Chapter 13
I wake to the sound of the front door opening, my heart hammering in my throat.
I’m in my bed, a pair of threadbare flannel pajama pants hanging off my hips, and not wearing a shirt.
I stay still for a moment, pulse pounding in my ears, and listen to the shuffle of footsteps through the cabin.
My bedroom door is open since I knew I’d have the place to myself until tomorrow, and the setting sun seeps through the frame, casting my room in shades of gold and orange.
Adrenaline makes my hand shake as I reach for my phone on the nightstand.
The shuffling footsteps turn down the hall.
And my phone clatters to the floor.
Before I can get up to grab it or something else to protect myself, Stevie appears in the doorframe, backlit in orange.
I sink back against the pillows, my eyes falling shut, hand pressed to my ricocheting heart.
“Damn it, Stevie, you scared me.”
She’s munching on something, and I’d bet it’s the baby carrots from the fridge. “I texted you.”
“I was asleep,” I say, peering at her through my lashes. Sure enough, she’s holding a plastic baggie of baby carrots. “What are you doing back?”
“Good to see you, too, Julian,” she says, but her voice isn’t as teasing as it would normally be.
I push my upper body up, leaning against the headboard, the blankets pooling at my waist. Stevie’s eyes follow the movement before snapping back to my face, blinking.
“I’m glad you’re here.” It’s the truth. When I came back from my shift this morning, the house felt too quiet.
I turned on an old sitcom on the TV during “dinner,” a tasteless chicken breast and a serving of microwaved vegetables on my plate, but it didn’t seem as funny as when Stevie and I would watch together, laughing at the ridiculous jokes and making up our own commentary.
“I just wasn't expecting you until tomorrow night.”
She toes at a scuff on the hardwood with her boot. “Yeah, me neither.”
Again, she sounds off. Not quite sad, but something I can’t put my finger on.
“My uncle wanted me to take a slower start getting back to work, so I just did a day hike today.”
“Oh,” I say. “That’s nice, I guess.”
Her eyes meet mine, intense, and I’m acutely aware that I’m half naked in bed.
“Yeah, I guess.”
I lift a brow. “Not nice?”
She inhales. Exhales. Stands taller. “No, it’s fine. I’m sure I needed the break.”
I watch her for a long moment, trying to decipher her facial expression, but it’s gone blank. I can tell she’s about to leave, but for some reason, I don’t want her to.
“Speaking of, we’re supposed to be doing something fun while we’re off work.”
She shakes her head. “Can’t. I need to help my mom with her garden. When I went over there last night…” she trails off, lost in her thoughts, before meeting my eyes again. “It was just kind of a mess. I need to take care of it for her. And then I have another day hike the day after tomorrow.”
“I could help. With the garden.”
I don’t know what makes me say it, except that in the few hours I was here alone today, I felt…
lonely for the first time in years. At my past jobs, I’d sometimes gotten to know my coworkers.
We’d go out for the occasional post-shift drinks, or I’d be invited to a birthday party that everyone who worked our shift would be invited to.
And there were women I’d meet, dates I’d sometimes go on.
But in the last ten years of working this job, Stevie is the person I’ve spent the most time with.
And now that I’ve gotten used to her being around, my alone time doesn’t feel as satisfying anymore.
Stevie stares at me for long seconds, her hand in the carrot bag. “Why?”
I shrug, unsure how to answer. I’m sure as hell not going to tell her it’s because I was lonely when she left. “I don’t have anything better to do.”
A grin lifts one corner of her mouth. “Words every woman loves to hear.”
“What can I say? I’m charming.”
Her smile widens, and the sun catches in her hair, making a halo around her.
It’s wavy today, hanging loose around her shoulders like she pulled it out of a braid.
She’s dressed in a fitted dry-fit shirt and utility pants with heavy hiking boots on her feet.
There are freckles on her cheeks from the time she spent in the sun.
She looks way more in her element than she has lounging around the house the past two weeks. It fits her.
“Seriously, though. You don’t need to come.”
This distracts me from my perusal, pulling me from my thoughts. “Why not?”
She lifts a shoulder. “You’ve helped me out entirely too often in the last few weeks. You don’t need to come pull weeds with me.”
The truth is, I want to. I could spend my day off hiking one of the many trails around town or trying out one of the restaurants I haven’t had a chance to yet, but I’d be doing those things alone.
And I’d rather spend my day with her than spend another one wandering by myself.
It’s a surprise, and I’m not sure what to make of it, but it’s true regardless.
“I don’t mind, really.”
Her gaze holds mine for a long moment, and I wonder what she’s parsing in my expression, if she can see the truth written in it. “If you really want to.”
“I do,” I say.
A crooked smile lifts one side of her mouth. “Okay, then. I’ll see you in the morning, Judah.”
She spins on her heel and heads for her bedroom across the hall. Right before she closes her door, I yell, “Jack!”
Her laugh floats through the door, and I smile into the darkness falling over the room.
I’m on my third cup of coffee when Stevie and I climb in her truck to head to her parents house.
Switching between day and night shifts is always brutal, and even after all these years, I’ve never quite managed to find a schedule that works for me to avoid the hangover-like feeling I get on the first day in between.
“Would it be easier if I just gave that to you in an IV or…?” Stevie asks, smirking at where I’m slumped against the passenger window,
“I didn’t go back to sleep until four.”
We both stare at the clock on her dash. It reads 8:07.
“You know, when you said you had nothing better to do, sleep was an option,” she deadpans.
“I need to get up so I can get on a normal schedule.”
The truck begins to back up before she turns the wheel and guides us down the mountain. “If you say so.”
“So tell me about your family,” I say after taking another sip of my coffee.
She glances at me before returning her attention to the road. “What do you want to know?”
“Social security numbers, dates of birth, you know, just the basics.”
A husky laugh rumbles out of her, and I swear I can feel it in my chest. It’s a good laugh.
“Seriously,” she says.
I lift my head from the window, the coffee finally starting to wake me up, and let my eyes travel across her.
The early morning sun highlights the freckles on her cheeks and catches on the length of her dark lashes.
She’s got her hair tied back in another braid today, and it hangs down her back.
She’s wearing loose linen pants and a mustard yellow sweater.
No makeup, but it somehow emphasizes her natural beauty.
She looks as much a part of this landscape as the trees and the mountains.
“What are they like?” I ask. “Are you close?”
She tucks her bottom lip between her teeth before saying, “Very close. I’m an only child. It took my parents a long time to get pregnant with me, and they had a few miscarriages after. So it’s just me and my parents. And now my grandma.”
“She lives with them?”
“Mmhmm. She has Alzheimer’s. Still in the early stages, but she lived a few hours away. It was easier for her to move in with my parents.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell her and she shrugs half-heartedly as if to say it is what it is. “What are your parents like?”
This makes her smile, just a small uptick of her lips as she turns onto the main road.
“My dad is kind of a goofball. He’s outgoing and funny and has unmedicated ADHD, so he starts a million projects on the farm and only half-finishes them.
It drives my mom crazy. She’s organized and scheduled, but she has fun, too.
She keeps us all on track.” She glances at me. “Is that what you wanted to know?”
“Mmhmm. And how do you fit into the mix?”
She tips her head back and forth like she’s thinking. “I guess I’m a mix of both. Adventurous like my dad, but more thoughtful about it like my mom. I used to follow my dad around the farm a lot, helping him with projects, but I’d also wander off a lot on my own. I liked exploring. And alone time.”
“I was like that too. My brother Evan was the outgoing one of the two of us. He was friends with everyone. Played a bunch of sports. Prom king. You know the type.”
Her chin dips in a nod.
“Down to earth though,” I say. “Never quite realized he was popular and beloved.”
She smiles. “That’s how Wren is. One of her other rental cabins caught on fire a few years ago and the whole town rallied to help her fix it. I think she was shocked everyone would do it, but I don’t think anyone even batted an eye.”
“Sounds nice,” I hum.
Her eyes flick to mine. “What?”
“This town.”
Something passes over her expression, there and gone before I can decipher it. “It is. Is your hometown not like that? I know you said it’s small, too.”
“No, it is in some ways. Everything in Montana is just so much more…spread out, I guess. It’s harder to be as tight knit when your closest neighbor is a mile down the road.”
“Ah,” she says. “Is that how you grew up?”
“No, we lived in an apartment in town.” It was old and run down, the only complex in all of Larkspur.
Most of the other residents were elderly people who either couldn’t or didn’t want to take care of their land anymore.
“We were actually pretty close with our neighbors. They were like grandparents to us. Babysat Evan and I a lot when we were small.”
“Did you have grandparents around?”
“No, my dad wasn’t in the picture for very long, and my mom’s parents both died pretty young. So it was just us.”
“Do you miss it?” she asks. “Your hometown?”
I watch the trees passing by outside, see the first of the autumn leaves starting to fall, and ponder her question.
It’s been so long since I’ve been back. I haven’t wanted to go, to see all the places my mom used to be, where she should be now.
It feels like her ghost is lingering there, knowing she left it much too soon.
But sometimes, when I look out at the wrong mountains or drive through miles and miles of farmland on my way to my next assignment and see corn or soybeans or cotton instead of cattle, I feel a little twinge in my chest, like there’s a hollow spot where Larkspur should be.
“Maybe sometimes,” I finally say. “But I love traveling too. You ever travel?”
That look passes over her face again, lingering longer this time before disappearing. “No, I’ve never been anywhere.”
My brows lift without my permission, but I shouldn’t be surprised. Before I went to college and then decided to do travel nursing, I’d never been anywhere either. But Stevie seems too big for this town with her exotic palette and her mobile home and her wandering job.
“You didn’t want to?”
She flicks on the turn signal, and I look back out the windshield again to see a wooden sign engraved with the words Misty Grove Orchard and a painted bushel of apples.
Her tires crunch over gravel and dirt, kicking up a cloud of dust behind us.
Up ahead, I see a white farmhouse with a wraparound porch and a dark red roof.
It looks like something out of a movie or a picturebook.
The kind of place I dreamed about living when our upstairs neighbors would be vacuuming or arguing in the middle of the night.
“No,” she says, breaking me out of my perusal. “I did. I just never got the chance.”