Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Ezra
I don’t know how to explain myself. But I do care about Autumn. I know I’m not letting her walk in the dark almost a mile to cover up some saplings all alone. Not when the weather is about to turn.
“You’re going to end up sleeping in the shed out there.” It doesn’t answer her question of why I care. But it’s the only safe response I have.
She breathes out an audible breath and faces forward. “Goodbye, Ezra.”
She’s good at saying goodbye.
Still, I can’t stop seeing her face when she confessed she thought I’d come back for her father’s funeral.
I don’t say a word, but stop my trek beside her. For ten whole steps. Then, I follow behind.
“I know you’re there,” she says after we’re twelve minutes into our walk. I’m very aware that she waited until we were far away from the houses to speak up. She knows I’m here—but we’ve come this far, so she must know I’m not turning back now.
The wind has picked up and I wish I would have grabbed more than a sweatshirt. But I wasn’t planning on walking a mile when I left my house.
“Then why don’t you wait up for me?” I call back.
She stops and looks back, hair blowing in the wind. "Because I told you I wanted to be alone."
“Fine, I’m giving you space. I’ll stay alone back here and you can stay alone up there.”
She scoffs and shakes her head. “Gee. Thanks.” She starts up her walk again, the cold wind blowing her hair behind her now. It’s definitely going to rain. And we’re definitely going to get wet.
Thanks, Autumn.
“Hey,” I bark, quickening my stride to meet up with her. It isn’t difficult. Autumn’s short legs were never a match for mine. “Are you always this pissed? Is this the new Autumn?”
“Not always. Just when you’re around,” she says, without bothering to look in my direction.
I stride next to her, my pulse quickening and my blood boiling with the first plop of a big fat raindrop. “Is that why you stayed? You told me to leave while you stayed behind all because I did something to tick you off? You’ve been angry ever since?”
She shakes her head, not speaking. She won’t even grace me with a glance.
“Because I heard ,” I say, coming up with the lie on the spot, “that you were seeing someone else. You liked him better than me. So, you ditched me at the last second.”
It’s not true, but she won’t be able to let it go. Maybe I’ll annoy her enough to get her to say something real.
We’ve walked just outside the rows and rows of trees, growing seven feet to just two feet, with the saplings in sight just yards away.
She looks at me— finally —her jaw clenching. She reaches out and with all the strength of a tiny sumo wrestler, she punches my shoulders.
"Ouch," I mutter, stumbling backward. Geez, it took her long enough.
“You know that isn’t true.”
I reach up and snag her by the wrist. “I don’t know anything. That’s the problem!”
More rain pelts my face. Autumn blinks as dollops fall onto her cheeks and lashes. “You had to leave!” She yells over the wind and rain of the storm. “You had to. You couldn’t stay here. Not with him . We both knew that.”
“You stayed.” I squint, staring past the rain and gusting winds.
She swallows, but she doesn’t speak.
Her head falls and just past her I see one little sapling whisked away with the wind, ripped from its home in the ground. Its ends never had a chance to take root.
“Crap,” I mutter, thinking of all the work Autumn has done here. It can’t all be destroyed with one windstorm. If nothing has changed, there are tarps and stakes in the shed just for occasions like this.
Autumn’s head whips around to see what I’m seeing, but I’m already running to the shed, praying I can make it before another sapling is lost.
Autumn is right on my heels despite her short legs. I yank open the door as though nothing has changed, not in ten years. I snatch up the tarp and stakes while Autumn grabs a mallet. The wind has rain pelting us sideways and stealing each of our breaths. We work silently—chances are we wouldn’t be able to hear the other well in this mess anyhow—but we move and work just as we did all those years ago, without needing to tell the other what we’re doing.
It takes time—she’s planted rows and rows of little trees—but we get them covered. The tarps are staked down, keeping the little trees safe. We only lose a handful to the storm.
I peer up, breathless and drenched, to see Autumn staring at me. She’s wet to the bone, her chest rising and falling with every breath.
I drop my mallet to the ground. Like a magnetic force, I’m drawn to her. I need to be closer. Ignoring the wind and cold, I lock my eyes on hers and move my body until I’m standing right in front of her. I peer down into her eyes and she looks up at me. I can’t tell if those are tears on her cheeks or raindrops from the sky. Her long hair hangs limp and drenched down her back. Her chin quivers and I cup her cheek—she’s ice cold. She leans into my touch, her eyes on mine.
“You told me to go, but you had to stay.” I’m hearing her exact wording for the first time. I’m tossing my pride aside and realizing the girl—for whatever reason— had to stay. She couldn’t come.
She nods, and with the motion, more tremoring quivers shake from her lip and chin.
“Come on!” I yell into the wind, sliding my hand down to hers. I lace our fingers together and drag her into the shed, praying Don still stores a few blankets in here. In the colder months, we covered the base of the younger trees, keeping the fragile roots warm. I imagine they still do. Last time I checked, Wyoming still had bitter winters. And if no blankets can be found, at least it’s shelter from the rain.
Autumn’s entire body shivers once I’ve got her out of the wind and in the safe cover of the shed.
"You need to get out of that jacket." The denim is drenched and weighing her down with cold rain water. It'll only increase her chances of hypothermia.
I peel the jacket from her body while she stands, shaking and moving inch by inch with my directions.
"Sweatshirt too," I say. Surprisingly, the girl doesn't argue. Slowly, she lifts her trembling arms and I tug the drenched thing over her head. She's only in a tank top beneath it, which might be helpful at this point. The thin cotton material should dry quick enough. I swallow, trying not to stare at the curve of her hips and the softness of her belly. Autumn's not eighteen anymore—in the best of ways. I clear my throat. "Jeans too."
At this, she tilts her head. Eyes deadly, though her lips are still quivering.
“Hey, I’ll turn around if you can get them off yourself.” I turn just to prove it, finding the blankets I’d hoped would be here in the process. I gather the dry, thin blankets and peek back at her. “Here,” I say, holding out one of the old polyester blankets toward her.
She takes it without complaint, and while she’s busy peeling her clinging jeans from her body, I tug my sweatshirt over my head too.
I turn back to see the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, her wet hair on the outside, dripping onto the ground. She’s shaking and on instinct, I move closer, rubbing my hands up and down her arms, shoulder to elbow.
Her teeth chatter and she watches me like it’s the only thing she can do.
“How long was your dad sick, Autumn?” I ask. This is key to her secret. I know it in my gut.
Her lips tremble, but she opens her mouth. “Five,” she says with a shudder. “Five years.”
I’m doing the math in my head. It isn’t difficult—and she knows it. Ed was sick for five years. He’s been gone for five years. I’m not the brightest man in the world, but five and five is ten. That means all this started right when I left.
I hold her shoulders in my hands and study her face, certain it will tell me more. “When did you find out?”
She stares, and while her lips are a pretty shade of purple, they’ve at least stopped quivering.
“When?” I hold her tighter, pressing for an answer .
“Graduation night. After you dropped me off. I heard my parents talking.”
I shut my eyes, my heart thundering in my ears. Memories of that night run through my brain in fast-forward, moments that I’ve played over and over again in my head. And yet for the first time in ten years, I am seeing things clearly.
“So, you stayed.”
She nods, her eyes glassy with unshed tears. Her expression speaks volumes. It says— I had to. It says— there was no other choice .
“You had to,” I say for her. She didn’t want to. She had to.
My hands rise to her cheeks, holding her there, searching her eyes for something, anything. Warmth radiates between our two bodies. I feel it, despite the wet T-shirt on my back and the clinging, cold sweats stuck to my legs.
I move in slowly, depleting the space between us. Autumn . I trace my thumb beneath her eye, feeling whole for the first time in a decade. My body has been lacking some serious sustenance—and this is it.
“Autumn,” I whisper, my entire body aching for her. Her eyes flutter closed, and a force so much stronger than my will relieves me of all my pain and anguish as I lean in and brush my lips to hers for the first time in a very long time.
Ten years ago, I held the gold medal for kissing Autumn Green, but this is different. She’s different. She isn’t a carefree kid anymore and neither is this kiss.
She lifts on her toes and the blanket around her falls over one bare shoulder. She holds it tight at her neck, pulling it back into place while never allowing our lips to lose contact.
Her mouth moves with mine, her breath warm, her tongue sweet.
Oh, how I’ve missed her.
I wrap my arms around her back, hugging her close and lifting her off her feet—all while reacquainting our lips. My kisses trail over her slender jaw and up to her soft earlobe. I hold her tight and bury my face in her neck, breathing in the sugar and vanilla that’s always made up Autumn’s scent.
My lips graze along her neck and collarbone—I’m a starving man, being fed for the first time in years. “I’ve missed you,” I say.
I'm not sure which one of those three little words sets her off, but Autumn goes rigid in my arms. And then she kicks, her legs swishing like a windup toy in the tub. Her hands flatten against my chest, attempting to put space between us.
“Put me down!” She flicks my chest with her fingers and I obey, dropping her onto her feet. She stumbles back with my release, almost losing her footing.
“You okay?” I hold out a hand, but she doesn’t take it.
And suddenly she’s got her voice back—no trembling lips, no shivering body, though she has to be cold still. She’s currently invoking loud, proud, and in charge. “You can’t just pick me up, Ezra.” She shakes her head. “You can’t just kiss me.” Her arms thrust down, her hands shaking out at the wrists. Her blanket slips off the edge of her shoulders and she snatches it up. “We don’t kiss anymore!”
I tilt my head. “Clearly, we can . We still have the ability. We just haven’t in a while.”
She glowers, not finding me funny at all. “I’m sitting over here to wait out the storm. You keep your distance.” A low, heavy breath falls from her chest as she tosses out another blanket onto a bare section of the cement floor. Finding a perch on the hard ground, she drapes her original blanket over her body. She lies back and rolls onto her side—away from me.
Well, that was a quick change of pace.
I run my hand beneath my chin and over the stubble there, my breathing haggard. She can tell me to stay away tonight. She can roll away from me and not spare me one glance. But the fact is, she didn't push me away a decade ago because she didn't want me. She didn't choose to stay behind. She didn’t want us to separate back then. In true Autumn fashion, she was saving me. She was saving everyone. And tonight, as she finally spoke her truth, she most certainly kissed me back.