7 - Brie
Repercussions
~
Brie
“Brie? Hello? Brie, a noun,” Lexi prompted, waving her arms to get my attention.
“A noun?” I asked, trying to remember what we had been talking about. It wasn’t the first time I’d lost my train of thought today, forgotten what lesson Lexi was doing, or what the point of a story I'd told her was.
I had been distracted all morning. Between the flashbacks of what had happened between Tobias and me, I wondered why it had happened and what it meant.
I knew I couldn’t give Lexi a meaningful lesson.
My mind just wasn’t in it. My thoughts were all on Tobias, and I couldn’t think of anything else in any meaningful way.
I wondered if it was regret I had seen on his face when he rushed out of my suite.
Maybe it was shame, or maybe there was no way I could figure out what he thought, and I just knew it made more sense to ask him.
He was right outside and hadn’t said a word to me all morning.
It wasn’t something that just happened. It was something he had chosen to do, and he planned his every move around it.
Forget him, I thought, maybe just for a little while.
“How about I wash and braid your hair, Lexi? I can give you a beautiful French braid,” I suggested, leaning closer to Lexi to run my hands through her thick curls.
Lexi pulled back, just out of reach. “No,” she said.
She didn’t give a reason or try to soften her words. She just recoiled as if I had threatened to rip her hair from her scalp, and refused with such certainty that I was afraid to push it or ask her why.
My whole career had been in service to young patients. I knew what a child’s boundary was when I saw it, and Lexi’s firm ‘no’ was clear.
I looked out the window and saw Tobias chopping wood as if his life depended on it. Sweat streamed down his face and made his rippling muscles glow. There was no competition this time. Each of the men was busy with something different, but still Tobias swung that axe furiously.
I wondered how he could just go about his day. I couldn’t reconcile the man whose sole objective just hours before was to drive me to ecstasy and have me writhing in pleasure with the man I was watching today. Always from a distance he imposed on us both.
“I’m sorry I’m so distracted today, Lexi. Let’s get some fresh air, and hopefully I’ll do better when we come back,” I said.
Lexi never needed much convincing to go outside.
She needed very little encouragement to play, use her imagination, and have the best time all on her own.
Sometimes it felt like my job was simply to witness it happening rather than actually to teach her anything.
I decided that missing one lesson so I could get my mind in the right space wasn’t going to hurt her.
We walked outside just in time to coincide with Tobias taking a break to chug down a bottle of water.
I walked toward him, determined to understand what this avoidance meant.
I could have accepted it if it were regret.
I might have even been able to wrap my mind around shame.
But the silence, walking out of a room as soon as I walk into it, and finding every reason under the sun not to look in my direction… that was getting to me.
Tobias looked up and saw me walking toward him, then immediately started chopping again. The wood split and crackled loudly under the axe.
“Mind the splinters,” he said without looking up.
I stopped within earshot, but not close enough to touch him. Just enough to watch him for a moment, waiting for him to realize I wasn’t just going to disappear and that he should just talk to me and get it over with.
Tobias stubbornly continued, adding two split logs to his pile before walking away without another word.
I questioned if I was imagining it, if maybe I was reading too much into Tobias simply going about his day.
Maybe the uncertainty about what had happened between us and why it happened had made me too sensitive to Tobias’s volatile moods.
I was desperate for information, something, anything that would make me feel like I understood where I stood a little more.
Everything else about my housemates felt normal.
Gunner made jokes about everything, he teased playfully and made up stories to make Lexi laugh.
At the same time, Gideon’s eyes periodically scanned the room, scanned the woods, scanned everything for something suspicious.
I was getting to know him better, and I understood that beyond his innate paranoia and distrust of anyone new, he really tried to be nice and welcoming.
It just rarely came off that way. Even Lexi was consistent in her stubbornness.
She never agreed to anything she didn’t want to do or accepted a truth without first thoroughly questioning it.
The subject of her current round of questions was the pulley in Gideon’s hands.
“Why must you fix it? Why can’t we get a new one because this one is broken, and we can’t be sure if it’s fixed properly?” she asked while she watched Gideon secure the rope between the groves around the wheel and attach it to the door or the barn-style garage.
“We’ll know it’s fixed after we test it,” Gideon smiled. “You have to test things before you need them, so when you do need them, you’re sure they work and how they work. You have to stay ready.”
Lexi looked at Gideon, probably still thinking that buying a new pulley would be less complicated, but she accepted his answer.
“Do you think it’s snack time yet?” She looked at Gideon and then at me.
“Hmm, I don’t know. Maybe you should ask your dad,” I suggested.
It was too easy. A moment alone with Gideon had found me before I even thought to seek it out.
I had to be careful. If anything, Gideon was principled.
If he even had the slightest suspicion that what I wanted from him was wrong, he would shut it down.
But how could it be wrong to want to understand someone I saw every day?
“I’m getting used to how things work around here,” I said, sitting next to Gideon to watch him work. He was currently securing a screw on a metallic crank I couldn’t place.
“Really?” he said politely, not because he was genuinely interested.
Gideon had warmed to me in his own way. He had stood up for me that very first night, included me in breakfast, and helped me convince Lexi that school wasn’t going to ruin her day, every day. If anyone would answer me, it was him.
“Yes, I know Gunner thinks everything is a joke besides hunting,” I said, going down my list. “You’re okay once you get over your paranoia and distrust of absolutely everything and everyone.
The entire household revolves around Lexi and Tobias.
I can’t really get a read on him,” I finished, testing the waters carefully.
Not wanting to start anything I couldn’t walk away from.
“You think I’m paranoid?” Gideon laughed. It was a short, gruff sound that didn’t continue long enough for me to join him.
“Of course you are. You scan every room like you’re expecting to find a bomb. You watch all of us as if you’re aware of some hidden danger that we don’t know about, and you’re always so guarded.”
Gideon shook his head and laughed. “It’s not paranoia; I’m just doing my job. I’m a bodyguard. I’ve been with Tobias for a long time, then with him and Lexi. Looks like you don’t really know how things work around here.”
It made sense, but raised more questions than it answered.
Why would Tobias need a bodyguard? Getting up this mountain was hell, and any one of the men would spot an intruder before he broke the fence line.
Lexi had told me Tobias and Gideon had come here with her, and Gunner had been here all along.
But she didn’t say why they’d come, and I could never ask a child such probing questions. Where had they come from?
I knew during that conversation what Gideon’s role was: to protect Lexi and Tobias. I understood him more just from knowing that. He was loyal to them, and they trusted him implicitly. If anyone knew what went on in Tobias’s head, it would be Gideon.
“Bodyguard?” I laughed. “I thought that was more of an unofficial role, but it makes sense. I’ve never heard of a logger needing a bodyguard, though.”
I said it casually, hoping Gideon would receive it that way, even if he didn’t answer me with all the juicy details. But he didn’t take the bait, just continued to tinker without so much as a laugh at my gentle attempts to pry and understand who Tobias actually was.
“You must have lived interesting lives before you came here,” I said, trying a different approach.
Gideon shook his head. “Don’t quit your day job. You’d make a lousy spy. If you want to know anything about Tobias, then you’re going to have to ask him yourself.”
“I was just—”
“No.” His nostrils flared in irritation. “My job is to protect Tobias and Lexi, which means protecting their personal information from nosy nannies, too.”
I sat next to him in silence, processing what I had learned.
He hadn’t told me about Tobias’s past, nothing I didn’t already know anyway, but I knew he wasn’t just a logger living in a cabin with his daughter and two housemates.
He did something that called for a long-term bodyguard.
I was going through a list in my head of what it could be.
He wasn’t an actor I knew of or a politician.
He didn’t look familiar at all when we first met, but he had to have done something important at some point in his life to warrant a live-in bodyguard.
I was wondering about Tobias, wondering about Lexi. The fact that she never mentioned her mother, no one ever did. Then Lexi jumped up in front of me from nowhere.
“Boo!” she yelled, doubling over in a fit of laughter before I could even pretend to be terrified.
“And where did you come from?” I asked, tapping my finger affectionately on her nose.
“I went to have a snack with my daddy, and you know something? He gave me apple slices, and they were great, but I really wanted a cookie. Gideon, you would have given me a cookie, right? Because I’ve been good.”
It sounded like a carefully planned setup to get her way despite her father’s decision. Gideon and I shared a look, both predicting where this was going and finding out we were wrong. Lexi wanted more than just a cookie after her dinner.
“You know, Brie, it’s really unfair that you cooked that delicious dinner the other day, and we didn’t get to enjoy it all together,” Lexi started in a very grown-up tone. “I think the only way to fix it is if you cook dinner for us again and we all sit around the table to enjoy it.”
Between her disappointment at the snack Tobias had chosen for her and making her way back to where Gideon and I were sitting, Lexi had hatched a plan and decided she wouldn’t let it fail. She was determined to have her way and couldn’t imagine the conversation not ending in her favor.
Gideon and I were both quiet. There was more to the meal than the little girl understood, more than Gideon understood, too, but like him, I was sworn to keeping some secrets.
“Please, Brie! If you don’t do it, I’ll starve,” Lexi begged.
I wanted to say yes immediately. But I couldn’t stand getting on Tobias’s bad side about the rations again. The purgatory I was in was bad enough.
“Gideon, please. Tell Brie we’ll all behave and my daddy won’t be mean to her anymore,” Lexi pleaded.
She pressed her hands together in a prayer and turned down her lips in the most dramatic, sad face, doing everything she could to inspire sympathy.
Gideon’s eyes softened. He would’ve done anything for her. It wasn’t something he even tried to hide.
“If you’re up for it,” Gideon said to me with a warmth that caught me off guard. “Whatever you need, I’ll make it happen.”