Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
Yesterday had been extremely weird, and she was signing on for more of it.
She literally couldn’t wait.
Spending the afternoon with Zane had been invigorating and exciting in a way that nothing else ever had been.
It was super high-octane fascination, and she was aware that she was – as her dad used to say – cruising for a bruising – but she had never felt anything quite like this before.
Being near him was electric. It shouldn’t be. Except yesterday, he had almost been nice. Yesterday, he had teased her. Told her the worst dad joke she’d ever heard. It had scared her, but in a fun way. Then she had gone and insulted him, and she felt bad about it. Even if he hadn’t.
She felt like she was in high school, except she’d never really had crushes like this in high school.
Crush. There was that word again. The one that she said she wasn’t going to use because it was too juvenile.
But maybe juvenile was the wrong word.
There was something exciting about this.
Fizzy.
She wouldn’t have said that anything with Zane could be fizzy.
But here she was. Feeling exactly that.
In a way she never expected. She had her pack with all of her supplies, and she had a basket of lemon rolls.
The strawberry rolls were his favorite, yes, but she had made him those a few times, and so this called for the lemon sunshine rolls, full of lemon curd, with a lemon buttercream on top. She loved the lemon.
She pulled up to the house, but he wasn’t waiting for her outside. She got out of the car and crept cautiously up the steps. Like he might throw the door open at any moment. But he didn’t.
She went up to the door and knocked.
And waited.
A few minutes later, the door opened, and there he was, wearing a tight black T-shirt, fitted jeans that showed off his muscular thighs, and an expression on his face to let her know she was, in fact, intruding just by being on his porch.
It made her feel as giddy as it might have if he’d smiled at her.
Was she in some kind of regression? Had she just been too responsible for too long? Taking care of everything, and so now her hormones were trying to urge her to obsess over the most irresponsible man to try to catch feelings for.
No. She wouldn’t say feelings. It wasn’t really about that. That made it sound like there was something deeper than the explosive chemistry that she felt when they were near each other. The sensations that she felt when she touched him. When she had reached out and grabbed his arm yesterday.
Oof.
It had been a total miscalculation on her part, and it had also been like being hit by lightning.
Which she had to admit was actually kind of fun.
It seemed reasonable that this was actually some kind of rebellion against the version of herself that had been so responsible for so long.
The version of herself that had been continually tuned to the needs of her mother.
Rather than her own needs. While her peers had been going out and sleeping with the wrong guys, Cara had been resolute in sleeping with no one.
At twenty-four, she was beginning to feel that gap, feel that lack of experience.
Maybe that was why she felt so electrified over him.
Maybe it wasn’t him. Maybe it was just what it was like when you were a twenty-four-year-old virgin who needed to get dickmatized.
Thinking about that, standing in front of him, standing right on his porch, was a very poor idea.
But she was full of nothing but poor ideas at the moment.
Poor ideas and ill-advised lust.
She really was having some kind of inverted teenage experience.
“Almost ready,” he said.
“Oh. Can I come in?”
She practically held her breath. He was going to say no. There’s no way he was going to let her into his inner sanctum. No way he was going to do anything quite so hospitable.
Except then, he shocked her.
He inclined his head, gesturing for her to come into the cabin.
She did it quickly. Before he could change his mind. Then there she was. In Zane’s inner sanctum. Which was as surprising as it was illicitly thrilling.
The cabin was dark. But it was organized. It looked like it belonged to a military man. Neat and Spartan, but a log cabin could only be so sparse. There was a hominess to it because of the materials. Because of all the natural wood.
There were shelves all along the back, and they contained bins full of mysterious items. There was a small collection of books. They looked like children’s books. There were also a few thicker volumes, though she couldn’t make out what they were.
There was also a rifle hanging on the back wall. Not for decoration, she had a feeling.
There were boots by the door, but they were lined up neatly. Clean but rustic was the best description for it, and she found that she was hungry to take in every detail. To see if it would teach her more about him.
Because yes, her fascination was physical, but part of the allure was the mystery of him.
The inaccessibility. She had wondered a little bit when she first got here if she might be into Walker.
When she had let herself get talked into going to visit Zane and ask for access to his land, part of her had wondered if it was because Walker thrilled her just a little bit.
But the trouble with Walker was that he wasn’t a puzzle.
Walker wasn’t an open book. Easy. She had mused earlier if part of her fascination with Zane was her wanting to not be satisfied. Her wanting to not get exactly what she wanted.
Because she was in a pattern of withholding.
She didn’t think that was it, though. There was something about the special secret that was Zane.
But that was weird and complicated and not something she was sure she could even make herself fully understand.
There was something about the fact that she had been in his cabin now, and how many people had been?
That she had gotten him to tell her that dad joke, and she knew that he had helped with equine therapy.
That he was considering doing something with horses on his ranch.
Each little piece of lore felt like a trinket she wanted to hoard, take to bed with her and turn it over and over.
Maybe that was the issue. Nothing had ever been hers.
Her life had been about other people for a very long time. When she was a child, of course, her life had been about her family. Her life had centered around her wonderful parents, and why wouldn’t it? Around the family.
Then her father had died while her mother’s health had declined, and things had become about that pain. Her mom’s grief.
How it was affecting her.
Even when there were happy things, like Cody and Marlowe, then it was about their relationship, about them finding love and getting married, which gave her mom some joy while Cara did nothing of the kind, but cared as much as she could.
She wasn’t bitter.
She wasn’t.
It was all circumstantial. It had been her age versus their age. Even though they ultimately hadn’t had kids, her mom had, of course, been hoping that Marlowe and Cody would give her a grandchild, and while she had been lucid, just the hope of that had been something lovely for her.
And that was great.
It was.
But in all of that, Cara had been lost.
When she had stood out, it was with her acts of service.
With her baking. With knitting sweaters and blankets, and doing things for other people.
For her mother, for the community. So there was something sort of self-indulgent and fascinating about this.
About having this little connection. This little secret.
Even though it wasn’t really anything, it wasn’t anything more than these moments. And maybe to him it was nothing at all.
But to her, it felt like something.
She just wanted to go ahead and feel that for as long as she possibly could. It didn’t have to become anything. In fact, it was probably better if it didn’t.
But it was so nice to feel something exciting, something that didn’t really scare her so much as invigorate her.
“All right,” he said, picking up his bag. “I’ve got my firestarter in here. Today I’m going to help you with that. We’re going to do a bit of wayfinding with the compass. It would be good if we could go out at night.”
The image that painted was instant. Them, out at night together. Under the stars. Would it be cold? Would he pull her closer to keep her warm?
He’d probably push you in the river and demand you figure out how to keep yourself from getting hypothermia while he stood there and stared at you sternly.
Even that made her feel fluttery and a little bit…excited.
She had a problem.
“Would it?”
“Yeah. Because then you could practice finding your way using the stars.”
He hadn’t been thinking of the stars in the same way that she had been, but knowing that he was thinking of them at all set something alight inside her.
“Yes,” she said. “We could do that.”
“I’m thinking that’ll be your graduation. Camping.”
He started to walk out the front door, and she scampered after him. “Camping? Camping is not a quick look at the stars to see which way is north.”
“No. But it would be good for you. To survive the night in the wilderness.”
“I practically already did that.”
Genuine worry was bubbling up inside of her.
She wasn’t sure about spending the whole night outside.
“I would stay with you, of course.”
That made her blood pressure skyrocket instantly. Though, not in a bad way.
“Oh.”
“Of course, I’m going to give you a bunch of assignments to complete so that you can graduate.”
“There’s a graduation now? This is official?”
“Maybe.”
She followed him down the steps. “Does that mean I get a certificate?”
“Don’t push your luck.”
She wanted to. She wondered what he would do if she did. It was now a curiosity that she found she couldn’t quite let go of.