Chapter 4 #2
There was something a little bit old-fashioned about her. Though he couldn’t put his finger on it.
He started his truck and started to drive out toward the main highway.
It wasn’t just that she wore dresses all the time, or that she baked. It was something indefinable.
Fuck. She was ten years younger than him.
Way too many years.
But it wasn’t just the years. Some people liked to say that age was just a number to justify their interest in someone much younger than themselves.
If Zane were to say it, it would be to amplify that gulf between them.
Age was just a number, and in his heart, he was a century old at least. He had no business being interested in somebody like Cara.
This little mixed-up, contradictory person, who seemed old-fashioned, older than her years, and absolutely her age all at once.
He pulled onto the street the map guided him to, and parked up against the curb. He saw the curtain in the window twitch, then go still.
He opened up the door, reached in and grabbed his items, then slammed the door shut and walked up the little pathway to the front door.
She had little round stones that led from the sidewalk to the porch, and on the porch, there were wind chimes, and there was a toad sitting next to a mushroom by the door. She had a chair off to the left of the door, with a pink lace cover.
The curtains, which had twitched upon his arrival, were also lace.
He lifted his hand to knock, and she opened it. “Thank you,” she said.
She was on crutches, and that made him feel something strange in the center of his chest. He didn’t have a name for it. It wasn’t really pain. But it was uncomfortable. He couldn’t say that he liked it.
“You’re welcome.”
She stuck her arms out, like she was going to take all those things from him while maneuvering on the crutches.
“Don’t be silly. I’ll bring it all inside.”
She looked around wildly, like she didn’t quite know what to say. “Cara,” he said. “I’m not going to burn your house down if you let me in.”
“That sounds like something the Big Bad Wolf would say,” she said, looking up at him with those large, beautiful eyes.
“The Big Bad Wolf?”
“You have that vibe.”
“What big teeth I have,” he said.
The better to eat you with.
But he did not say that second part, and instead, as soon as she moved away from the door, he pushed in past her and walked into the kitchen.
He wasn’t one for banter. Not for any reason.
In fact, he resented being drawn into it. But most especially, this kind of banter, that made his stomach go tight, and made the blood in his veins run hot.
Dear God, the house was cute.
Not in the sense that he thought it was cute, but in the sense that it was empirically done to be cute.
Old-fashioned plates hung up on the wall, festooned with florals.
There were little bouquets of dried flowers hanging in the window, and all the curtains were lace.
The furniture looked like it had come from a Sears showroom back in the 90s, and if he hadn’t known that she lived here, he would’ve thought it belonged to an old lady.
Well, maybe. If it weren’t for the little touches that gave it a quirky vibe.
Like the little frog cookie jar she had on the kitchen counter, and the little ceramic mouse sitting on her counter, a wooden spoon slid through its paws.
“You can just set it down on the table,” she said.
“Yeah. You didn’t hit your head, did you?”
She blinked and shook her head rapidly. “No. I didn’t. I really… I didn’t. I’m fine. All I did was sprain my ankle. Well, and I have some abrasions,” she said, lifting her sweatpants up above the knee very suddenly, and making his heart hit his sternum as she revealed bandages covering her leg.
“Nothing that needed stitches?”
“No,” she said. “They were all pretty surface. But I’m supposed to kind of stay off my feet for the next couple of days, and I don’t really want to do that. I don’t like doing that. I don’t like…” She held her hands up and waved them around. “I don’t like having nothing to do.”
“Healing isn’t doing nothing,” he said. This was something he knew for a fact. Because he had done it several times in his life, whether it was from the trauma he experienced as a child, from an injury in the military, or an accident on the rodeo circuit.
“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who would say something like that,” she said, tilting her head to the side.
“Really? What kind of guy do I seem like?”
“The kind that would growl sternly and say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Walk it off.”
“Walking it off in this case would be pretty fucking stupid, actually, and what I’m not is stupid.
There’s a difference between being a baby and sitting down because something feels too hard, and sitting down because you actually can’t do it, and you need to take a rest. Need to let your body do what it does.
I was a combat medic in the military,” he said, wondering if he was going to regret giving her this information.
“So I know a little bit about healing, and also about survival.”
“I mean, I knew that you did survivalist stuff, but I didn’t know about the medicine.”
“I wouldn’t call it medicine. I would call it very crude emergency training.
Generally speaking, I could hold somebody together while we try to get them to the doctors.
I can reset a bone, stop bleeding, give CPR.
But that isn’t really the point. The point is, even soldiers sometimes just need to rest because there’s healing their bodies need to do. You’ve got to let yourself heal.”
She was looking at him with far too much interest, and he knew then that he had made a mistake because he didn’t want her to be interested in any part of him. Not in his past, not in who he was.
He didn’t really want anybody to be interested in those things, but with her, especially, there was something dangerous about it.
“But my bakery…”
“Yeah, I’m kind of broken up about it too, because where am I going to get my breakfast?”
The corner of her mouth tucked up just slightly, and her cheeks turned pink. Dammit.
Dammit.
“Anyway. I’m just going to drop your stuff. I have to get to the hardware store before it closes.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He turned away, then stopped. He was forgetting something.
“Marlowe wants you to come over on Friday. For dinner.”
“Oh. Sure.”
He nodded and was about to turn away again when she shifted, and her crutch slipped just slightly, and she wobbled.
He reached out and grabbed hold of her arms, steadying her.
She looked up at him, and he could feel it echo all through his body.
She was a wreck. She looked feeble and weak, and he should not be lusting after her. Shouldn’t be doing it if she were in tiptop shape, either. But he really shouldn’t be doing it now.
“You need some survival training,” he said.
He hadn’t meant to say that, but it was true.
“I do?”
“Yes. Hell, you should never go out without basic survival gear.”
“It was just a trail…”
“And look what happened. If you’d had a backpack with a flare, a blanket, a radio… Well, things could’ve gone differently for you.”
“I did get found.”
“Yeah. I know you did. But maybe you wouldn’t have been, and then what?”
“I had my phone, it’s not like I was being stupid.”
“I didn’t say that you were being stupid. But I think that it’s smart to always take survival gear with you.”
“I’ve never seen Cody do that.”
“Cody has different life experiences than I do. I trained in wilderness survival, and I know how to survive in all kinds of different terrain. I also know what you might want to have with you. I can teach you.”
He really hadn’t meant to say that. That was the dumbest shit he could’ve possibly said.
The stupidest thing that could’ve come out of his mouth.
“You’ll teach me?”
“Yeah. Yeah. I will because I don’t want you to never go out again. You just moved here, and I think what you need is to feel prepared. I think that would serve you a hell of a lot better than being too afraid to go out and hike, or afraid to ride horses.”
“I don’t like horses,” she said.
“Well, that’s going to have to change.”
“Does it have to change?”
“In my opinion.”
“What if I don’t share your opinion?”
“If you let me be your teacher, then you’ll figure out that my opinion is generally right.”
Maybe this was actually smart. Maybe if he did this, then he would feel like he had a task when it came to her. A purpose to the interaction so it wouldn’t slide into banter or flirtation, or whatever the hell this was.
One thing he knew was that he didn’t like the idea of her wandering around out and about without any further training. He didn’t want her to be vulnerable like she had been.
Didn’t want her to be caught off guard like that ever again.
Now that he had the inclination to try to fix it, to try to make sure that she was protected, he couldn’t let it go.
It was pathological for him.
There were certain things that he had worked through with the army psychologist. Because hell, sanding the edges off his PTSD had seemed a decent enough idea.
But he had never really seen the point of getting rid of this part of it.
It was the only thing that really made him feel connected to emotion.
Wanting to keep other people safe.
Sometimes it got a little bit intense, but oh well.
He could help her. He could keep her safe. So why not?
“Well, maybe after my ankle heals.”
“Yeah. After your ankle heals, we can do a little crash course in wilderness safety. By the time all is said and done, you’ll be an expert.”
Something about that seemed to spark something within her. “Yeah.… I would like that, actually. I’d like to be an expert.”
“All right then. Once you’re off those crutches, I’m going to turn you into a survivalist.”