3. Juliette
Chapter Three
JULIETTE
The mountain man’s doormat is plain and functional.
My dress drips on it as I stand there thinking about the polished console table in our entry hall.
The same carefully chosen orchid will get swapped out by the florist every week, straight into the trash, blooms and all, before they have a chance to wilt.
There’s a big wood stove ticking in the corner and a couch with a quilt thrown over it to disguise its shabbiness. A large bookshelf is filled with paperbacks. It's warm. Despite needing to keep my guard up and be wary of this stranger, my muscles relax into the warmth.
He carries the groceries past me and sets them on the counter. He’s at least a foot taller than me, with broad shoulders and hard muscles. “Go through that arch, you’ll find the bathroom through there… clean towels on the shelf. I'll get you something dry to put on and leave it outside the door.”
“Thank you.” My voice is weirdly squeaky. “I’m sorry, I didn’t ask your name. I’ve been in your truck for half an hour and now I’m here, but I don’t know who you are.”
He rests one of his large hands on a cupboard door. “Holt.” He meets my eyes and there’s a jolt of electricity that travels from the tip of my head down to my core. His eyes are a silver-gray, a contrast to his deeply tan skin and black hair.
He goes into a room off the back, and from behind the wall comes the scrape of a heavy object being dragged off a bed. My shoulders tense again. As much as I’m pretty sure he’s not a serial killer, I’m in a strange man’s home with no idea what’s in the next room.
And he never asked me for my name. I think he was going to, back on the road, it was like the question was coming, and then he checked himself and didn’t ask me.
Like he knew I’d make something up. He let it go and drove.
I try to think sensibly about what fake name I could tell him when he does ask, but I'm shaking and stupid with cold.
It’s like the wedding dress is fighting me trying to take it off.
I fiddle with the long column of tiny buttons down the back.
It feels like months ago, but it was only this morning that my mother's seamstress buttoned them up while my mother chattered about napkin colors.
I get about three undone before my cold fingers stop working.
So I rip the rest of them, popping them one after the other, as the tiny pearl buttons bounce across the tiles.
I have a rush of relief, before I get down on my knees and fish buttons out from behind the toilet.
Six shoulders the door open and sniffs at a couple as I scoop them out.
I usher him outside, then lock the door and turn on the shower.
The water is hot and blissful, as I soap myself clean, borrowing some of Holt’s shampoo to get the hairspray out of my hair.
The clothes Holt leaves outside the door are his.
There’s a big red-and-black flannel shirt, washed so many times the fabric is butter soft, and a pair of sweatpants I have to roll at the waist so they don’t drag across the floor.
A thick pair of socks. I look at myself in the small mirror over the sink: hair drying in ropes and a scrubbed clean face.
Nobody in my old life has ever seen me like this.
I like the way I look, for once. There’s no pretense: I’m just me, like the rain washed all of my family’s expectations clean away.
Six is waiting patiently outside the bathroom. He escorts me to the guest bedroom and sits in the doorway. There’s a freshly made-up single bed and some stacked mountaineering equipment under the window. On the nightstand there’s a mug of tea and some cookies, and beside it the key to the door.
I wrap my hands around the mug and go to stand in the doorway, petting Six’s rough head.
“Lock it if it helps you feel safer, I’m not offended,” Holt says from the main room. He’s not looking at me; he's crouched at the stove feeding it a log. “I'll be up early. And don't let the dog talk you into feeding him, he lies about it with those mournful eyes.”
I hold the key up. “Okay, thank you for this.”
He looks over then. Just for a second, gray eyes in a hard, weathered face, and I can't read anything in them. “Get some sleep.”
I close and lock the door. After ten minutes, I unlock it again, because Six is making a wounded noise from the other side. When I open it he pushes his snout in and then lies down across the threshold, like he’s guarding me.
The pillow smells like cedar smoke, but the bed is surprisingly comfortable.
I lie in the dark listening to Holt move around the cabin: opening the stove door, running water in the sink and then the couch creaking as it takes his weight.
Then there’s nothing but rain on the roof and Six’s steady breathing.
I wait for the wave of fear and anxiety to come.
It’s always worst at night, when the world is still and I have time to think about everything.
Ever since February, when the merger papers were finalized and Corbin laid his hand territorially on my knee under his desk for the first time.
Instead what comes is the memory of Holt's voice saying ‘good’ when I told him there was no groom. He meant it.
That helps me to fall asleep.
In the middle of the night I jolt awake to the sound of a truck engine on the road below, my entire body tense and ready to spring.
It's them; my father’s people. I'm certain of it, the same way I used to be back home when a car door slammed after lights-out and I knew they'd sent someone to get me.
I lie with my fists balled up, waiting for the dance of headlights across the ceiling, but they never come.
The engine fades away and I release my breath.
Six shifts on the floor, rearranging his long body. Next door, the bedsprings creak; Holt heard it too. He's awake, exactly like I am, and for some reason that makes me feel better. He’s listening for trouble, so I don’t have to.
Daylight, and there’s the sound of an axe outside when I wake up. Hot coffee’s on the stove in a dented aluminum pot. I pour a mug of what's in there, finding some milk in the refrigerator to dilute the strength.
I find Holt out back splitting wood. He’s only wearing a t-shirt, despite the cool September air.
I stop in the doorway with my mug of coffee and stare.
Last night it was dark and he was impressively big.
This morning he’s huge. Massive shoulders that make the axe look small, threads of silver-gray coming in at the temples of his thick, black hair. He must be near forty.
He doesn’t have a polished, symmetrical handsomeness; his nose has been broken, and there's a scar through one eyebrow.
But his jaw and cheekbones remind me of the statues in the museums we visited at school; sculpted and strong.
When he swings the axe there's nothing showy about it, and the log falls apart in two clean halves, as if it’s effortless.
A pang of need flows up from my core and my heart races in my chest.
I want him to look at me with the same protectiveness that was in his face when he saw the bruises on my wrist last night; like I mattered to him.
This is stupid. I barely know him. I slip back inside as quietly as I can before he notices me gawking at him.
Holt comes in with an armful of wood. “My friend Bobby called… he towed your cousin's car in this morning.”
“He did?”
“Yes. He does repairs out of his back lot when he's in the mood.” He stacks the wood by the stove. “The fuel pump's shot and there's a cracked hose behind it. He’ll order it in for you. Maybe by the end of the week, he says.”
My stomach drops. “That's five days.”
He straightens up, dusting off his forearms, and looks straight at me. “There's a bus twice a day from down in the valley. I'm happy to drive you down whenever you want… you want to call someone?”
He's giving me an exit. I should take the bus. And keep running before anybody catches up with me. But I don't want to.
Nobody is watching me here. For every day of my twenty-four years I've been supervised by nannies and maids. My own mother reads my mail, my father makes decisions for me. What I have now is freedom and I’m not ready to give it up yet.
“I can't abandon the car. It's my cousin Daisy’s… she’d kill me.”
It's true, but it’s not the real reason. He raises a thick eyebrow, like he knows it.
“Okay,” he nods.
“Holt, I'll pay you for the room. I have cash.”
He shakes his head and turns to the stove, opening it. “Bobby will call when the part's in. Until then, you're welcome here, you don’t have to pay.”
In my father's house, welcome is a word for donors and photographers.
“Juliette.”
Holt’s hands stop moving on the stove and he turns to look at me.
I clear my throat. “My name is Juliette. I mean, that’s my real name.”
He repeats my name, as if he’s trying it out for size. “Juliette.”
“Do you want me to leave?” I don’t drop my gaze, even though looking at him for this long is starting to make my core heat up.
“No,” he says. Fast, without thinking.
Six thumps his tail twice against the floor as if the matter is settled.