Chapter Nine
Pace
Where there is smoke, there is fire. Being a fireman, I know that is not always true.
Sometimes the smoke is all that is left of a fire. Wispy plumes of smoke where something once stood. Where lives were lived and memories were made. It clings to walls and skin. It permeates all it touches. It cannot easily be washed off or scrubbed away.
If it could be, this would be easier. If I could scrub the words from the note she left me, this might not be so hard. Wash off her sweet scent that has clung to me all day. I cannot wash out the smell of her, the impression of her in the bed, her spot in the big chair by the fireplace.
“Why would she run off on me, Smokie?” I mutter to the dog.
Sitting on the front porch as rain pours down once again, I hold the note in my hand. It’s just a few lines. Just enough to wreck everything. I read it again as my faithful dog sits close to provide her support. The minute I got home just before dusk, I knew something was wrong. I am not sure how I knew she was gone before I even set foot inside the cabin.
Pace,
I had to go. I made a mistake coming up here. I write those stories about my adventurous alter ego Bettie Buttons but…in real life, I have tried nothing, done nothing, seen nothing remotely close. I am a coward. I thought I could hide up in this cabin with you and start living my own adventures but…then I woke up. I made a huge mistake, Pace. I am so sorry. I cannot tell you what this time with you has meant to me. Thank you for saving me, even if it was just from a wild rabbit. Truth is, you saved me from myself.
Goodbye, Pace.
Balling the note up, I start to toss it in the garbage, but I can’t. Because what does she mean she made a mistake? We’re not a mistake. This time she’s been up here with me, both of us using the storm as an excuse to stay hidden away together, has been the best time of my life. I told her just a few hours ago that I was coming home to her tonight, so what went wrong?
“We’re not a mistake. Our relationship is no mistake. Guess I have to go find her and let her know, huh Smoke?” I whisper to the dog who thumps her tail because yes, we need to get Piper back here.
Coming home to the empty cabin never bothered me before. I had the dog, I had peace and quiet that I loved. Now, it feels completely empty. Too quiet. Nothing has changed beside her presence being there. Now that it is gone, it feels wholly wrong in the cabin.
Heading back inside, I try to think of a gameplan. Short of showing up at her apartment and tossing rocks at the window to get her attention, I’ve got no idea how to do this. I’ve never courted a woman before. It is all new to me, but I am not running from it, not giving up on it. I am not giving her up.
Pacing in the kitchen, I am hit with a new yet familiar scent. Fire . Smoke. I circle the small kitchen quickly, looking for a source. Was there a fire here? Was she hurt? Is that...is that why she left, because of a fire? I rush through every inch of the kitchen, heaving a sigh of relief once I find it.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I mutter when I see the charred insides of the oven. “We just can’t let you cook. Not until I teach you how to put out fires.”
I am checking out the damage when I am hit with what I just said. With what I am doing. I am calm. I am not panicked or upset. Putting out fires is what has soothed my guilt, my pain from the loss of my family. A loss I blamed myself for. Fire does not scare me the way it those first months after the fire. I can walk right into a blazing building now if I think I can save someone from the same pain I’ve dealt with for so long.
Pain that since I found Piper has eased. It is not gone. It will never be gone, you never get back to where you were before the sort of loss I faced. Yet having her here, having someone to talk to about it, to share the pain with has made it easier. It has dulled the sharpness of it. But if something were to happen to her...if she were ever hurt or taken from me the way everything else before was.... I would never be the same again.
“Piper makes it better. Makes me better,” I whisper to myself.
If I had come home to the place being in flames, it would have traumatized me for sure. But coming home to her being gone is worse. I cannot imagine what she was feeling. How bad she must have felt to up and go, thinking I couldn’t handle another fire.
As long as I have Piper, I can handle anything.
“Come on girl, let’s go get her back. Bring her back home where she belongs, yeah?”
Smokie barks and rushes to the jeep, waiting impatiently for me. I chuckle as I rush after her, deciding to deal with the stove later. I will just get a new one. Hell, I will tear the place apart and Piper-Proof it if I have to. Whatever it takes to make her realize this is her home. What we’re not going to do is bail on each other if we get something wrong.
Outside the rain is pouring down once again, the skies dark gray as night starts to fall. I am tired, anxious, and honestly a little afraid. What will I do if she refuses to come home? No. No, that is not an option. She won’t refuse to come back to me, will she?
“No, we’ll bring her home. If not we will go to her. Stay with her at that little spot above the paper. Whatever she needs. Anything for her.”
I tell the dog all of this as we speed down the mountainside. With the wipers banging on the windows, I can still barely see. The window fogs up as the temperature changes on the way down the mountain. With the rain, the roads are narrowed by the rushing mud that floods the dirt path.
“Get to her in one piece, idiot,” I chide myself as I slide towards the edge of the washed-out road.
Taking a sharp turn, the jeep fishtails out in the mud. I slam on the brakes and right the wheel, chest heaving as I draw in calming breaths. My hands tremble on the wheel. I am shaking. I am in such a panic, I almost don’t see it. I almost miss the reason I am so wound up. But there it is.
“You must be kidding me,” I murmur as I throw the jeep into park. I start to laugh. Can’t help myself. It might not be funny to her at the moment, but I suspect we will be laughing about it later.
Climbing from the truck, I stand in the rain for a moment, just admiring her. It is just the way I found her that first day. Only now I have no question about what sent her up a tree. Now I know foxes, deer, and yes even some bunnies scare my sweet Piper.
“Sweetheart, how long you been in that tree?”
Piper’s sat atop a branch, legs swinging as if she is having a glorious time. Her hair is hanging down her shoulders in wet curls. Her clothes are filthy and tattered no doubt from her getting in that tree. I chuckle again. It is not funny but ironic that I must have drove right past her to get home.
“Long enough, mountain man. It was a coyote this time. I am certain of it. I was…well, you must have read the note. Where were you going just now? How did not see me earlier, doc?”
Going to her under the tree, I beam up at her. “I was coming to find you, sweetheart. Where else would I be going in this downpour. I was not looking for my old lady being up in a tree. Again. Good thing you’ve got me here to save you again, yeah?”
“Has anyone ever said you’re not very funny?”
“No, no one has ever said that. I am very funny. You laugh at all my jokes, sweetheart,” I argue with a huge grin as she huffs, trying to hide a smile. “Will this be a regular thing, Piper? Me saving you from a tree?”
“Do you…I mean do you still want to save me, after what I did?”
Immediately the humor of the moment is gone. I go to her, but I do not yet take her out of the tree. I figure it will help me get said what I need her to hear. “What do you think you did, Piper? Besides walking out on me with a note to remember you by. How could you think I would let that stand? Just let you walk away. Do you believe I could ever do that?”
Piper won’t meet my gaze before she lifts a shoulder. “No one else cares whenever I go. It’s the one thing I got good at. I followed rules, I took care of everyone else, stayed out of the way. I was never too loud or called attention to myself. And I always, always, got out of the way whenever I thought I had to. I never wanted to be in the way.”
“Well, you got in my way, Piper. And I want you there. I like you being in my way, making me feel things. Making me want things. I was alone up here before you got yourself stuck in that tree. Alone because I was afraid to let anything, or anyone get close enough to hurt me again. I never even gave living a chance after the fire.”
“Healing takes time,” she murmurs as the rain pelts us. “You needed time, there is nothing wrong with that.”
“No, I suppose there ain’t. It damn sure made sure I was waiting for you, Piper. That’s what I was doing this whole time up on this mountain. I knew I was waiting for something, I could feel it, sweetheart. I just had no idea it was you. I never dreamt I could have something so good in my life.”
“Why not? Why wouldn’t you deserve good in your life, baby?”
We’re still too far apart, but I don’t want to take her down yet. I need to get this said. Need to be sure she understands what she has done to me. What she has done for me. It might have been just a few days shacked up in the cabin to her, but it was a helluva lot more to me.
“I gave up on life after the fire. I could have ended it to be with them, but I was a coward. Truth is it took more strength not to give up. Not to end my life out of some bullshit belief I was being sanctimonious. I couldn’t know you were out there, on your way to me.”
“What do you mean?”
“You came up the mountain for research you said. To find out about the type of men who hide away up on this mountain, yeah? To find out why we wound up here. Why we stay here if we’re so alone, so broken, so starved for something more. Because we all gave up on life for one reason or another. We all need a reason to continue. A reason to try. That’s what you are, Piper. You’re my reason. I might have saved you from being stuck in that tree, but you saved me from being stuck up here for the rest of my life. You saved me, Piper. You came up here for me. And you’re going to stay up here for me.”
Piper stares down at me, the wind whipping her hair, the way she is settled in the tree making her look like a beautiful, ethereal pixie. She is not stuck there. Just as she was not stuck there the first day we met. Not at the tree, but up in that window, looking down on us. I was the one who was stuck before she found me. Stuck in a life of emptiness.
“You going to save me again, doc? Will you save me when I get chased up a tree again or lost in the woods?”
“Hell, yes, I will. I will spend the rest of time saving you, if you let me, sweetheart. Come here, let’s go home now, yeah?”
There is a brief moment of her hesitating. Her arms reach out for me and I reach for her. With the rain still coming down, she wraps her soaked frame around me. There is such trust in her embrace, in the way she gives herself to me. It was there that first day, and I believe it always will be.
Because I might be saving her from being stuck in a tree—again—but she saved us both by coming up this mountain.