Chapter 42 Kit
Kit
It took approximately forty-five minutes for Bowen to exit the cabin. I know this because I had a one-hour timer going on my phone and a promise to myself that if he didn’t come out before the timer went off, I had to knock.
He didn’t even look at me sitting in the open door of the van when he bounded down the steps. Just went about his business. Meanwhile, I spent every one of those forty-five minutes staring at the cabin, like if I did it hard enough, I would be able to see through the wood at the man inside.
Now he’s got all sorts of stuff pulled out from the shed that I never remember seeing in there before.
A workbench, power tools. He even rolled out a big, sleek black toolbox a while ago.
The one I remember being his dad’s. He’s got music coming from a Bluetooth speaker on the work bench, and he’s…
sawing wood? I don’t even know. He’s doing something, though, and I’m still wondering what the hell to even say to him.
He has to know that I’ve been watching him like a lovesick puppy since the moment he walked out, but he shows no signs of caring.
Stop. Being. A. Baby! It’s Bowen for fucks sake, Brett’s yelling, flailing his arms around in the air.
Fuck! Fine.
I guess I’ll just figure out what to say when I get over there. I’m sure a perfectly good, normal question will come out of my mouth. Nothing embarrassing or weird at all.
Sleep Token is playing when I walk up, and my pounding heart in my ears adds an interesting layer to the already heavy music. I’m only a few yards behind him now. I wipe my palms down my shorts and open my mouth…
The music shifts to a completely different sound, and it’s not until Bowen pulls his phone from his back pocket and tucks it between his shoulder and ear that I realize it was his ringtone.
“Hey,” he says. Then, after a few beats and a small laugh, he says.
“Yeah, I’m good. Just wasn't expecting it.” He inspects the piece of wood he was cutting.
Running a fingertip over an edge. “No, I don’t need you to do anything.
Really.” He laughs again, nothing loud or full, but it’s more than I’ve heard from him in a long time.
“I missed your voice, too. Call you later?”
I missed your voice, too?
I rub my hand over my burning chest. A girlfriend, maybe?
That would be more plausible than something happening with Ian, I bet.
Yep. A pretty little blond. Maybe even a redhead.
Or he found himself a badass little alt girl covered in tattoos and piercings that absolutely rocks his world in the bes—
“If you’re going to puke, puke over there,” Bowen says, motioning to the bushes on the side of the main cabin.
I didn’t even realize he turned around.
“I’m not going to puke.”
I don’t think…
Bowen hums, sounding like he doesn’t care one way or another. Then cuts off any more conversation with the sound of the saw in his hand. I watch him work for a moment longer, music back to blaring.
This is crazy. I rub my eyes, then walk over to the speaker and fumble with it until I find the power button. The lack of music doesn’t get his attention.
Or he is very purposefully ignoring me.
I deserve it. But the buffet of feelings I didn’t expect or ask for since the moment I got here is swarming and flooding my stomach, and I need to say something.
“Why is all this stuff here?” I ask, but Bowen doesn’t hear me over his work, so I walk to the opposite side of the table and stare at the top of his head.
The sunshine is hitting some of the curls in a way that casts a silver hue.
One lone curl is hanging down his forehead. “Was that your girlfriend?”
The saw cuts off this time, and Bowen leans both hands on the table and finally graces me with his eyes.
Not that I’m looking, I’m looking at his big hands spread out on the sawdust-covered table. He has a silver ring on each middle finger. A tattoo on the inside of his left ring finger, but I can’t see what it is. The veins on his hands rope up his forearms and… Damn, it’s hot out here.
I can feel his eyes, and I can only stand it a moment longer before I turn my face away and rub my neck. “Hot day, huh?”
“Is there a point to you breathing down my neck, Meyer?”
“I'm not… I'm not breathing down your neck. Just seeing what you’re doing.”
Bowen snorts and dusts his hands off. He moves around me, close enough that I can feel his own warmth radiating off his skin, to the speaker, and turns it back on. Music once again fills the space. He doesn’t offer me another glance before he picks back up where he left off.
I can feel bratty Kit hovering. Metaphorical arms crossed, glaring daggers at the big, sexy, annoying man. I can only handle feeling ignored for so long before I huff, walk back over to the speaker, and once again shut it off.
I stomp back over to the table and fold my arms over my chest. A little bratty, a little trying to contain the beating beast in my chest trying to get his attention.
The saw cuts off, and the silence rings in my ears.
“Spit it out. I’ve got shit to do, and I don’t need you hovering and pouting.”
“What are you even doing?”
Bowen uses his shoulder to wipe a bead of sweat running down the side of his face. “I’m replacing the steps.”
“You live here.” It's not a question, and he doesn’t answer it as one. Just looks at me.
His neck is wider than it used to be. He’s just…bigger. Wider. More solid.
“You didn’t know,” he finally says.
I shake my head and look over at the little cabin.
“Small cabin is off limits.”
The door is closed up, a curtain hanging over the window where one never used to be. It was always used for storage as the shed was in bad shape, and my dad never took the time to fix it. I guess Bowen is fixing it all up now. One broken thing at a time.
I swallow past the lump in my throat and ignore the burn. “How long?”
I see him go rigid out of the corner of my eye, then he relaxes and moves away from the table. He picks up a water bottle that was discarded in the grass and takes a long drink before capping the bottle. “A while.”
A while.
What does that even mean? A week? Month?
Year?
This time, when he walks back to his workbench and the saw turns back on, I take a step back from him.
This never felt like my place. This was our place. Our summer haven. And it's not just his now. Screw that. I glance back at the closed door and tilt my chin in the air.
Fuck off limits.
I stomp through the grass, closing the space between Bowen’s work area by the shed and the cabin. My heart kicks in my chest, half expecting Bowen to barrel in behind me.
He doesn’t.
The handle also doesn’t budge under my palm.
The cool metal quickly warms from my clammy hand, and I give it another turn, trying to shove it with my shoulder, but it stays closed up tight.
Locked.
It was never locked.
When I turn, shooting an accusing look in Bowen’s direction, he’s watching me with a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
I scoff, pretending that the hurt I feel is completely to blame on the locked cabin door behind me.
Two years spent mainly with just my own company, yet I somehow have never been so bored.
I used to spend hours wandering trails and lying in the sun.
A whole afternoon could be spent under a tree with my notebook, and hours would pass in a blur.
According to the clock on my phone, it has been exactly one hour and four minutes since I slunk away from Bowen, but it feels like at least five hours should have gone by.
I’ve sat on the dock. I’ve cleaned up the van. I’ve pretended to know a few yoga poses and even sat still in the grass and willed my brain to shut off or whatever the hell one does to meditate.
All I can think about is Bowen.
Bowen. Bowen. Bowen.
Bowen wiping the sweat from his face with the bottom of his shirt.
Bowen walking around with his big, worn boots untied.
Bowen not looking over at me a single time in all these sixty-four minutes.
I feel like I’m fifteen all over again, willing him to look at me.
See me! Love me!
It's such an intense, agonizing feeling to be this close to him and feel like I can’t take up the same space.
At least when I was a teenager, he wanted me around.
At least for most of it, he did. He didn’t understand why I was pulling away and being weird.
Now I would trade just about anything for a single one of those afternoons I spent avoiding him back.
A moment when I could sit next to him, and he would offer an easy smile.
I would give anything for a quiet moment sharing space.
Not me sitting on the outskirts looking in. I feel dirt under my nails when I go in for more grass, ripping it from the ground by the handfuls. Bowen used to yell at Brett for doing this. I rip more.
Bowen’s back muscles flex with his movements, and I watch him drag his stuff back inside the shed. The workbench looks exceptionally heavy.
My body is moving before my brain gets around to understanding what's about to happen. My breath hikes itself up into my throat and stays there while I jog over.
Bowen grunts softly, the leg of the bench getting caught on a root sticking out of the ground. He wipes his face with his shirt again.
“Let me help.” The words come out rushed and jumbled up. He turns, but I don’t look to see what kind of glare I get. I just grab the edge of the table and try to lift. Try being the operative word here.
“Holy shit,” I all but wheeze, trying to lift it again. The damn thing doesn’t even have the good grace to pretend to budge for me.
“I got it,” Bowen says. My face burns with the sound.
Drenched with annoyance and disbelief. Still, I give it one more push as a last-ditch effort.
But it happens to be at the same time Bowen pulls with his freakish Hulk strength.
The table moves back, and I fly into it.
Bowen goes stumbling backward, his back banging into the shed door. He grunts in pain; I groan in horror.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “Are you okay? Let me—”
“I said I got it. Fuck, you never did listen, did you?”
I watch him turn and walk away, shaking his head and rubbing his back.
“I’m sorry, Bowen,” I blurt out. It's the kind of apology that's spent years on the tip of your tongue and weighing down your insides. I don’t feel any lighter with the words now hanging between us.
Bowen has stopped, back to me. I see his shoulders rise and fall with a breath.
I can feel those three words hovering in the negative spaces between us, refusing to reach him.
He doesn’t want them.
It’s clear in the way he doesn’t turn to me. He doesn’t scoff. Doesn’t argue. Doesn’t tell me to go fuck myself. He just…continues walking.
The vision of him blurs and becomes distorted, the tears I refuse to let fall burning worse than any shot of whiskey ever did.
“I’m sorry, Bowen.”
I jump over a fallen branch, and a twig snaps under my foot.
Besides my heavy breathing and the sound of nighttime waking up around me, it’s the only sound.
I left my headphones in the van. I didn’t even stop to change into my running shoes.
It was either run or fall apart right there where he left me.
I ran.
My shirt is soaked and clinging to my skin. My throat is dry and sticky; every breath feels like a struggle. My lungs burn, and my legs are begging me to give it a rest for the day. I haven’t taken more than one run in a long time. Not since the first few months when I started.
I don’t know what to do.
“I’m sorry, Bowen.”
I cringe away from my broken echo in my head, forcing my legs to move faster. Push harder. I dodge a tree, jump over another fallen branch.
“Keep trying,” Brett is urging me. I swear I can feel him like the wind between the trees. Running right next to me.
I push off a tree, changing directions.
The shadows in the woods are growing darker, deeper stretches of the coming night under the canopy of leaves. Every shadow seems to hold another echo.
Another memory.
“Promise me it will always be us against the world.” Brett said that in these very woods, under the same moon. The same stars. Flashes of his young face as he looked over at me, already smiling. Bowen on my other side.
My heart lurches, and I stop. Panting, I change direction.
“You know I’ve got you, kitten. Jump to me.” Bowen. Fourteen. His eyes held nothing but pure, simple love.
A growl rips through the sawing of my breath. I push my hair off my forehead, pulling at the strands at the root. I sprint away.
Scene after scene of Bowen running his fingers through my hair.
Bowen smiling down at me.
Bowen helping me jump out of trees, holding my hand while I walked on curbs, holding his arm out before we crossed a street.
Bowen’s fingers digging into my abdomen.
His tears soaking into my neck.
Me facing away from him.
Him pushing inside of…
“I’m sorry, Bowen.”
Bowen holding my cupped hands, catching fireflies.
I can hear my giggles in these trees.
I can feel the butterflies swarming my belly. I can feel the warm skin against my hands. I know exactly what it was all leading up to. The biggest, best, and absolute worst thing that has ever happened to me.
His love brought him to me night after night. Through his grief, through his own heartbreak. He came to me and held me while I couldn’t even look at him.
“Look at me.”
“Meyer. Look at me.”
I choke. My feet stumble over themselves. A sharp pain shoots up from my palm where I catch myself from face-planting in the dirt.
A low, wrecked sob forces its way out, and I beat the ground under my hands until all the fight drains out of my body. I’m so tired I couldn’t keep running even if I tried.
It's not until I roll onto my back that I feel the raindrops. It's not until the sobs quiet to sniffles that I hear the thunder rolling in the distance.
Once upon a time, there were two boys who came running at the first sound of thunder in the sky. I never had to ride out a storm alone.
I wish the ground would open up and swallow me whole.