Chapter 12 Gabe
Gabe
I bring the axe down again, and again, and again, reveling in the feel of it hitting the wood and slicing through it. This isn’t fine work—I’m not being careful—but I don’t need to be today, and that? That feels good, too.
I want rough, hard work today. Something that will get my aggression out. Brutal manual labor that lets me focus only on the strength of it, rather than any thought process.
I don’t want to have to think about what’s going on in my life right now, or the blonde troublemaker who’s involved.
The troublemaker in question was up early again this morning, her face scrubbed clean of makeup and her eyes bright as she made waffles for breakfast, and I huff out a laugh at the thought that she’s trying to kill us with carbs.
Pancakes yesterday. Bread for dinner two nights in a row.
Waffles this morning. If I’m not careful, she’s going to make me fat.
Give me one of those dad bods everyone is talking about.
I swing the axe harder, instantly trying to burn more calories, and go right through the log I’m chopping and into the ground below it.
“Shit,” I mutter, jerking at the axe and freeing it.
That was fucking sloppy. There could be anything below the wood, from simple dirt to rocks, and I didn’t bring a spare axe with me.
If I chip this blade I’ll be out of luck until I get back to the house for a new one.
I pause, though, to look through the wood I’ve gone through already this morning.
I don’t need a lot of it. Just enough to mend the fence the horses tried to get through last night.
Our fencing isn’t fancy, just wood and chain link, and we have one horse that looks at it once a week and thinks he should be able to get through it if he tries hard enough.
It never works. But he ends up damaging enough wood that I spent one day every week fixing the fucking thing.
If he wasn’t my favorite horse, I’d have sold him by now.
But he’s the best for wandering through the forest, taking the long trip to the waterfall, where I often spend my days off.
No other horse has the patience to go out there and graze for a full day, and I find myself increasingly dependent on having that day of solitude.
Away from the messy emotions and drama of life. Away from the memories.
I bring myself back to the wood and glance across the pieces I’ve chopped, then pause for a moment.
I just want split rails for the fence, but one piece is calling me for something else.
I stare at it, then move around it and get a different view.
It’s a gorgeous section of the tree, full of knots and whorls that make it more interesting, and as I look it becomes something entirely new.
An eagle with its wings spread, talons extended as it tries to catch something.
A fish, I realize, looking at the bottom of the chunk.
It’s catching a fish. The whole piece is action, the eagle caught in the act of hunting, and no matter how I move, I can’t unsee it.
I remember my grandfather telling me about this.
How he started building sculptures because he couldn’t help but see the figures in the wood.
He took me into his shop and showed me how to use chisels and sanders to do the fine work.
How to go slowly so you didn’t split the wood in a way you didn’t mean.
How to sand out the parts that wouldn’t split right.
And this right here is what it should be about. The business. It should be about the art of the process. Showing people how their things are made. The story behind the pieces.
It would sell. I know it would. And it could fix everything.
If only my father would listen.
I sense something then—that feeling you get when you know you aren’t alone—and look up, expecting to see a deer or squirrel or fox in the clearing with me.
Instead, I see wild blonde hair and wide-set hazel eyes.
A lush mouth that wants kissing. And as she moves closer, I can smell her—that unique scent she’s worn since we were kids, that always told me when she was in the room with me. I can feel her, feel the energy of her.
And I’m so angry I could scream. I came out here to get away from her, and instead she follows me and intrudes on my solitude like she has any right to it.
She doesn’t say anything but starts moving the pieces of wood around to give each one space so I can see them more clearly. She’s not intruding, just… helping. The way I taught her to when we were younger.
That doesn’t make me feel any happier about her presence.
“What are you doing?” I ask roughly. “Why are you out here?”
She looks up from her work, her eyes troubled. “I’m helping. I came out here to help.”
I slam the axe into the ground, heedless of any damage I might do to it, and start yanking the wood away from her. “That’s not what I mean.”
“Then what do you mean?”
“Why are you here? Why did you come back? We were doing just fine and now you’re here putting your hands all over everything. Making it all messy. Why don’t you just go live with your mother?”
Her lips press together firmly, and she stares at me, not answering, and that’s even more annoying than everything else. Because of course she can’t just answer me. She owes me answers—she must know she does—and instead she’s standing there, mute.
“Is it because you were in jail? You can’t go home because she’s mad? How did you land in jail, anyhow? What did you do? Let your New York friends talk you into something stupid?”
I don’t know why, but I want to hear her say it. I want her to say she’s been doing illegal things and getting in trouble. That she’s not as perfect as she’s always seemed to be. I need to knock her off the pedestal I’ve kept her on.
I need to stop thinking she’s the only good thing in my life.
She doesn’t answer again, though. Just takes the pliers out of my tool chest and starts working with a piece of wood, taking the loose splinters off it to make it smooth.
I hiss, because I taught her that, too—it makes the wood safer to carry for those without gloves—and reach over to yank the pliers away from her.
She jerks them away from me, though, and in the process pinches herself with them.
“Fuck!” she hisses, dropping the pliers and clutching at her hand.
I make it to her faster than I can believe and take her hand in mine. “God, are you okay?”
When I look up, I see that her eyes are filling with tears, shadows reaching out from under her eyes. Her mouth is pinched when it should be smiling, and she’s pale.
Christ, has she looked like this since she got here, and I’m just now noticing? What kind of friend am I, if that’s true? Because she looks...
Tense. Tired. Stressed. She’s not the girl she was, and it’s more than just having grown for four years since I last saw her. She looks frightened, like she’s on edge and waiting to run. She’s standing on her toes and twitching when I move.
And now she’s crying just because she pinched her fingers with a pair of pliers.
I’m not the boy I was when she last saw me, but she’s not the girl I knew, either. What the fuck has happened to her since she left this mountain?
And why did it take me so long to notice?
“Are you okay?” I ask, meaning a whole lot more than just her hand.
She looks up at me, biting her lip, and I nearly come undone at her expression.
She looks lost, terrified, and completely abandoned, like a puppy that’s just been left at the shelter by the people it trusted, and I want to kill whoever did this to her.
I want to take her in my arms and hold her close.
Keep the world out. Protect her with my life, if that’s what it takes.
Am I being dramatic? Yes.
Do I regret the thoughts? Absolutely not.
And for the first time in years, I don’t think before I act. I don’t consider the consequences or argue with myself about whether it’s a good idea or bad. I don’t go through the possible dangers of making myself vulnerable or showing my feelings to someone who might hurt me.
I just move.
I reach for her and bring her to my body, fitting her snugly against me in the way I can only do with her, her head right under my chin and my arms wrapped around her shoulders.
I don’t know if she’ll hug me back, and I don’t care, but when her arms wind around my waist and she turns her face into my chest, I nearly come undone with relief and the expansion happening inside my chest. I’m a live wire that’s found a way to ground itself, a broken heart that’s just discovered safety.
A wild animal who’s feeling affection for the first time.
A lost soul coming home.
“What?” I ask softly. “Taryn, what’s going on?”
“What makes you think something’s going on?” she asks, sniffing.
I chuckle. “I just caught you crying because you pinched your fingers, girl. I’ve seen you hurt yourself a million and one times, and I’ve never seen you cry over it. So I’m guessing you’re not actually crying about getting a little pinch. The pinch was just the thing that sent you over the edge.”
She grows very still, like an animal who knows it’s been spotted, and I listen as our hearts beat against each other, her heartbeat echoing my own as both slow and find the same rhythm.
And when she looks up, she’s all wide eyes and parted lips, flushed cheeks and glowing skin.
The shadows are gone, the fear vanished, and when her eyes glance down at my lips and back up, I. ..
I...
I realize that I was stupid to think I could do this. I can’t deal with the closeness or the vulnerability of the moment. The heavy, intense pressure bearing down on us from all sides as we stand here staring at each other like nothing else in the world matters.
The last time I looked at her like this, she left me, and I’ve never gotten over it.
And the idea of making myself that vulnerable again...
I can’t do it.
I can’t.
I press my lips together, drop my arms, and take several staggering steps back. And then I turn and walk away.
“I’m going to find a Christmas tree,” I say over my shoulder. “We need one for the house.”
I don’t look back again.
I can’t. She’s already seen too much of me, and I don’t know how to handle the emotions blooming inside me at how badly I want her to see more.