26. Reed
reed
Nerves bang around in my gut as if I’m driving Rose to the scene of a crime I committed. I don’t see any outcome where this goes well. But like with most things, I can’t deny Rose. I’d give her the shirt off my back if she asked.
I should not imagine Rose wearing my clothes when we’re on the way to my cabin.
“This is deeper in the woods than I imagined it to be.” She gazes out the window, taking in the old-growth forest we’re driving through. My cabin’s only about fifteen minutes outside of Sunshine, but it doesn’t take long for the trees to swallow us up.
“There are other houses tucked away out here. You just can’t see many of them.” We passed a new development a few miles back, but now the homes are more spread out. More luxury houses are being built out here all the time, but you can still find basic fishing shacks, too.
Like mine.
I turn down my access road, white-knuckling the steering wheel. This is fine. Just bringing the woman of my dreams to the place I created when I promised myself I wouldn’t dream anymore. She doesn’t have to like it.
I still want her to.
I round the last bend. My cabin sits in a small clearing, sheltered by the surrounding trees. Rose gasps, but I can’t decipher its meaning. “What a cute little cabin” feels like a stretch. “This is the start of a slasher movie” is just as likely.
The gravel road dissipates into a small lot, and I park close to the cabin. I’m about to tell her we can turn around and leave now that she’s seen it, but she’s left the Bronco before I get that far.
I climb out and join her in front, where she’s appraising it with wide eyes.
The wood exterior is stained a warm pine to blend in with the forest around us.
I extended the steeply sloped roof to give it a tiny covered porch, but beyond that, there’s not much to see.
Rose would probably put potted plants all along the edge of the porch to brighten it up.
Something with a long bloom time for maximum color.
I shake my head before those thoughts can take hold. She’s only here to look at the place. She’s not here to move in.
“It’s pretty basic.” About the best I can say.
“Definitely rustic.” She doesn’t lace that with judgment, just stating facts. “So, it started out as a…”
I clear my throat, kicking myself for ever bringing her here. Maybe for not building myself a nicer house in the first place. “Storage shed. Yeah.”
She gives nothing away when she turns to me. “Can I see inside?”
“Sure.” Might as well hammer that nail into the coffin.
I unlock the door and step over the threshold, the scent of the pine tongue-and-groove wall paneling almost suffocating from being shut up in the heat.
In the mudroom, my waders and fishing poles take up one end of the small space, boots and jackets on the other.
“This front area is for gear storage,” I narrate, like I’m giving a tour of an historic property and not a five-foot-deep glorified closet.
“Through here is the rest. Kitchen. Bed.” I gesture as if it’s anything other than obvious.
“There’s a bathroom in the back and more storage in the loft for out of season gear. ”
She wanders a slow loop around the room, her gaze landing on everything. Pretty easy to do, as little as there is to see. My place holds none of the life and personality that shines in her bedroom. For the first time since I built it, I wish it did.
Light filters through the faux stained-glass rooster I made, casting reds and greens on her yellow T-shirt and jeans shorts. Colors dance over her skin, begging me to close the distance between us and trace each shimmering pattern.
She daintily brushes a finger over the banana mini-figure keychain sitting on my bedside table.
Her gaze skates over my bed, made with the light comforter I need up here even on summer nights.
Her mouth tips into a smile when she spots the framed photo of Jovie tucked into a nook.
She circles past the kitchenette—scrubbed clean for this event—and back to me.
“It’s nice. No skylight, though. Whoops.”
I take a step closer to her, my gaze pinning her in place. “Tell me what you really think.”
I don’t want filters and politeness from Rose. It’s her honesty I want, no matter how little I’ll enjoy hearing it.
“It is nice,” she says. “It feels like a cozy retreat.”
A long beat passes where we face off with each other. I’m not ignorant. She has more to say. Fran’s words knock around in my head. I can’t imagine that girl being happy out there.
“But…it looks lonely.” Her blue eyes are gentle as she slices into my beating heart. “Are you happy all alone like this? Is that what you want?”
A year ago, a month ago, I would have said yes.
I would have said alone’s what I do best. I am a solitary creature.
A Sasquatch, as Jovie would say, isolated from people and reclusive by nature.
Content to be on my own. But now, after spending so much time with this woman who practically demands connection and closeness, I don’t know how true that is anymore.
And what I want…
I lift a hand to cup her jaw. She sucks in a soft breath as my thumb grazes along her bottom lip. Her pulse flutters beneath my fingertips on her neck, a flush gently creeping down her chest to disappear beneath her shirt.
What I want is right here, staring up at me.
But I need to know that she wants this, too. Rose has been told her whole life that her needs aren’t important, that her wants should take a back seat to everyone else’s. I don’t want her to ever feel she has to go along with what I want at the expense of her own comfort.
I drop my hand from her face, letting it trail over her shoulder, down the smooth skin of her arm until it links with her fingers.
“Come on.” I tug her toward the door. “You begged me to teach you to fish.”
I grab two fishing poles and a tackle box in the mudroom and lead her outside.
She follows, ambling along with her hand locked in mine.
The river’s a short walk from my cabin door, crushed volcanic rock leading to a sandy bank perfect for casting a line.
I dragged a fallen log out here last summer, and that’s where I set down my gear.
“I like being in the woods.” I open the tackle box and poke around in it, giving myself something to do while I talk. “The peacefulness of being surrounded by trees. The quiet by the river. I need time alone to recharge. You might have noticed in the coffee shop, but I’m not at my best in crowds.”
Her eyes flash with warmth. “I’ve noticed.”
I find a small lure and tie it onto the line of one of the rods. “But to answer your question, I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy here.”
It wasn’t meant for that.
I pass her the rod and prepare the other one. “I built it after Brooke broke up with me.”
She said she liked me best when I was gone.
So, I decided I’d just stay gone. I put a house in the middle of nowhere and opted to live like a hermit, keeping away from people as much as I could.
Including my family, who never deserved that distance.
I sank into the thing she hated most, licking my wounds like an angry bear nobody wants to approach.
Sounds like one of Jovie’s toddler tantrums, now that I think about it.
It was working just fine until Harry left me that coffee shop. And then Rose walked through the door and booped the angry old bear on the nose. She crushed my “forever alone” goals into a fine powder from the moment I saw her.
“I usually learn a new craft after a breakup, not buy a house.” She gazes back toward the cabin. “Or a quarter of a house.”
Her small smile shows she doesn’t mean anything by it, and I reflect it back to her. “We all heal differently.”
“You must have really loved her.”
“I thought I did. I wouldn’t call it that now.” I was gone most of the year, and the months we did spend together were more about getting to know each other again than strengthening a solid relationship.
I wasn’t seeing her day in, day out, letting her happiness fill my veins like liquid sunshine. Not listening to her laughter like other people listen to symphonies, entranced and longing for more. Not witnessing her at her best and worst, knowing I wanted her any which way I could get her.
“Have you ever?” she presses. “Been in love?”
I gaze down at her, the truth sitting on my chest like a tangible thing.
“No.” Lies and deception.
She inhales slowly as if she might say something, then busts out a smile. “Show me how this works.”
I instruct her on the basics of the rod and reel, pointing out the lures I attached.
“Thank you for not making me stick a worm on a hook.” She moves closer to the riverbank but stops short. “There aren’t sturgeon in here, are there?”
“Not in here. You’re most likely to get a rainbow trout.”
“I guess those aren’t as horrible.”
“Some think they’re beautiful.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Beautiful fish, huh? I’ve got some stiff competition.”
Never any competition for her. She’s already won all the battles, and my heart’s laid down in surrender.
Her sneakers sink in the wet riverbank as she nears the edge.
Sunlight turns the water a pale moss shade here, darkening to an opaque blue-green the deeper it gets.
The river talks to us on the gentle current, babbling and gurgling over rocks and through scrub brush.
Beyond the river, pine trees rise up into the bright blue sky.
My favorite place, made even better for having Rose in it.
She gazes back at me. “How do I…?”
I move closer until I’m right behind her, resting my hand over hers holding the rod, the other at her hip. My face is next to her ear, and it’s all I can do not to drop a kiss there. “Is this okay?”
“Yes.” Barely a breath.
“Here’s the motion you want to do.” I take control, lifting the rod and swinging in a wide arc. “It’s a gentle snap of the wrist. Got that?”
Her hand clenches beneath mine. “Do it again.”
I smile to myself, doing as instructed. “There’s an extra step to it.” I show her how to open the reel and hold the line until she’s ready to release. “You’ve got it this time.”
Using every last ounce of my strength, I step away and let her cast. She swings the rod in a fluid motion, sending the bobber into the middle of the river. It drifts downstream, and I help her lock the reel back in place.
“Excellent work, firefly.”
She grins at me. “It’s not so bad.”
“Not bad at all.” Rose beaming with a line in the river might be the most glorious thing I’ve seen in my life. “Now you slowly reel it in and do it all over again.”
I could grab the other rod and move downstream so our lines won’t get tangled.
But I sit on the rough log and watch her fish.
It’s been a long time since I fished with anyone.
Not since Harry passed. My brothers have offered, but like most of my time out here, I thought I deserved the isolation.
I’d forgotten how enjoyable it can be with someone else.
I’m starting to realize that’s true of a lot of things.
“This is kind of fun.”
I can’t even be annoyed at how surprised she sounds. I did ambush her with it.
“Do you really think we’ll catch something?”
“Fishing is mostly about being on the river and working on your patience.” A virtue I’m running slim on just now.
She reels her line back in, glancing over her shoulder at me like she’s waiting for more instructions. I nod her along. She’s got it. She does everything I showed her, casting the lure back into the river in a gentle arc. A natural.
“For the record,” she says, gaze on the bobber, “I’ve never been in love before, either.”
That information lights me up and breaks me down at the same time. “No?”
She shakes her head, her dark braid swaying across her back. “As much as I want someone to care for me, I don’t think I’ve really let the guys I’ve dated see me. I was trying too hard to be someone else.”
Rose gazes back at me, the vulnerability in her eyes riveting me in place. “I never really had someone I could just be myself with before.”
This woman who pours her heart into everything she does deserves to get that back a hundred fold.
Not from a man who’s hiding away in darkness, growling over a heart that stopped hurting a long time ago.
But from someone who’ll meet her out in the sunlight, see her love for the treasure it is, and make sure she never forgets she doesn’t have to do a thing to earn love in return.
I’ll do everything in my power to make sure that man is me.
I stand, an urge to say who knows what leaping inside me, when her bobber dips. Her attention snaps to it, and I close the distance to stand beside her.
“Does that mean what I think it means?” Her eyes are wide, but her lips pull back like she’s imagining a sturgeon at the other end of the line.
“It does. Reel it in slowly.”
The bobber dips and sways as the fish tries to get away. Rose winds the reel, drawing it closer. I ready the small net I brought, crouching at the edge of the water so I can snag it as soon as it comes into view.
“I’m kind of nervous,” she says, her hand spinning slow circles on the reel.
I glance up at her. “You’ve handled partying raccoons. You can handle this.”
She stands straighter, grinning at me. In another minute, the rainbow trout is in my net, lashing around while I free the hook from its mouth as quickly as I can. I let it dip in the water so it can breathe, but I’m careful not to lose it.
“First fish,” I tell her. “Want to hold it?”
“I don’t want it to suffer. Let me just touch it.” She crouches next to me, resting one hand on my knee to keep her balance as she reaches her other out to caress the fish. Her shriek when she makes contact has my ears ringing, but I can’t fault her enthusiasm. “It’s so slippery!”
“It’s covered in mucus.”
She darts her hand back. “Seems like an important thing to mention when you offered to let me hold it.”
I chuckle, tilting the net so the fish can swim free, disappearing into the murky water. As disgusting as she might think a trout’s slime coat is, she sure looks like she’s enjoying herself.
I thought I didn’t need anyone out here, but I do. More than I’ve ever needed someone. I need Rose.
“Since we just set our meal free, can I take you to dinner?” I ask.
“Sure. Whatever you—”
I lift one eyebrow, waiting. She nibbles her bottom lip, the pink skin there indented by a glimpse of white tooth.
“How about Delish?” she finally says.
“That’s my girl.”