Chapter 9
CHARLIE
Tall, broad shouldered, golden-tan skin.
Thick, chestnutty curls a little longer than he used to wear them.
Neatly trimmed facial hair that lives somewhere between scruff and an actual beard and does precisely nothing to hide the cut, square-jawed perfection of his face.
Long, thick lashes and that serious, quietness behind his endlessly deep brown eyes.
Myles. Because, of course it’s him.
So very different and so entirely the same as the boy who’d meant everything to me.
“Everything okay?”
My throat goes too dry to answer, and so I just nod, hoping to god that I don’t look as shell-shocked as I feel. Is this ever going to get any easier?
I’m guessing not.
“Oh yeah?” His eyes fall to the axe still grasped in one of my gloved hands, and then to the mangled chunk of wood stuck at its end.
“Fine, no.” I admit, shaking my head as I look away from him, taking in with fresh horror the now apparently impossible-to-deal-with-mound of wood I’ve paid two hundred dollars to have dumped in my yard. “No, it’s not.”
It makes absolutely no sense, but the irritated embarrassment I’d felt when I’d first heard a vehicle pull up is completely gone.
Myles should be the last person I want here to witness my ineptitude, but instead, all I feel is relief.
Like him being here means this disaster is somehow going to be alright.
“Want to see something that’ll make you feel better?”
I’m back to wordlessly nodding again because, before I have a chance to get any actual answer out, Myles is stepping toward me, and oh sweet lord, rolling up the sleeves of today’s flannel, exposing his forearms. Of course they’re every bit as golden-tan and unfairly gorgeous as the rest of him, thick and toned and dusted with dark hair.
My brain is totally short circuiting, because yeah, this is making me feel better. Even though I know it’s definitely not what he was talking about.
“Can I see that?” His voice is softer now that he’s closer to me, not calling across the yard.
Myles has always been quiet—not this awkward distant kind of quiet that’s between us now, but just…quiet. Gentle. The kind of person who calms you down, not winds you up. Except for when his goofy side comes out. Then, he’s ridiculous. Purely, simply ridiculously funny. Get the two of us going and—
Memories of us laughing ourselves breathless burst through me like physical pain. Ohmigod, how can I miss something from so long ago so much that it can hurt like this?
I need to pull myself together. I need to switch those thoughts off and focus on just being glad he’s here now. However short it is and whatever it looks like.
He takes hold of the axe handle and settles a big, booted foot on the wood it’s trapped in. One twist, and the axe head pops free.
“And this makes me feel better how? Apart from the fact that it’s not stuck anymore?” I point at the axe he’s still got clutched in his hand.
Maybe what I said just now could have sounded bitchy, but it’s really just that my heart’s going like crazy, somewhere up in my throat, and I’m so off kilter, just at standing so near and taking in the fact that he’s almost smiling at me, that my brain is total mush and I really am not responsible for anything I say right now.
Thank god he doesn’t seem to have thought I was being any way though, because that almost-smile spreads into the first genuine Myles-smile I’ve seen in so long, it’s like I’m feeling the sun on my face for the first time after a lifetime of winter.
“That’s just about knowing the right angle. You could have done it too. This is what’s supposed to make you feel better. Watch.”
He grabs a new piece of wood from the disaster pile, sets it on the stump, and lifts the axe over his head.
His shirt pulls at the flex of his back and shoulders as he brings the axe down, and I’m so caught up staring at his unashamed hotness that I almost miss registering what happens when the axe connects with the wood.
“See that? Not anything you’re doing wrong.”
I jerk my eyes away from staring at him, over to where the head of the axe is stuck, maybe a teeny bit deeper than I’d gotten it in the first piece of wood I’d tried to chop.
“This wood is total shit,” he grunts, wrenching the axe out of the unsplit round. “It’s so full of knots, you’d be lucky to get even a handful of these pieces to split with an axe. See all these spots where there were branches? Where’d you get it from?”
“Byron Dutch,” I groan, stripping off my ridiculous gloves since it seems there’s no point in them anymore.
“I’d heard he sells firewood, and since I needed some, I thought getting it from him would be a sort of peace offering after having to call him pretty much every other day about Mickey’s behavior in class. He said this was the best wood around.”
Myles lets out an angry scoff. “Byron Dutch is an asshole. This wood’s the leftover stuff he can’t sell.”
“So I’m supposed to feel better because it’s not that I'm weak or bad at chopping wood, just gullible? Comforting, Myles.”
Except I feel comforted. Not by what he’s told me, but by everything that’s happening right now.
“Nah. Just that you’re a city boy now. There’s a difference between being gullible and not knowing this stuff. But fortunately, you’ve got me to help.”
The grin he flashes me is dazzling. Almost as heart-stopping as those words—you’ve got me to help. It pulls a smile from me as my pulse sings and my head spins.
Impossibly, his expression only brightens.
It’s like this fiasco with the wood is all it took to strip away the walls standing between the two of us.
And suddenly, my heart soars as it hits me that maybe the awkwardness wasn’t him wanting to avoid me.
Maybe it wasn’t him putting up barriers, but each of us being so certain the other one was.
“There’s a splitter back at Dad’s place.
My place, I guess.” His brows scrunch together for a moment, and the expression, coupled with how he’s corrected himself, cuts through the giddy warmth that’s hijacked my brain.
“I’ll run over there and grab it and come back and get this all taken care of for you. ”
“Your place?”
Myles turns away, lightly swinging the axe to embed it in the top of the stump. “Yeah. He died a few months ago and left it to me. You hadn’t heard that’s why I’m back in town?”
Mutely, I shake my head as the impulse to step forward and hug him grips me so hard that it’s all I can do to stay rooted in place.
Myles’s relationship with his dad was always strained, but there’s a broken, haunted sort of pain in his expression as he turns back to me that in turn breaks something in me.
Like he reads my mind, Myles goes on. “Things weren’t good between us. Way worse than they were…before. We hadn’t talked in years, so it’s not like—” He sucks in a harsh breath. “Anyway, I’m here for as long as it takes me to fix the place up and sell it, and then I’m out of here for good.”
I don’t know why that should hit me like it does. Like a stone dropping in my stomach. Because I’m not staying in Riverside long term either. And, just because we’re talking right now and it seems Myles is going to help me with this firewood disaster, doesn’t mean we’re friends again.
“I’m sorry. Even though things were difficult between the two of you.
” I have to tuck my hands behind my back and grip onto the wrist of my left with my right to keep from reaching out to touch him.
Even if he doesn’t want to show it—or maybe doesn’t even want to feel it—his need for comfort is like a silent scream, and it’s killing me not to be able to give him anything better than empty words.
“I’ll be back.” He’s stepping away from me already, and I hate it that he’s brushing me off like this, but what else can I expect? We’re as good as strangers now. Why would he want to open up to me like he would have once?
It’s impossible to keep my mind from flashing back to memories of all the times before.
When there were no barriers between the two of us, and Myles would have poured his feelings out to me without question.
One particular memory slams into me, as sudden and jarring as the blow of the axe against the impossible to split wood.