Chapter 17 #3
But there’s a simplicity in it all.
A pureness I haven’t found in anything else in this life.
This is what Connor wants, what he needs. It isn’t complicated by anything from the outside. He’s looking for his home to be a refuge again, what the homestead used to be for him. He’s trying to recreate it here. And as much as I hate that, it almost makes sense.
I stare at all of his hard work.
Endless hours of manual labor it’s taken for him to build the foundation.
The work to hike up here with these tools and supplies.
With no one to help him.
Because he doesn’t want it.
He knows his brothers would fight him tooth and nail if they knew what he was doing up here, what his plans were, and the McBrides don’t back down from a fight, which would put them at odds with each other.
I walk over to the site of his new cabin and run my hands over one of the beams he’s already prepared, all the rough bark removed and thrown into the stove for kindling, the smooth surface now ready to interlock with other logs to build the structure he has so perfectly envisioned here.
If they don’t stop him.
If I don’t stop him.
Someone has to convince him that he doesn’t belong here, that he needs his family and friends around him, not to isolate himself even more.
But that’s a fight for another day.
Now, I just need to bide my time until he gets back.
I turn and make my way down the path toward the river and find that, even after getting up before the sun, he still came down here and hauled fresh water up to the bathtub.
He still lit the fire beneath it to ensure I could take a hot bath if I wanted to without having to submerge myself in the freezing river waters.
Goddamn you Connor McBride…
The flames have burned down to little more than embers at this point. I could throw on some of the kindling and logs that he left nearby, but I’m not ready to sink into that warm water and have to think about the time we’ve been in there together.
Somehow, having that man’s huge body crammed into that tiny tub with me became a guilty pleasure I’m truly going to miss when I head back to civilization.
And I don’t want to get in alone now.
I move toward the river instead.
My system needs a shock today. Something that’s going to help wake me from this fog of worry and self-doubt I’ve had the entire time I’ve been working on this project that has only grown since completing it.
“What if I fucked it up?”
That uncertainty threatens to choke me as my question floats out over the water.
Almost as if in response, one of the eagles that lives along the river soars from the top of one of the trees, out over the crystal surface.
It’s breathtakingly beautiful.
Another reason I can see why he loves it up here.
Everything is so free. So untainted.
I roll up my jeans, toe off my boots, pull off my socks, and slowly wade into the water until it’s lapping just below the fabric.
It’s cold.
Just as the air is starting to cool with fall coming quickly.
Is he really going to stay up here in the winter?
With the blustering winds and the snow so deep he won’t be able to walk through it?
That thought makes my eyes burn with tears I thought I was done with for the day.
You can’t do that, Connor.
The fact that I find myself caring so much pisses me off more than just about anything.
Because life would be easier if I still hated Connor McBride, if I still thought he was a selfish, arrogant prick who broke my heart intentionally, who hated me and thought I was ugly, who rejected me and put me in a position to question everything about myself as a teenager.
In the last two weeks, he’s shown me that he’s kind, compassionate, caring, and so goddamn attentive. He’s all those things I remembered him to be when I chose him that night in the first place. He’s still an ass who has the ability to easily get under my skin, but that isn’t all he is.
He’s gone.
He’ll be back tomorrow…the next day at most.
I keep telling myself that, and I repeat it again and again as I climb from the water, snatch up my boots, and decide to chance walking barefoot back to the cabin.
The feeling of the grass and dirt beneath my feet helps ground me in the moment, in the land, it helps ease a bit of that worry and self-doubt I’ve been allowing to creep into my head today.
I just need a distraction.
One of the books Connor left sitting beside the bed…
Or maybe I can find something on my computer to mess around with.
Maybe I can write a new article about Connor McBride. One to publish when all this is over that explains how wrong I’ve been about him.
The corners of my lips curl as I consider that possibility.
But that’s when it hits me.
The birds aren’t chirping anymore…
The animals aren’t scurrying along the forest floor like they normally are when I walk down this path…
The mountain is quiet.
Deathly still and deadly silent.
What Connor said that day in the bath about how he knew something was wrong, how he knew the hit squad had come, flickers through the back of my mind just before I hear a branch snap behind me.