Chapter 4
Edward
The dull throb behind my eyes is a familiar companion these days. A constant reminder of the torment of one too many sleepless nights.
But today, it’s competing with another, more unfamiliar ache: the echo of Penny’s voice.
Beautiful and heartbreaking. But it’s beautiful. Her compliments about my drawings had burrowed deep, bypassing the usual defenses, stirring something I thought long dead.
My sketches, my darkest, most private confessions, laid bare by a woman who saw not brokenness, but beauty.
It was unnerving. Disorienting.
I watch her now, hunched over her own sketchbook, her brow furrowed in concentration. She sketches me, the subject of her current artistic fixation.
The idea is fucking ludicrous. Me, inspiration?
My life is a testament to ruin, not art.
Yet, the way her pencil moves, fluid and precise across the page, suggests she sees something I don’t.
Or perhaps, something I refuse to see anymore.
I remember the weight of my first rifle in basic training, the stupid grin on my face thinking I looked tough. How being part of the military is what I always wanted.
How fucking na?ve.
The truth is, that fucking grin died the moment I was flown out of the country to choke on sand and blood of the enemy.
I take a long breath as the storm rages outside, a relentless beast butting against the walls.
Inside, an uneasy truce has somehow formed. An odd, fragile bubble of shared existence in a less-than-ideal situation forced upon us both.
My stomach rumbles, and Penny looks up, a small, amused smile playing on her lips.
“Sounds like someone’s hungry,” she observes, her voice light, like she's been waiting for a brief moment to snap the tension. “What’s on the menu, Edward? Because if it’s more tea and existential dread, I swear I'll riot.”
I grunt, pushing myself out of the armchair. “Lentil soup, probably.”
Her face falls slightly. “Lentil soup? Are you trying to make me miss my car crash?”
“Survival food,” I state, moving towards the small pantry. “Nothing gourmet here.”
“A gourmet chef could make lentil soup sing,” she counters playfully, hopping off the bed and immediately invading my personal space bubble. She peers over my shoulder at the sparse pantry shelves like she expects truffles to materialize. “Have you tried salt? I heard it makes things taste better.”
I grunt, pulling out a dented can. “Yes, I’ve heard of salt. Revolutionary concept as it is.”
“Clearly not revolutionary enough to make it into your kitchen,” she shoots back, leaning closer. Her sweater brushes my arm, and I swear I feel every thread. “Okay then, chef. What else have we got?”
I rummage deeper. “Water. Canned lentils. More water.”
“Be still, my beating heart.” She sighs dramatically, plucking a dusty spice jar from the back. “Expired five years ago! Edward, your pantry is basically an archeological dig.”
“It’s served me just fine,” I mutter, grabbing the can opener.
“It’s depressing,” she corrects, bumping her hip lightly against mine to nudge me aside.
I ignore her and the sudden tightness in my groin. “Just shut it. You can help. Get out the pot.”
She claps her hands together with surprising enthusiasm. “Finally! Some action! I’m a pretty good sous chef, you know. I can chop, dice, julienne… all the fancy things. Though I suspect we’ll mostly be opening cans.”
She’s right. My pantry is built for efficiency, not culinary adventure.
But the endless rows of canned soup, dried beans, and rice has served me just fine since I moved up to the mountain.
I grab a large pot from Penny and the lentil soup off the counter.
“Here,” I say, handing her the can opener. “You’re on can duty.”
“My specialty!” she declares, brandishing the opener like a weapon. She tears into the can with surprising speed.
Maybe I should have fed her earlier? I hope she hasn't been sitting there starving…
“So,” she begins, pouring the thick tinned soup into the pot. “About these survival skills. You clearly know what you’re doing up here. You built this place, apparently. You’ve got supplies for days. Were you always this… self-sufficient?”
I pour some water into the pot. “Came in handy where I was.”
She pauses, stirring the soup with a wooden spoon. “Where was that? If you don’t mind me asking.”
I hesitate, mainly because my past is a minefield. Every answer I give is a potential explosion of memory. And with a memory bank filled with the brutality of war, that's not a pretty sight.
But Penny… she has a way of asking that feels less like prying and more like genuine curiosity. Like a gentle nudge, not a crowbar.
“The military,” I say, the words feeling heavy on my tongue after so long.
Her eyes widen slightly. “Oh. Right. I… I remember hearing that. From my parents. That you joined up. Did you go on a lot of tours?”
I nod, staring into the simmering soup.
"More than I can count."
More than I wanted.
“That must have been… intense,” she says softly, her tone devoid of the usual pity I encounter. “I can’t even imagine what that must have been like.”
“You don’t want to,” I mutter, the images already trying to claw their way to the surface. Dust, screams, the unforgettable smell of human flesh melting.
She’s quiet for a moment, letting the silence hang and not pushing.
It’s remarkably comfortable, this quiet understanding while doing something so… normal.
Most people either badger you with questions or tiptoe around you as if you’re a ticking time bomb.
Penny just… accepts.
“Well then,” she muses, changing the subject with a gentle pivot that I appreciate. “What’s your favorite thing about living up here? All alone with the… bears. And the… inspiration.”
Her lips curve into a playful smile, and a bolt of pure, unadulterated lust hits me.
It's not just her mouth, that soft, pink curve promising things I shouldn't want.
It's how that smile dances in her eyes, the brightness behind them challenging me to look away. It's how the firelight catches the gold highlights in her messy blonde hair, making me want to tangle my fingers in it.
It's how her yellow sweater clings just right to the generous curve of her breasts, the soft wool begging to be peeled away.
My gaze drifts lower, lingering on the sway of her hips as she stirs the pot.
A primal heat flares low in my gut, a possessive hunger that hasn't stirred in years. Years.
Fuck. I want to push her against the counter, feel that soft body pressed against mine. Hear that cheerful chatter dissolve into needy moans as I taste the skin at her throat.
The realization shocks me with its violence.
This isn't just noticing she's pretty. This is a visceral, demanding need to claim her, to erase every thought but mine from her mind.
It's dangerous. Stupid. And utterly, terrifyingly undeniable.
“Peace,” I say, perhaps too quickly, squeezing my eyes shut to stop the wicked thoughts entering my mind. “I enjoy the peace and quite up here. Alone.”
She hums and bites that sultry bottom lip, the sight nearly making me lose control altogether.
“I get that. Sometimes the world is just… too much. Too loud. Too many expectations.” She glances at me, a knowing look in her eyes.
“My parents… they mean well. But living at home, trying to launch my art studio, dealing with all the ‘what are you going to do with your life, Penny?’ questions… it gets exhausting.”
I find myself nodding, a rare, instinctive agreement. “It does.”
“So, what kind of peace is it, Edward?” she asks, leaning against the counter, folding her arms across her chest in a way that makes her breasts perk up even higher. “Is it the kind of peace that heals? Or the kind that just… numbs?”
The question cuts through the careful layers of avoidance I’ve built.
She’s too intuitive. Too observant.
“Numb,” I confess, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “Mostly.”
She doesn’t look surprised. Just sad. A quiet, empathetic sadness that doesn’t demand a response.
I look away, stirring the soup with a vengeance. “Some of us aren’t built for living, Penny.”
“Everyone’s built for living, Edward,” she counters immediately, moving closer so I get that strong scent of strawberries again. “Sometimes… you just forget how.”
She leaves the thought hanging, unchallenged and soon, the aroma of the soup begins to fill the cabin.
“Okay, Master Chef,” Penny says, sniffing the air dramatically. “We've got something that actually smells pretty good. Are you sure you’re not secretly a five-star Michelin chef in disguise? Or just really good at heating canned goods?”
I crack a small smile. “Years of MREs taught me to appreciate anything that wasn’t processed cardboard.”
She laughs. “Right. So, you’re saying you can make anything edible. Good to know. Just in case we run out of lentil soup and have to start foraging for… moss.”
She shudders theatrically as I ladle the steaming soup into two bowls, handing one to her. Her fingers brush mine, and I feel a jolt, a current of warmth that travels up my arm.
“Careful,” I warn, my voice gruffer than before. “It’s hot.”
“Thanks,” she says, blowing on the soup. We sit opposite each other at the small wooden table I built, unsure at the time why I bothered with the second chair.
Maybe I knew all along?
The storm, for a moment, seems to fade into the background.
Penny takes a spoonful of soup, her eyes widening when she slurps the first mouthful.
“Oh, wow. Edward. This is actually… good. Like, really good. You did something to it, didn’t you? You added a secret mountain ingredient. Is it… resilience? Or a little bit of your grumpy soul?”
“It’s soup, Penny,” I deadpan, but again, the ghost of a smile appears.
“No, it’s more than soup,” she insists. “It’s lentil soup, elevated. You’ve got a touch.” She points her spoon at me. “A surprisingly tender touch, if I do say so myself.”
I just grunt, but I can feel the corner of my mouth twitching upwards.
Her incessant optimism, her playful teasing, it’s… disarming. And unexpectedly pleasant. I've smiled three times in five minutes. That's more times than I have in the last five years.
I haven’t ever truly laughed, not really. But with Penny, I feel a strange urge to. Like maybe it's okay to be happy?
“So, Edward,” she says, after a few more sips. “About this ‘peace’ you seek. The numb kind, you said. What did you… see? Out there?”
My spoonful of soup hovers halfway to my mouth.
This is the minefield. This is where I shut down.
But her gaze is gentle, filled with a quiet understanding that nudges, rather than pushes.
She’s not demanding answers. She’s offering a quiet space to share.
My gaze drifts to the workbench, to the worn leather cover of the top sketchbook she rifled through. The charcoal nightmares trapped inside, the twisted trees clawing at a blood-red sky, the soldier dissolving into ash.
She called them profound. Breathtaking. Saw the raw grief in them, the trauma, the darkness I carry inside my soul and refuse to let anyone see.
She blows on another spoonful of soup, steam curling around her pretty face.
Still… she waits.
Not pushing, just present. Safe.
“Things,” I say, my voice tight. “I saw things no one should ever see.”
The images surge away in the back of my mind. Dust choking my lungs. The metallic stink of blood mixing with gunpowder. A small boy’s wide, unseeing eyes staring up from the rubble, empty of life but finally free from fear.
My fault. His life was my fault.
“I can imagine,” she whispers, her gaze dropping to her bowl. “My grandpa fought in Korea. He never talked about it. But I could still see it, sometimes, in his eyes. That distance. Like he was seeing something I couldn’t.” She looks up, her eyes empathetic. “Is it like that?”
I nod once, sharply. “It's exactly like that.”
“I bet you feel like you’re still there, don't you?” she asks.
Still there? Fuck…
I’m always there. In the dust, in the blood, in the screams.
“Every damn day,” I admit, the words raw, tearing at the walls around my heart.
This is the closest I’ve come to confessing the full extent of my torment to anyone.
"They offered therapists, counselors… all of them with kind eyes and soft voices. They were all armed with notebooks and pamphlets about processing and moving forward… Like it was that simple. Like talking could ever cauterize wounds that deep."
Penny takes a breath, her spoon now forgotten on the table.
"I sat in sterile offices and just… stared at diplomas on the wall." I shake my head and take a breath. "But you know what I said? Nothing."
"Nothing?"
"The words choked me, Penny," I say, staring down into my bowl, refusing the dim the bright lights in this beautiful woman's eyes with my dark past. "They didn't need to hear the gory details.
Shrinks couldn't carry that weight for me, and I sure as hell wasn't going to dump the bloody mess of it onto some stranger's clean carpet. "
Her hand reaches across the table, her fingers gently touching mine.
“I’m so sorry, Edward,” she says, her voice sincere. “No one should have to live with that.”
Her empathy, so unburdened by judgment, is like a tiny chisel chipping away at my defenses. I want to pull my hand away, want to retreat into the numbness, but her touch is the first human contact I've had in… fuck knows how long.
“It is what it is,” I manage, my voice rough.
“No, it’s not,” she insists softly. “It’s trauma. And it’s… real. And it’s not your fault.”
Not your fault.
I’ve carried that blame, that guilt, like a crushing weight for years. To hear it articulated, by someone who doesn’t even truly know the half of it… it’s unsettling.
“You don’t know what I did."
The images threaten to overwhelm me. The choices I made. The lives lost on my command.
“No, I don’t,” she agrees, her gaze steady. “But I know you, Edward. The man who let a stranger into his cabin in a blizzard. The man who hides heartbreakingly beautiful art. The man who just made the best damn lentil soup I’ve ever had. And that man… isn’t what you think he is.”
I stare at her, truly seeing her, for the first time.
The vibrant artist, yes, but also the woman beneath, with an intuitive understanding that cuts through my facade.
“Why are you even here, Penny?” The question escapes me before I can stop it, laced with a desperation I don’t intend to reveal. “Why are you trying to help me?"
She smiles, a gorgeous curve of her pink lips. “Maybe… maybe you need to heal, Edward. Maybe your art needs to breathe. Maybe you need to breathe.”
Her thumb brushes gently over the back of my hand, a tender, electrifying stroke that sends shivers down my spine.
We finish our soup in companionable silence, the weight of the conversation replaced by a quiet intimacy.
I find myself watching her, captivated by the light in her eyes, the playful curve of her mouth, the warmth she exudes.
Is she right? Can I finally… breathe?