40. Colton
forty
Colton
H er fingers keep mindlessly playing with my chest hair, but her body tenses in my arms as she asks her question. “What did you mean earlier… about being yours from the very beginning?”
I don’t think those were my words, but I let it slide. If it’s how she feels now, I’m more than okay with it.
I smile, remembering that day vividly.
I’d been to New Hampshire on a call for a 1967 Ford Mustang Fastback stranded on the side of the road—turned out it was just a loose belt. On my way back, off a township road, I noticed fresh tire marks that continued straight into a thicket where the road angled sharply left. Slowing down, the glimmer in the trees indicated a car was there, tucked deep in the underbrush.
I pulled over. My immediate thought was that the driver might have fallen asleep at the wheel and hit a tree. Prepared for the worst, I had my phone out to call EMS when I saw the most angelic face. She had reclined the driver’s seat. The window was cracked open an inch or so. “You okay in there?” I asked.
She started, momentarily confused, large eyes widening, then her face closed off and she said, “I’m leaving, I’m leaving.” She went to start the engine and muttered, “Can’t fucking sleep in peace.”
“Hey, miss,” I said, hands up in the universal sign of someone who doesn’t want to cause trouble. “I was just checking. Just making sure you’re okay.”
“Yeah right,” she answered, avoiding my gaze. She backed up into a clearing and made a swift three-point turn.
My truck was blocking her access to the road. She stared at it, straight ahead. That gave me time to admire her small, pointed nose. Her clear, porcelain-like skin. To notice how thin she was. And that her fingernails were bitten to the quick.
The back of her car seemed packed with bags. I knocked on her window, signaling her to open it.
“What?” she snapped but did as I asked.
I bent down so that my face was closer to the opening. It didn’t smell like booze or weed. At least there was that.
“You traveling?” I asked, glancing at her bags obviously again.
“What’s it to you?”
“Maybe this is my land.”
This got me a once-over. “I don’t think so.” She was young, I could tell, and yet her eyes were weary. Something in me wanted to protect her from whatever she was running from. She’d seen shit, and she didn’t want to deal with more of that. “Besides, I’m leaving. What do you care?”
Good question. I didn’t know why at the time, but I did care.
I wished I had her spunk to deal with my own shit, and her comebacks when people got in my way. I was instantly attracted to her energy.
At the same time, she got me riled up—concerned. I didn’t know what to do with her, but one thing was clear: I wasn’t leaving her. So I went back to my truck, grabbed my emergency box of cookies, and waited.
She got out of her car and stomped to me. “Hey. Move.”
“My mom says you don’t catch flies with vinegar."
“You calling me a fly?”
“I’m saying you’re the vinegar. You want me out of your way, ask me nicely.” I popped a whole cookie in my mouth, relishing what was to come.
Whatever it was, the way her eyes danced was my reward. “Can you pretty please get your fucking truck out of my fucking way?”
“You talk to your mom with that mouth?”
Her face closed tighter than it already was. “No.” Then she clarified, defiance in her tone, “I don’t talk to my mother.”
Her eyes had a shine that I instantly loved, although later I’d find out it meant pain. But at the time, it intrigued me. She intrigued me. Pulled me in.
I wanted some of that strength.
“Okay,” I said, shrugging like I didn’t care. I took another cookie and offered her the box. “Hungry?”
She looked starved. “Not enough to eat your industrial shit.”
I swallowed. “I have a cousin,” I started.
She rolled her eyes. “You gonna go through the whole family? The mama, the cousin… Fuck.” She set her fists on her hips and stared up at me. She was short, and I was sitting in my truck.
I chuckled. This was getting entertaining. “My cousin is a baker,” I continued, noticing her features soften and her interest pique. “And he’s constantly on our case about the food we eat.”
“And?” she said, and something in my chest fluttered. I had her hooked.
I shrugged. “That’s it. You made me think of him.”
“Is he hiring?”
That thing in my chest blossomed, the heat of hope and never-ending tomorrows filling me. “Who?”
“Who?! The pope! Is the pope hiring? ’Cos I’m a qualified cardinal.”
The fight in this girl was like nothing I’d ever seen. I hid my smile. “When was the last time you ate? Are you thirsty?”
She licked her lips, my gaze flicking there for a beat. “Are you saying I’m a bum?”
“Your word, not mine. Your getup suggests something’s going on.”
She stood taller, shoulders back. “What’s it to you?”
Her answer made it clear that she was living out of her car. And yet, she oozed pride and confidence.
Coming back to the present, I stroke her shoulder. “I didn’t feel like you were mine. More like, I tried to make you a part of me.” It’s really hard to explain. “You were everything I wasn’t. You looked fragile but you were strong. You looked lost but it seemed like you knew where you were going. I was the opposite, on all fronts—or that’s how I felt. I wanted to be more like you.”
She lifts herself off my shoulder. “You’re kidding, right?”
I shake my head. “I wanted to be able to say fuck you to people who got in my way—the way you did to me. I wanted to have a sense of purpose that was other than just… following.”
“Really,” she says, clearly perplexed.
“Course, it didn’t hurt that you were a stunner. But you shut that down pretty quick.”
She laughs. “Yeah, I was that way, back then.” She tucks her head deeper in the crook of my arm, and splays her hand flat on my chest, her memories maybe taking her where mine are. To how she got to Emerald Creek.
“Why don’t we go ask him?” I’d answered to her question about Chris.
“Ask who what?”
“My cousin. He might be hiring. Only one way to know.”
“'Kay. Where is he and what’s his name? I’ll check him out. Are you gonna get out of my way now?”
“No.” I wasn’t letting her out of my sight so easily.
She rolled her eyes so far back she could have played in an exorcist movie. “Ugh!” she cried out.
“I’ll take you to him. You follow me.”
That day, after meeting with Chris, she slept in the spare bedroom at Mom and Dad’s (the one that had been Chris’s not so long ago), and once she had her first pay stub from the bakery, she moved into Sunrise Farms.
“You kind of were my knight in shining armor,” she murmurs. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for that.”
“No need to. I did what anyone would have.”
She snorts her disagreement. “I was so scared at that time, you have no idea. I didn’t know where the next blow was going to come from. I couldn’t trust anything or anyone.”
I hate that she went through that. Someday I’ll have to find out absolutely everything that happened to her, but now there’s something I need to know. “What made you trust me?”
She thinks on that, her fingers playing on my chest again. “It seemed like you were… Like you cared enough to have an opinion on what I should be doing. But at the same time, you respected me enough not to judge me if I acted differently. And it felt like, for the first time in a long time, I had a choice in how I lived my life. A real choice.” Her gaze lifts to me as I look at her.
I sear this moment in my memory forever.
Always give her the choice—a real choice.
We fall asleep tangled together and I wake up with her to the sound of chirping birds. “What the fuck?” I grunt as I roll off her.
“What?” Kiara says, stretching her limbs like a lazy cat.
“Birds. It’s winter.”
A thump sounds, the chirping stops, and a soft glow lights Kiara’s naked body. “That’s my alarm.” She turns her face toward me. “Just makes facing the world easier. Coffee?”
“Come here,” I say, and hold her tight against me.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, her breath tickling my chest.
“Nothing’s wrong, baby. Everything’s…” Overcome with emotion, I hug her tighter, unable to express myself with words. “What else am I going to find out, huh?”
“What do you mean?”
“Sweets, yesterday I found out you were scared shitless when I thought you were so strong that I wanted to be you. Now I find out you wake up to the sound of chirping birds in order to face the world. I did not see that coming. A swearing parrot is the only kind of bird I thought you’d tolerate in the morning.”
She giggles. “Now that’s an idea.”