Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
The months passed, and the harshness of winter stayed with them. Montana was a beautiful place regardless of the season, but Zeke had always considered spring to be something special. The dreariness of the cold months faded. The lavender shaded bitterroot and golden avalanche lily had sprung from their spots in the ground, the pink shooting stars following suit.
But it was the Indian Paintbrush with their vibrant crimson hues that always caught Zeke’s eye. They lit up the plains and the culverts along the sides of the road like fire, and no matter what might be on his mind, he couldn’t help but slow down to pour over them each year when they returned in earnest.
Too bad they had a ways to go yet before things warmed up.
Still, life had been treating him kindly. So kindly that he’d begun to grow a tad bit paranoid. Rarely had his existence ever been untroubled for long swaths of time, and when it was, that was nearly always due to him restricting himself to going from work to home exclusively. Yet that hadn’t been his modus operandi for a while now, and he’d started to get jumpy about when the other shoe would inevitably drop.
He tried to forget about his anxieties when with Callie, and she made it easy to do so. She stayed so full of laughter and lightness that he didn’t slide into his festering moods like he normally did. In fact, he hadn’t done that since they’d been together. Dating. But not really.
Mainly, he still thought of their outings as helping her get to know the town better. And that was a little silly. It had been months of exploring.
Even if they’d been everywhere and seen everything at least twice by this point.
One thing that had become tricky was their goodnights. Farewells had never been a problem for Zeke with anyone else, but with Callie hugging him so firmly every night, letting her loose felt… difficult. Partly because he didn’t want to hurt her feelings. And partly because… well, he didn’t want to break that connection.
It felt so nice to be held, to have that link with someone. To have that link with her . He didn’t know if it was simply physical or something else in addition, but the more she did it, the more he wanted it. Even craved it. Not that he ever told her that out loud.
They’d created a pattern of going out while keeping any possible public displays of affection virtually absent. Except for that last embrace when he drove her home.
But they never discussed it, never spoke a word once their feet made contact with the surface of her porch. It was almost as if that time was happening because of some anomaly, as if it was occurring outside of the regular realm of time. Like it was too sacred to speak about aloud lest that bubble of theirs burst.
Maybe that’s why after snowshoeing on a mountain trail to led up to one of the highest summits around—the view had been breathtaking—and seeing a moose and her two calves at a lower elevation. They were in the distance, but not super distant. The event had excited him and Callie enough for their usual dynamic to change.
“I was so afraid that she’d see us and come after us,” Callie confessed, her lips lifted in a smile but her voice relieved as he pulled up in her driveway. “They can run fast when they want to.”
“Faster than any human,” he agreed, as caught up in the craziness of that moment as she was.
“I’m so glad we didn’t wind up between her and her babies by accident.”
“Yeah, that would’ve been bad.”
“It would’ve been terrible ,” Callie laughed, that nervous tittering that came out when her emotions ran high. It didn’t happen all that frequently, but it did happen. Luckily, she had the patience and common sense to play those emotions down when that family of moose had been nearby.
“They were beautiful, though.” Zeke could hear the awe in his own voice. He’d seen plenty of deer, elk, and moose before. But he’d never seen such a massive moose without having the safety of a vehicle between him and them. And never as close as they were today.
“They were. Even though my pulse was ricocheting through my veins, I thought so, too. Dangerous animals, but so beautiful.”
As if her phrase triggered some invisible cue, they quit speaking. She unfastened her seatbelt, and he came around to the passenger side and opened her door. They ambled side by side up her sidewalk, and the trill of anticipation filled him. She’d hug him soon, and he couldn’t wait. But something felt a little different tonight.
Maybe it was how their blood pressure had gone through the roof or the actual possibility of being in harm’s way, but rather embracing him like she perpetually did, she raised her arms instead. Wrapping them around his neck, she stood on her tiptoes, bringing her mouth closer and closer to his.
Zeke could’ve stopped her. He could’ve brought everything to a halt before her lips ever made contact with his. He could have.
But he didn’t.
And the heat of her breath, the silkiness of her skin, the warmth of her meeting with the warmth of him locked together and stayed that way. It’d been forever since Zeke had kissed anyone or been kissed by anyone, and while this had never occurred with anyone else, with Callie that contact emptied everything else right out of his head.
For those brief seconds, he wasn’t Zeke Knight. He didn’t know who he was, where he was, or even who he used to be. Instead, he was simply a being whose only link to reality existed only through Callie. It was like he saw with her eyes, heard with her ears, smelled through her nose, and tasted with her lips.
It was perfection.
Until it ended.
Zeke took a pace backward in a daze, almost taking a header off her porch.
“Don’t fall,” Callie chastised him as she drew him back toward her doorway, her voice full of humor. She was the most gorgeous creature he’d ever seen. He’d thought that before, but never with so much clarity. So much certainty.
“It’s your fault,” he teased her. “You made me lightheaded.”
“Maybe next time I’ll grab you by the lapels and shove you up against my door. That way I’ll have you right where I want you.” During those last few words, she’d poked him in the chest to emphasize each one.
Zeke’s blood stilled even as he shivered from head to foot. He yearned to kiss her again. And the fact that he yearned for it so desperately had him turning around. Then, rather than meandering off without saying anything else, he twisted so that he was walking backwards.
“Goodnight, Callie.”
“Goodnight, Zeke,” she said, smiling at him.
From that point on, every one of their dates ended with a similar lip lock. Zeke looked forward to it. He relived the ones he’d already shared with her and daydreamed about having more. He quit pretending that he and Callie were merely hanging out as he familiarized her with Rocky Ridge. She was plenty familiar already, with the town and with him.
Maybe that’s why the notion of her coming over entered his brain.
“I’ll make us a picnic lunch, and I’ll show you the property.”
“The property?” she repeated, her grin wide. “You’ve never mentioned your property before. Do you own a lot of it?”
“Some,” he hedged, oddly hesitant.
He wasn’t embarrassed or anything, but he didn’t have people over with the notable exception of Tim or the members of his family. And even then, that was occasional and short lived. He didn’t invite them to stay. Usually, they only came to drop off something they needed him to work on or repair for them. He’d like for it to be more—like having family and friends over for dinner or even lemonade on a hot afternoon. That wasn’t where he was, though. Maybe one day he could get there.
Zeke made up a simple spread of turkey and ham sandwiches cut into quarters, made lemonade from some frozen concentrate, brought some carrots and celery with ranch dressing—that was all for Callie since he rarely ate vegetables—as well as some black forest brownies he’d secretly bought.
They traipsed together out to the furthest reaches of his fifteen acres, a modest amount for around that neck of the woods. But it had a unique feature he couldn’t wait to show her.
“From here, you can see so far,” she exclaimed, and she was right.
He’d chosen to share this view with her because the land edged upwards in a manner that allowed the observer to see the nearby mountain range, a creek that ribboned through a valley next to it, and his neighbor’s herd of not cattle but…
“Are those… What are those?”
“Ostriches,” he explained, unable to hide his grin. “Big, aren’t they?”
“They look enormous.”
“The males can reach nine feet tall or so.”
“Nine feet?” She sounded astounded. “How do those tending them not wind up trampled?”
He chuckled. “Mainly by staying out of their way.”
She thwacked him on the arm, and he chuckled harder.
Now that the blooms had fallen from the trees, they found a lovely spot and sat beneath the shade of a giant maple, its branches stretching out in every direction. Their picnic came out as such a success that Zeke had no qualms whatsoever about bringing her into his house afterward. It wasn’t anything fancy, but the one-story ranch style was all his.
“It’s so clean in here,” Callie said with a tone of surprise.
“What’d you think? That I lived in a pigsty?”
“No, but most men who live alone are known for not exactly keeping the tidiest of homes.”
“I’m not like most men.”
She peered over at him, her gaze intense. “No. No, you’re not.”
The image of her standing there in his living room next to his leather couch and oval coffee table did something weird to his insides, and he made an excuse to go to his kitchen.
“Can I get you anything? Want some tea or hot cocoa?” The temps had dipped considerably degrees within the last hour.
“Ooh, cocoa sounds nice.”
“Take a load off,” he called as he worked, heating the milk in a saucepan on the stove. He’d learned it from a YouTube video rather than from someone showing him.
He supposed his parents were decent enough people on their own, but together they’d been a nightmare. Their divorce had been nasty, and the fact that they’d used him as leverage had placed a wedge between each of them and him.
He still maintained contact with each, but he’d go months without reaching out to either of them. And even two decades after separating they couldn’t speak to one another without the situation devolving into a shouting match.
Not even now.
That’s why he concentrated on making the cocoa. This was one of the very few items he made from scratch based off a recipe, adding the dark powdered chocolate, dash of salt, and cup of sugar and other ingredients one by one.
He heated the milk to not quite a boil, then with a dollop of marshmallow cream, reentered his living room with two mugs in hand. Yet he found Callie missing. Had she gone to the bathroom? He set the drinks down on his coffee table, sinking into the cushions of his couch and using his remote to flip on the TV.
When Callie didn’t reappear, however, he stood back up, looking for her. “Callie?”
“In here,” she called out, but she wasn’t in his bathroom, the only one he had. Evidently, she wandered off in the opposition direction without him realizing.
Into his bedroom.
His heart racing, he basically sprinted inside to find her where no one was allowed to go. He’d meant to close this door but had maybe forgotten. But still, her being in here was unexpected and more than he was willing to deal with.
“Who is this?” Callie had retrieved a picture frame from the top of his dresser drawer. One that he kept out and visible even if he seldom focused on the images anymore. Those were his parents with him at about the age of three. Even then, they’d looked unhappy and had stared at the camera unsmiling. “You and your parents?”
He couldn’t speak, so he offered her a curt nod.
“You’re so cute,” she gushed, maybe caught up in the novelty of spying something she hadn’t before. But Zeke was almightily uncomfortable. Especially when Callie reached for the other photo in its frame, this one twisted to face the wall.
He didn’t know why she grasped it, flipped it around. Maybe she assumed that it’d simply been knocked around, that maybe he’d bumped it when dusting, but as she scrutinized it, something went wrong inside of Zeke. It was like the milk he’d heated a few minutes ago had curdled inside of him.
“ Put it down ,” he told her, his tone one hundred percent order.
She did, craning her neck around to gape at him. “Zeke…” Her tone was questioning, but he barely registered this.
“You can’t be in here.” His voice sounded empty. Hollow. Then, he repeated, “You can’t be in here.”
“Sorry,” she mumbled, then began to ramble. “Guess I shouldn’t have gone in without your permission. Truly, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to invade your space but I thought taking a peek would help me get to know more about you. I want to know all about you. I mean we’re together. You can trust me, you know.” His only response was silence. Callie went on. “That looks like you in that photograph, but who is the pregnant girl?”
Zeke’s brain had become nothing but static. Nothing but an endless cacophony of buzzy white noise. He was trying to react so strongly to Callie being in his bedroom, but he couldn’t stop the need to hide his past even from her.
He attempted to clear buzz, to make his thoughts quit spiraling as if around a drain, but they wouldn’t. Maybe they couldn’t. He didn’t mean to speak his next words. They just popped out of him beyond his control.
“Maria.”
“You’ve never mentioned an Maria before.”
But as if everything he tried never to think about came to a head like a stubborn pimple, he burst out, “You need to leave.”
Bewildered, Callie looked at him. “What?”
“Leave now. Get out. You can’t be here. Not anymore.”
“Zeke… please. I’m not trying to hurt you. Let’s go back into the living room and talk?—”
“Go. Get out of here. Right now.”
She approached instead. “Zeke, I’m sorry for going into your bedroom. I truly am. I obviously crossed a boundary, and you’re upset. But if you’ll just tell me what’s wrong, I?—”
“I can’t do this with you. Leave,” he raised his voice at her, something he swore he’d never do to another woman. He didn’t want to become his father, to turn into his hateful parents. And despite what had happened with him and Maria, he’d made a point of not yelling at her.
Yet, he couldn’t seem to help himself. He could feel something shifting inside of him, something hot and scalding. Not anger. No. He wasn’t mad as much as he was… He didn’t know what he was. All he knew was that Callie couldn’t witness it.
No one could.
“ Go, Callie ,” he shouted, hating himself. Forcing himself to quiet his tone, he said it again. So softly it was close to whisper. “Get out of here, please. Please.”
She had tears in her eyes, tears he couldn’t stand. But she couldn’t stay here. Not now. She didn’t protest or produce more reasons to stay. She didn’t try to reach out to him again, either. Finally, finally, she collected her things. Then, she marched resolutely to his front door.
If he thought she might hesitate, might pivot to glance back at him, he was mistaken. Callie hurried through the door instead. And he knew that whatever they’d had over these past months was over. Erased.
Ruined.
And unlike so many other things in his life, there would be no fixing it.