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes. "Nice to meet you, Felix."

She's beautiful—stunning.

Mesmerizing.

Fascinating

And so, so sad.

I'm in love.