Chapter 19
Mason
He was working out in his sunroom when I woke up.
It took me a minute to find him, and he didn’t hear me stop in the doorway.
I just stood there and admired his arms and chest as he lifted weights.
Soon, though, I became aware that the reason he hadn’t noticed me was because he was staring intently out the window, and I suddenly realized his damn cat was also looking out there. Why were they always so fucking creepy?
“What are you looking at?” I finally said. Elijah jumped and turned to face me, setting the weights down quickly. “Sorry,” I said sheepishly, but I waited for him to tell me he was seeing some invisible person out there.
“My friend,” he said instead, giving me a smile.
I eyed him suspiciously as I moved toward the window and looked out to see a full-grown buck eating leaves off a bush in his back yard.
I raised a brow and turned back to him. Elijah shrugged.
“Seriously,” he said, walking out of the room toward his kitchen.
I trailed along behind, still admiring him shirtless in his sweatpants as he grabbed a carrot and stepped out onto the porch.
That deer, pretty damn intimidating up close, sauntered around the side of the house when he heard the door open. He paused when he saw me, sniffing at the air, but then Elijah said, “He’s okay.” And of course the buck moved forward, taking the carrot Elijah was holding out to him.
Those strangely deep eyes watched me as he munched on the carrot, letting Elijah pat him right on the little teardrop mark on his forehead.
He was bigger than he looked from the window, and I supposed I’d never been so close to one but he seemed almost abnormally large.
A hybrid, maybe? The antlers towered over me, looking like they could kill me if he decided I wasn’t to be trusted.
But deer didn’t do that, right? He didn’t quite look like a normal deer to me, but he sure seemed to like Elijah.
He finished the carrot, gave Elijah’s hand a little nudge, and headed off toward the woods.
Elijah turned back toward his front door. “I helped him out once,” he said simply, heading back inside and leaving me even more confused than I had been before.
We ate some cereal and he got ready for work. As he was grabbing his stuff he said, “You can stay here if you want. Help yourself to anything you need. Just lock up if you leave.”
I just grinned and gave him a kiss goodbye. I wanted to snoop around here, but I wasn’t too keen on being alone in the house where Elijah had seen some weird shadow and then a person outside, neither of which I could see.
He kissed me back with no hesitation, like we were just an ordinary couple parting for the day, and it meant everything to me.
“Okay, I’ll see you this afternoon.” I watched him leave and headed to get ready myself.
I’d probably end up going into town to follow him home out of an abundance of caution, pretending like I just happened to be there again, of course.
◆◆◆
Once I’d showered and dressed, I walked around the outside of Elijah’s house again.
I looked closer at the scuff under his window and around the area, but I didn’t find any more clues, just like I hadn’t the last few times I’d looked in the daylight.
The garden was still, the woods seemed normal.
I glanced at the spot in the woods where Elijah had insisted a man was standing, a man I couldn’t see no matter how hard I squinted, and then I booked it a little faster back into his house.
I didn’t really want to sit here like a slug, so I tidied up a little bit and started his laundry, then I headed into town around lunch time and went to the diner.
I wasn’t really that hungry, but I knew it would be busy and that people in town liked to gossip.
I sat at the counter with my back to the room, ordered some coffee and a sandwich, and pretended to be engrossed in my phone while I tried to listen to all of the conversations around me at once.
At first all I heard was a bunch of nonsense I didn’t care about.
The movie theater playing an R-rated movie.
Vickie’s beauty parlor giving people lice.
The football coach getting caught in an affair.
I scrolled on, not really seeing what was on the screen, managing to keep my face neutral and not roll my eyes at the things people gossiped about.
Suddenly I heard, “Elijah got arrested at the vet clinic . . .” And my ears perked up.
I clicked on a random web page and scrolled slowly, taking a bite of the sandwich Jodie had placed in front of me.
It was a female who had Elijah’s name in her mouth, but I didn’t look to see who it was, pretending not to notice.
A male voice spoke up from the same direction.
“Well, I guess we’re going to find out who’s gay in this town, because Elijah has slept with all of them and they’re either going to run or end up dead.
” He had the nerve to laugh at his shitty joke.
Another female spoke up. “Do you guys really think he did it? I mean, it’s Elijah. Come on. Have you seen how much animals love him? He’s like a damn fairy-tale princess or something, and that has to be important, right? Animals don’t gravitate to the villains.”
“I don’t know,” said the male voice who’d already spoken. “He’s definitely not perfect. Sometimes you don’t know what a person is capable of.”
Another male voice spoke up. “Dude, whatever. You’re just judging him because he’s gay and he’s slept around a little. I guarantee you’ve slept with more chicks than he has dudes. Come on. That’s a double standard.” Some snickers.
“It is, though,” said the girl who’d talked about animals liking him. “You guys are jerks. He’s not a bad person, I’m telling you. You know who the real assholes are in this town? And who also hate gay people for no reason?”
“Yeah, everyone knows Jaron and Tanner are assholes. But the cops talked to them already. They’re too drunk and stupid to pull off anything like this anyway.”
“Well, they do have friends, you know. Some pretty smart ones. And if you hang out with people like them, maybe you think like them too.”
“Meh, I don’t know. I think their friends are all leftovers from high school who feel sorry for them.”
I kept listening but they changed the subject to their friend Deana getting fired.
I hadn’t seen Jaron or Tanner with anyone other than each other, so I wondered who these “friends” were.
If they were left over from high school, it was probably someone I’d been friends with too.
The only people I still talked to were Chris and Derrick, and neither of them seemed to be friends with those idiots.
The conversation behind me strayed even further from Elijah, so I sighed and tuned them out, trying to catch any other pertinent snippets of conversation around me.
None of them seemed important. I remained with my back to the room, still listening but feigning ignorance, and sent a text to Miller. Anything yet?
A few minutes passed with no reply. I got a coffee refill.
When his text came through, it just said, I still have to work every day, and all you gave me was a likely fake first name and a possible town.
You’re going to have to be patient here.
Any new murders in that little town? I can tell you everyone your boyfriend talked to who’s still active on the app if you want me to.
I chuckled but sent back, No. He already told me who he’s hooked up with. We had a very uncomfortable-for-him conversation about it a while ago. No new murders, but you’ll be the first to know.
He sent me a thumbs up. I finished my sandwich, and hearing nothing else important around me, left Jodie a hefty tip and headed out into town.
◆◆◆
I walked around all afternoon, able to look back at my childhood for the first time without drowning in guilt.
So many of the places Elijah and I had gone as kids were still here, still the same.
I paused at the window of the ice cream parlor and gazed inside, thinking about all the times we’d saved our change just to go get an ice cream cone before dinner with no permission.
I glanced at the park we’d gone to that was near the house he grew up in, and stood in front of that house thinking about all the times we’d wreaked havoc in there alone when his mom was at work.
We’d almost caught it on fire once, because we thought letting off fireworks on a tile floor would be okay.
It was weird to be able to look back and smile, to be able to remember things without the thought of how badly I’d fucked it all up shoving its way back into my mind, eating away at my soul.
His forgiveness had lifted something off my chest, a weight I hadn’t realized was as heavy as it was.
The weight I’d been carrying the longest.
I glanced at the entrance to the woods behind the park. We’d explored them a lot, miles of them, distances our parents had no idea we’d gone. He’d always loved the woods. I wondered how close we’d gotten to the house he lived in now. It seemed like we’d gone nearly that far a few times.
We’d made a lot of discoveries that I knew I’d never be able to find again: a spot in the stream deep enough to swim, an abandoned rope swing, even an old church—one whose road was too overgrown to find, and a place that no one seemed to even remember existed.
It was falling apart, but Elijah had loved it.
He made me go there a few times, and he’d probably gone without me too.
He would sit there in the pews like he was actually at church, told me he felt closer to God there than he did at the church our parents made us go to.
Looking back, I knew why. He knew even then that he was different.
He knew the people at our church wouldn’t accept him for who he was.
Elijah believed in God, and he believed that he was loved by that higher power, even though people were unconsciously telling him, and me, that we weren’t.
When he was alone in the woods, or with the friend that he futilely trusted, he felt closer to heaven than he did anywhere else.
He wasn’t scared there of what the world would think.
He was at peace. Thinking back, maybe that was when he started talking about us living in a cottage in the woods together.
Just us in a place he felt safe. Maybe he’d already discovered his feelings, and meant it as more than what I understood back then.
I wished I could have just given him what we both wanted when we were younger.
I hadn’t, though, and our future was still uncertain.
His forgiveness meant everything to me, but I had a life in the city that I hadn’t fully left.
Elijah would never want that life, would he?
I couldn’t think about it yet, though. All I could do was protect him.
I had to keep him safe, there were no other options.
I could not lose someone else I loved due to my own incapabilities. If Elijah died, I would too.