Chapter 05
5
HEIDI
M y nights have been... unsettling. Unquiet.
Let’s be honest. I haven’t been able to sleep much. I stay up late, drafting, then erasing and wading up sheets of paper to throw away. I paint and I paint and it never gets there. The images never look the way I want them to.
The silver fox has been in every dream I had since the day I bumped into Scott Hughes. Why in the world does his name sound so familiar? I have no idea. And I even looked into Google. But nothing came up. Just another no one like me. I mean, not like me. There’s no other person more unlike me out there.
His sharp jawline and the depth of his eyes are stuck to my mind. The way his gaze traveled down my body, setting tiny sparks along my skin. The breadth of his shoulders, how damn muscular he looked beneath that shirt.
I have always been a girl with a soft spot for older men. And Scott’s gray hair and gray beard set off every lustful cell in my body. But here’s the dilemma - older men, technically, have more experience. Me? I have none.
This becomes obvious when you remember I splashed tea all over the men, then ran away instead of being a grown-up and fixing my mistakes. But Scott was so nice about the entire thing. He even asked me to have breakfast with him.
Throughout my life, dreaming of the silver fox worked as a good omen. These past days, it has felt like a warning. But I don’t know about what. Every night I put my head down, I have the same strange dream. The fox stands to a side, just out of my vision. But as I turn, he moves too. I can never focus on him.
Everything is confusing, so I just put my head down and work, work, work. And damn hope there’s someone out there who’s willing to buy the dozens of paintings I’ll be producing of foxes. It’s the only figure on my mind.
When I’m sleeping, I see the fox. When I’m awake, all I think of is Scott Hughes.
Sweeping the house, I procrastinate before sitting down to work. Sun soaks my living room, stretching over my couch and spilling down the coffee table, glinting off the rim of forgotten cups and glasses. I take my time tidying the house up, forgetting to turn on Alexa, and ignoring the birds chirping outside.
With a tremendous sigh, I finish up my cleaning and sit inside my studio. There are four unfinished paintings around the space, all bearing the same animal. I can’t quite manage to get the fur right in any of them. It’s never good enough.
That is, until an idea blooms in the back of my mind. With a new mix of colors, I try to emulate the way Scott’s hair looked like. How black, white, and silver mixed and matched, how they looked beneath the sunlight. How soft it seemed. Closing my eyes, I can almost feel the strands between my fingers.
There is a place on my arm I still feel the numb sizzle of his touch. Curling my fingers around it, I press my lips together. I can’t understand what he saw in me. There’s no reason for him to be joking or teasing me, even if that’s the first thing I thought.
He’s a stranger, someone who’s just passing. Maybe he saw the plus-sized girl in a shapeless T-shirt, sitting by herself, and thought I would be an easy fuck. He wouldn’t be the first.
Then why is something still nudging me on? A tug, a feeling as if something is about to happen...
A car hurries past the front of my house, crunching the gravel in the beaten road. I perk up, sitting straighter as I look at my phone’s clock. My neighbors only get home around six. How odd.
I realize that the house to my left is still vacant. Maybe it’s someone visiting?
Crossing my fingers, I step down my stool and into my living room. I hope whoever is moving is someone quiet. Someone who loves the introversion, and the silence living near the woods provide. No parties, for goodness’ sake.
Opening my front door, I peek up the road toward the vacant house. To be sure, the To Rent sign has been taken down. In the garage, now there’s a black bike parked. They’re possibly just visiting. One can’t move in on a bike.
The entrance door is open and I stand at my porch, half-hidden, watching for a moment. Sure enough, someone soon leaves the house.
I have to blink several times to be sure I’m not hallucinating. It would be understandable after I’ve had so little sleep these days. But the man who exits the house is the very same I have been thinking about. The man who won’t leave my mind.
Scott Hughes is still as hot as sin. He looks even hotter in fact. A dark shirt doesn’t conceal the bulge of his biceps as he checks the porch, pressing the tip of his boot to the floorboards as if to check how solid the whole thing is.
I slam my door shut and press my back to it. A huge gasp escapes from between my teeth. Curses. What is this supposed to mean? Universe’s way of laughing at me?
But that night, when I fall asleep, I dream about the fox again. I wake up with my heart skipping and get up to fetch water. My feet find their way in the dark, and I sip from my glass staring out the kitchen’s window, into the forest.
There, I see the silver fox. Once more, I blink several times to dispel the sleep, but he sits there, on the edge of the thicket, looking into the woods. And he makes me feel... Home.
It’s the strangest feeling. A comfort. A calmness I have never felt.
The certainty that I’m on the right path. And the next morning, when I think of Scott Hughes, there’s not an inch of doubt or hesitation. Now I understand the tug. And I know it’s in his direction.