The Problem with Falling (Problems #3)

Chapter 2

CHAPTER 2

Theo

W hat the hell was that?!

I stood in my boat and placed my book on my seat as I glanced around the lake, searching for what had caused the loud noise. I’d never had other people on the water with me in the wee hours of the morning, so I knew it wasn’t another fisherman. And I knew damn well it wasn’t the urban legend giant squid, Mumford, whose stories were told around the Westin campfires when I was a kid.

Though it sounded as if something had fallen into the water.

I turned up the headlights on my boat, glancing around to see where the ripples were most intense. I waited a few seconds, uncertain what was happening until I heard more splashes.

Something didn’t fall into the water.

Someone did.

Without much thought, I shot into action and started on my way toward the noise in question. If someone needed help, I wasn’t going to be the dick who looked the other way at two in the morning. Especially when I knew it was probably some dumb high school kids from town drinking and making idiotic choices. A lot of that happened in Westin when the weather finally started to get nice out. Booze and dummies.

As I approached the area, I slowed my boat at the sight of a figure floating in the water.

“ Jesus ,” I muttered to myself before calling out. “Hey, you all right?”

No answer. I inched my boat closer to take in the figure better. A plump ass was poking out of the water on a completely nude woman. The moon wasn’t the only thing full that evening.

Her head was in the water, and she wasn’t moving at all. I shot into panic mode and went to pull her out of the lake. As I flipped her over, I noticed a nice gash on her forehead. Glancing around, I saw the rope tied to the tree at the top of the cliff.

“Fucking teenage kids,” I grumbled to myself. I’d cut that rope down repeatedly because it was such an unsafe place for people to dive into Westin Lake due to the rock formation that sat beneath the water. I’d repeatedly taken that complaint to Westin Lake community meetings, but nobody gave a damn about what I had to say.

After dragging the woman onto the boat and getting myself soaked from head to toe, I checked for a pulse. It was there, thank goodness. Still, she didn’t look great.

I started with CPR compressions, followed by mouth-to-mouth in case she’d swallowed any water. Luckily, she began coughing and spat up what was stuck in her lungs. I rolled her over to her side, trying my best not to place my hands anywhere inappropriate on her body as she regained consciousness.

She kept coughing, trying to find her breath, before she groaned and touched the gash on her forehead. “Ow,” she murmured to herself, sitting up a bit more. “Where am I?”

“On my boat.”

Those words were enough to terrify her. She leaped with fear at the sound of my voice. As she turned to face me, pure panic filled her eyes. “Who are you?!” She glanced around to find it was just me and her on a boat in the middle of the lake. At two in the morning. In mostly pitch darkness. To be fair to her, it wasn’t a great look.

She went to stand, and the boat swayed a little, then the realization settled in that she was, indeed, naked in my boat. “I’m naked!” she shouted, her voice bouncing off the water. I turned away from her to give her a bit of privacy.

“That you are,” I deadpanned. “Just to be clear, I didn’t take your clothes off. You had none on when I found you floating in the water.”

“Gosh, my head,” she groaned. “What happened?”

“I’m guessing you went for a cliff dive off Rocky Pier up there. That shit is a dangerous jump. I should know. I lost a tooth when I was a kid doing that. Hit my head hard on a rock.” I headed over to my gym bag that I always kept an extra set of clothing in, in case a fall-in took place. I grabbed a towel from the bag, too.

“Here,” I said, still looking away as I held the sweats out toward her. “Something for you to cover up in.”

“Thanks,” she softly said, her voice sounding as if it were dipped in honey. Shockingly sweet. She even sounded sweet when she screamed somehow.

Who the hell was this woman?

I’d lived in Westin my whole life, and I’d never seen her in all my time. I knew everyone from our town, and they all knew me. Based on how wide her eyes grew when they locked with mine, it was clear we were nothing more than strangers.

I gave her time to get dressed, and she announced when she was fully clothed.

When I turned back to face her, she smiled an uneasy grin. She was still nervous, rightfully so, but it was also clear her head was killing her based on how she kept touching the cut.

“Might need stitches,” I mentioned, moving over to the steering wheel. “Where are you staying?”

“In Big Bird,” she replied.

“You’re staying…in Big Bird?”

She nodded. “Yes.”

I sighed and pinched the bridge of my nose. This was not how I wanted my evening to go. “You must have a concussion, too. The doctor’s office doesn’t open until after the long weekend, and—”

“No, no,” she said, holding the towel she used to dry off with to her forehead. “Big Bird is the name of my mobile home. My dad calls me Little Bird, so I thought it would be funny to call the school bus Big Bird, and well, ow,” she groaned, touching her head a little too hard.

Mobile home? Big Bird?

What?

“Let me see,” I said, walking toward her.

She hesitated for a moment. “You’re not a serial killer, are you?”

“If I were a serial killer, would you hop out of the boat right now?”

She glanced around and narrowed her eyes. “No. That water’s actually pretty cold, and I don’t want to get your sweats wet.”

This woman was wild.

“Sorry you saw my”—she gestured to her whole body—“bits.”

“Don’t worry. I was more concerned about you not dying than I was with checking out your body.”

She placed a hand on her hip and smiled. “That’s very non-serial-killer of you. What’s your name?”

“Theo.”

The smile stretched. “I’m Willow.”

I blinked. “Okay.”

That was the first time I really studied her lips, outside of me trying to bring her back to damn life. It was the first time I actually studied her. She was a beautiful Black woman. She might’ve been the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen in my life. She had deep chocolate irises, stunning brown skin, and a smile that looked like it was drafted in heaven. Her hair was soaked but long, and you could see the curls in it, too.

She kept smiling.

It was a good smile.

I didn’t smile back. I didn’t care enough to offer one up.

“Sit down and hold on. We should get you stitched up,” I grumbled, a bit annoyed that my solitude was no longer existent. It was pretty rude of her to almost die during my alone time.

Once we got back to my place, I turned on every light in the house. As we walked into my living room, I hurriedly grabbed the clothes and beer bottles scattered through the space.

Willow sat in my recliner and made herself comfortable. I had a feeling she was the kind of woman who made herself comfortable wherever she’d planted her feet. Then again, I also had a feeling she never planted her feet for long. We were different in that way. She seemed like a wanderer. I was more into staying still.

“Let me change out of these wet clothes, then I’ll stitch you up.”

After drying myself off in my bedroom and tossing on my own set of sweats, I gathered some items from my first aid kit and headed to the living room to find Willow still sitting in that recliner.

She sat straighter and leaned in my direction, resting her elbows on her knees. “You know how to stitch up things?”

“Sure do. Had a good teacher.”

She leaned in closer. “Then by all means. Stitch me up.”

Was she not going to ask more questions than that? Fucking hell, this woman wasn’t the brightest light bulb. Luckily for her, I wasn’t some psycho, but the way she allowed me to take her back to my place and put literal stitches in her forehead was foolish. Her stranger-danger meter must’ve been off. She walked into my house like we were old friends.

I pulled a chair closer to her and took a seat. After cleaning up her wound, I began placing the stitches as she sat there with her eyes closed.

“So tell me, Theodore—”

“Theo,” I corrected. “Just Theo.”

“So tell me, Just Theo ,” she began again. “What was the worst day of your life?”

I huffed, shaking my head in disbelief at the question. “Not interested in deep talks.”

“I don’t like small talk.”

“I don’t like any talk.”

“Are you antisocial?”

“That’s one way of putting it.”

“I’m social-social.”

“Shocking,” I replied sarcastically. Even though she was beautiful, I wished she’d stop talking. I was still stuck on how stupid she was for jumping into the lake at two in the damn morning. “You know, you could’ve died from that dive,” I scolded, unable to keep that thought to myself. Which was odd… I was almost always able to keep my thoughts to myself.

“Meh.” She shrugged. “Death’s coming for us all.”

“No need to rush the process.”

She bit her bottom lip and tilted her head slightly. “What can I say? I’m a speed racer.”

I tilted her head back into place. Damn this woman. What was her deal? She kept her eyes on me, and that left me feeling such unease. I felt dizzy whenever she stared. I didn’t like the way she looked at me. It was as if she were trying to read my locked-away pages.

“You keep to yourself, don’t you?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“Are you lonely?”

“Never.”

“What happened to make you want to keep to yourself?”

“Nothing.”

“Yes, it did.”

“What makes you think something happened to me?”

“The way your eyes look.”

I sat back a bit and rested my elbows on my kneecaps. “And how exactly do my eyes look?”

“A little bit sad.”

“You don’t know shit about me,” I grumbled, unease building up within me.

Willow stayed calm. “You don’t need to know someone to know sad eyes.”

“What the hell were you doing out there naked and alone, huh?” I snapped, annoyed that she thought she could see me. Annoyed that it felt as if she could see me. “Do you know how dangerous it is for a woman to be out at those hours alone? Anything could’ve happened to you.”

“Yeah, but I couldn’t miss the opportunity.”

“What opportunity?”

“To bathe under the full moon and soak in its energy before howling up toward it.”

Oh hell.

I was stitching up a bizarre woman.

I went quiet again because my anxiety from the whole situation grew. She asked more questions, but I ignored her. I didn’t want to talk to her, or any human, at almost three in the damn morning. I wanted to be on my boat fishing or reading in my bedroom. That was it; that was all.

Yet now, instead, I was stitching up a woman who howled at the moon.

“That’s fucking stupid and dangerous,” I growled. For some reason, her pixie personality pissed me off. She was acting as if she couldn’t have ended her life right there on the lake. “You could’ve died out there.”

She shrugged. “But I didn’t.”

“That’s because I found you,” I grumbled.

“Yes. You found me.” She said it so matter-of-factly as if there was no question that I would’ve found her.

“ But if I hadn’t ,” I urged.

“ But you did ,” she responded.

I rolled my eyes. “Let me guess. You’re one of those glass-half-full types of people.”

She wiggled her shoulders. “I’m an overflowing glass, Theodore.”

“Theo,” I corrected. “Just Theo.”

“Just Theo,” she echoed. “Are you a glass-half-empty kind of guy?”

“I believe all glassware is shit and shatters in the end.”

“Oh… I see. You’re a pessimist.”

“A realist.”

“Just because I’m not a Negative Nancy doesn’t mean I’m not a realist.”

“You’re right, but thinking it was a smart idea to dive off a cliff at two in the morning naked to howl at the moon says you’re not much of an intelligent person, either.”

She pulled back slightly. “Did you just call me dumb?”

“No. I just stated that you aren’t smart.”

“ Ohh , I see,” she sang, clapping her hands together. “You have trauma.”

“Excuse me?”

“Whatever, or whoever, it was that made you like”—she waved her hands widely in my direction—“ like this must’ve traumatized you.”

“You don’t know shit about me.”

“Then why are you so grumpy?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe because a random nude woman almost died in front of me and is now trying to read me while I stitch up her forehead. For the love of God, stop moving,” I ordered, stilling her shoulders in place.

Willow grew quiet.

That didn’t last long, though. This woman didn’t know how to stop talking. “And to think, I thought we could’ve been friends.”

I narrowed my eyes and stared into hers. “Why the hell would I want to be friends with someone like you?”

Her eyes flashed with hurt, and a tug happened in my gut from seeing it. Shit. Maybe I took it too far. I grumbled to myself, knowing I should apologize, but shit…what could I say? I was traumatized.

I tightened the last stitch and cleared my throat. “All done.”

“Lovely,” she said, hopping up from the chair. “I’ll be out of your hair.”

I sighed. “I’ll drive you to your ride.”

“No. It’s fine. It’s clear that this unrealistic, unintelligent woman ruined your night, so I won’t take any more time from your clearly joy-filled life.” She headed for the front door and opened it. “But first, fast question…are there…bears out here at night?”

“Get in my truck. I’ll drive you around to your damn bird.”

She did as I said, and the moment I hopped into my driver’s seat, she was already tinkering with the stereo.

“What the hell are you doing?” I spat out.

“Trying to find music. I don’t like silence,” she said.

I shut off the radio. “I figured that out by how much you never shut up.”

She turned on the radio. “You know what? You really put a little extra grump into your grumpiness at three in the morning.”

I shut off the radio. “And you dash a bit extra annoying in your annoyingness at three in the morning.” I put the truck into park after turning down the road toward the cliff where she’d jumped. And there in front of us was a school bus. “Big Bird, I assume?” I remarked sarcastically. What a joke this woman was.

“That’s her.”

I grumbled.

She narrowed her eyes. “Your energy… It seems tainted. Do you want me to burn sage around you?”

“That’s the last thing I want you to do.”

“But your energy feels heavy. I don’t like it for you.”

“Oh no, a strange woman who howls naked at the moon doesn’t like my energy. How will I ever survive?” I mocked.

She opened the truck door and stepped outside. Yet before she closed the door, she said, “I don’t think you’re a very nice person,” with her chest puffed out. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, you saved my life and stitched me up, but I don’t think you’re a nice person. You don’t give off that energy.”

“Well, I’m glad you picked up on that fact. Don’t get me started on what I think about you.”

“What do you think of me?” she asked, hands on her hips.

“Trust me, sport, you don’t want to know what I think of you. Have a good life, Willow.” I leaned over and grabbed the passenger door. “And stay the fuck away from the cliffs.”

I slammed the door shut, then drove away from her, hoping we’d never cross paths again.

People.

Psh.

I fucking hated people.

Especially the ones who howled at moons.

My next morning started on a bad page because my night ended on a bad note, too. I woke up grumpy and annoyed. One of my first thoughts was of the strange hippie flower child I’d saved on the water. The thought after it was stupid, strange hippie flower child I’d saved on the water .

There should’ve been a rule about being idiotic when it came to nature. Warning: keep fucking idiots out of nature. If it wasn’t a random woman diving off the cliffs in the middle of the night, it was people doing gender reveal parties who burned down half a forest.

The number of people in town who almost burned down wooded areas with their damn gender reveals was alarming, to say the least. Annoying as fuck, to say the most. And what in the world was with all those newly created celebrations that people found the need to partake in as of late? What happened to just having a baby shower? What was up with all those other made-up parties before the baby was even born? Soon enough, someone was gonna be hosting “the day we screwed and made a baby” parties or “guess who’s the baby daddy” parties. Half the idiots throwing those parties had no business being knocked up, anyway.

Hell, now I wasn’t only annoyed with Willow, but I was annoyed with gender reveals.

I begrudgingly headed to my grandparents’ house around ten in the morning. I didn’t need to be at the restaurant until one in the afternoon, but I told Grandma I’d get her friend settled in at my place.

She’d texted me about an hour ago that her friend had arrived, and as I pulled my truck up to my grandparents’, my stomach dropped when I saw the last thing I wanted to see.

Fucking.

Big.

Bird.

And standing on the side of the yellow school bus?

Fucking.

Little.

Bird.