Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
A week after my date with Emma, life has somehow settled into a sense of normalcy.
Every day after school, Hallie meets her when she gets off the bus at the farm's entrance, and they chat as they walk up to the house, where they make sure Emma gets her homework done and then make dinner together. Most nights, I’m able to convince her to stay and eat with us, and a few times after I’ve gotten Emma to bed, she’s stayed to hang out, watch a movie, or chat about everything and nothing.
It’s like I have my friend back, and even though the road to get here was bumpy as fuck, I’m glad we made it here.
On Saturday, Emma has a sleepover at a friend’s house, so I drop her off around noon and then head back home, feeling unsure of what to do with myself for the next twenty-four hours.
I rarely have a weekend without Emma, and knowing I have the entire house to myself suddenly feels daunting.
I didn’t tell my family that Emma would be gone, desperate for some quiet time and knowing if they knew, it would be filled with well-meaning visits.
I’m still trying to think of what to do and how to spend my time when I step out of my truck and see it: footprints in the snow.
Familiar footprints with a star design that I fucking know were not meant to be walking in the light dusting of snow we got overnight, much less in the deeper snow on farmland that might be hiding anything from holes to ice.
Looking around, I note that they go straight into the woods, and my mind starts reeling, moving to dangerous territory.
Thoughts of Hallie having slipped or gotten her foot stuck somewhere deep in the woods, where she has no cell service to call for help, flood me.
Without thinking, I follow the footprints out into the woods on a mission.
Thankfully, it only takes me about five minutes to find her, and even though she didn’t go far, I’m still frustrated by the time I make it to her. “Hallie!” I call when I see her crouched in the snow, seemingly unmoving
Maybe my nerves weren’t so unfounded. Maybe she’s hurt, maybe she fell, maybe—
A bird flies off, and a low curse comes from her direction as I continue storming toward her and she stands.
“Jesus, Jesse, could you be louder?” she asks, standing, her phone in hand, and glaring at me as I close the distance between us. Well, at least she’s not injured, I suppose.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I was taking a picture of a cardinal in the snow, but then you scared it off like the giant ogre you are.”
“Ogre?” I ask with a laugh. She continues to glare at me, though its burn isn’t as effective with the way her full lips are tipping at the edges.
“Yeah…you’re like, fifteen feet tall and built like a lumberjack. An ogre. A hot ogre, but an ogre.”
I shake my head as I slow my steps before her. “I think an ogre is inherently ugly.”
“I’m sorry. Next time I compare you to a mythical creature, I’ll try to think of something more accurate.”
I let out a laugh, then look around.
“You’re out here in the freezing cold to take pictures?” I ask. Despite her inappropriate footwear, she’s dressed warm, with a hat, gloves, and a thick jacket, so it seems she came out intentionally rather than being lost and needing a rescue.
“Yes. Half of my job is posting pictures to the farms’ accounts. And I like to take pictures. When it’s all snowy like this, it’s extra pretty.”
I remember Madden saying he’d take her out on the UTV if she wanted to last week, and I nod, then speak without thinking.
“All right. Well, come on. I’ll take you out,” I say, and she gives me a skeptical look.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll take you around the property on the UTV. You do that with Madden sometimes, right?” She lifts an eyebrow, head tipping to the side. Her long red hair is in a braid, sliding along her jacket, with small locks sticking out around her face, framing it.
“Don’t you have work today?”
“It’s Saturday. I don’t really work much on the weekend, since I try to spend time with Emma, but she’s out for a sleepover, so I have nothing else to do.”
“That’s kind of depressing,” she says, and I lift a shoulder and tip my head for her to follow me toward the house. When she follows, I respond.
“That’s me, depressing and boring.”
“I don’t buy that,” she says under her breath, but I don’t say anything because I don’t know what to say.
Instead, we walk in silence for a few minutes as we make our way back to my house.
During that time, Hallie’s phone buzzes a few times, and when I come back outside with the keys, her head is hunched over her phone, an annoyed look on her face.
As I approach, her phone dings with another incoming text, and she makes an annoyed grumble this time.
“Who’s texting you?” I ask with a laugh, and her head lifts to glare at me.
“Your sister.”
“Is she okay? Does she need something?”
Hallie shakes her head and groans. “Nothing, other than for me to say yes to a blind date she’s trying to set me up on.”
Without my mind’s permission, my heart skips a beat, and I try not to show it on my face, instead opening the pack of hand warmers I grabbed from inside and shaking the small packet before offering it to her.
“A blind date?” I ask as casually as I can manage. She finishes her message, accepts the sachet, then rolls her eyes and slides her phone back into her pocket.
“It seems now that your sister is in a happy, committed relationship, she’s decided I need to be too.”
“You two have always done things together,” I say, turning the key in the ignition and sitting behind the steering wheel. She walks to the vehicle, sits beside me before I start driving.
“Yeah, well, that’s not something I’m looking for, and the sooner she realizes it, the better.”
Unsure of what to say to that and concerned that if I do say something, it will absolutely be the wrong thing to say, I start to drive, moving into the woods and toward the field where the trees are.
“Where do you want to go?”
“I don’t care, wherever,” she says, and I hesitate, then look over at her skeptically. Her gaze is locked on trees in the distance, and she seems lost in her thoughts.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?” she asks, but her tone further proves her anything but dull and emotionless, so completely far from my Hallie. Gently, I attempt to explain that, trying to keep levity in my words.
“It’s just, you’re Hallie. You always care. You always have opinions on what to do and where.” A moment passes, and I wait for a sassy remark, which doesn’t come. The unease builds in my chest. “Is it my sister that’s bothering you? I can talk to her, tell her to lay off, or have my mom—”
“No, no…it’s not Wren. I’m used to her meddling in one way or another by now. It’s different. It’s…it’s just been a weird day.” Her words are weighted down with emotions that are clearly weighing on her.
“Do you…” I hesitate, not wanting to push too hard on our new, tenuous friendship. “Do you want to talk?” There’s a long pause, and I continue to drive slowly along the property as she seems to contemplate how to answer before a reluctant sigh leaves her lips and she speaks.
“It’s silly, really. I saw that—” she starts, then her words fade off before her hand reaches for my leg and squeezes, hard. “Oh my god,” she whispers, then starts slapping me. “Stop.”
“What?” I ask, shifting toward her as I take my foot off the gas.
“Stop! Stop the vehicle, Jesse!”
“Hallie—” I start to say, but do as she asks, panic moving through me. Before I even come to a complete stop, she’s moving off the UTV and off into the distance, before her steps slow and I see it stepping out from behind a tree, maybe ten yards from Hallie.
A deer, maybe six months old, is chewing on a low-hanging tree branch.
“Goddammit,” I murmur as I approach her, then reach down for a pinecone. When Hallie looks over her shoulder, she glares at me, seeing my intention before I even make a move.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” she threatens under her breath. “Do not scare that deer off, or I will spend the next two years teaching your daughter to be an absolute tyrant.” That makes me stop, and I look at her in a mix of hilarity and shock.
“Did you just threaten to indoctrinate my daughter to be a terror?”
“Scare off that deer, and it won’t be a threat,” she says, then turns away from me again, taking slow steps in the deer’s direction.
“It’s chewing a tree branch, Hal. Don’t know if you’re aware, but my family kind of sells those.”
“It’s winter! She’s hungry!” Hallie argues over her shoulder, then takes another step. The deer’s head lifts, and Hallie stills.
“That’s not how that works,” I grumble, but drop the pinecone all the same. Hallie takes another tentative step toward the deer, her phone lifted to take photos.
“Where’s your mom?” she whispers, her voice so low it barely carries over to me as she takes another step closer.
“Hallie,” I murmur in warning, but there’s no way I’m going to stop her from doing what she wants.
She’s Hallie, after all. So instead, I pull out my phone and, even though I know they won’t be as good as hers, I take a few photos of the two of them together.
She murmurs a few more soft words to the deer a few feet away from her, and they look at each other as if they’re genuinely having a conversation I can’t hear or understand.
After a moment, Hallie sniffs, then wipes her cheek, and I realize that she’s actually crying.
Something in my chest tightens as I watch the exchange, as she continues to speak to the deer softly.
After a minute or two, there’s a crack of a branch in the distance, and the deer’s head lifts, ears perking before she runs off. Hallie stays there, squatting in the snow for another minute before I slowly take a few steps toward her, and she stands.
“That was crazy, right?” she asks, with a smile on her lips. Her eyes are a bit glassy, and I can make out where the tear fell before, but I ignore it, knowing somehow that’s what she would want.
“Yeah. You don’t normally see a deer that young without her mom, much less this time of year.” Hallie looks off to where the deer went, a look I can’t decipher on her face, before a chill runs through her, and I realize she’s absolutely freezing.
“Hallie, we’ve gotta get you inside,” I say, trying to keep my voice soft. Like the deer, I don’t want to scare her off, not now.
“I’m fine,” she says, then steps to move around me and back toward the UTV.
Her shoes slip, her hands flying up in panic, and instinctively, as I’ve done so many times before, I catch her, pulling her into my chest. From here, I see her clearly—the whites of her eyes are a bit pink, her eyes are a little swollen—and I wonder if she’d been crying earlier, long before I found her.
“Those fucking shoes,” I murmur instead, and she gives me a half smile.
“They’re wet, so they aren’t even warm right now,” she admits. “I haven’t been able to feel my toes for a bit.”
“Your lips are blue.”
I expect her to tell a joke about looking at her lips, of which I’ll have to laugh off, even though we both know I am.
In the past week, all I’ve been able to do is look at her, and often, I find my mind drifting to that kiss a year ago.
Now that I know the truth of what happened, now that I know she’s just as into me as I am into her, and there are just extenuating circumstances making it impossible, I can’t seem to think of anything but kissing her.
And right now, with her so close, our breaths mingling in the cold air between us, it would take nothing at all to dip my head, to press my lips to hers. Would she meet me halfway?
My heart thunders in my chest as I grapple with the decision, deciding if I should just say fuck it or step away, but I can’t seem to force myself to do either.
We might stand like that for an eternity, but when her teeth chatter just a bit, I’m knocked out of the moment and into the reality where she needs me to take care of her.
“You need to warm up,” I say softly, loosening my grip on her and stepping away.
“Yeah, probably,” she murmurs. My mind is racing as she shivers again as we move back to the UTV, and she slides in beside me. Without thinking, I say something so incredibly foolish.
“Do you have a swimsuit?” The cold must be getting to me because I can’t quite figure out why I would say that.
“I…right now? On me?”
I shake my head and roll my eyes. “No. At your place.”
Her brows come together, and she shivers again, a reminder as to why I said it. It has nothing to do with the potential of seeing her in a bikini and everything to do with the fact that she’s near hypothermic.
“Well…yeah?”
“We’ll go to your place. Grab it, and you can warm up in the hot tub.” She opens her mouth to argue, but I shake my head. “It’s the easiest way to warm you up, Hallie. I won’t even bother you if you don’t want.”
I don’t expect what she says next.
In a million years and with a million guesses, I never would have seen her next words coming.
“And if I do want?” she asks. My heart skips a beat, and I hold my breath.
Her tongue comes out, licking her lips, licking her bottom lip absent-mindedly as she watches my own lips.
I watch every millisecond, cataloging it for future use, for long lonely nights.
Then, she clarifies. “For you to bother me. What if I want that?”
My mouth is dry, and my voice is raspy when I give my response. “Then I’ll be happy to bother you.”
Her pupils flare with my words, and beneath my thick denim jeans, my cock twitches.
This is so fucked up. This is such a bad fucking idea.
But I can’t stop it.
“Okay,” she says, then nods. “Then let’s go get my bathing suit.”