Chapter 18
It’s dark when Jack’s headlights slice over where I’m seated on the front porch, rain pelting the tin roof above me, lightning zagging through the sky, turning the blackness purple.
I watch as he shuts off the engine and kicks open his door before running through the rain to the porch.
He’s drenched by the time he closes the short distance, his sneakers pounding up the wooden steps.
Rain clings to his eyelashes and the ends of his hair.
“Hey,” he says, sounding more breathless than the short run from his car calls for. “You’re home.”
I nod and gesture at the storm raging beyond us. “Yeah, and my hike was canceled for tomorrow. Storm’s supposed to last all night and day.”
“I’m off tomorrow, too.”
I know from looking at the calendar, but I don’t tell him that.
“You got plans tonight?” he asks, running a hand through his damp hair. It slicks back and looks almost black under the muted glow from the dirty porch light.
I shake my head. “No, just sitting out here, watching the storm. Reading.” I lift the worn paperback in my lap. I picked it up from the library earlier today. It’s the book club pick for the month, and my goal is to be able to actually make it to the meeting.
“Want company?”
“Sure,” I say with a shrug, like I hadn’t been watching the clock on my phone waiting for him to be home, tired of the way the silence has started to feel too loud now, how solitude doesn’t feel as comforting as it used to.
“I’ll go change and be right back.”
Thunder cracks as he slips into the house, and I let my attention return to it. Rain is falling in heavy sheets, soaking the dirt and gravel road. It will be a mudslide tomorrow if the rain continues like they’re predicting. I’d bet we will end up stuck up here until the storms let up.
Jack returns a few minutes later, letting the screen door slap closed behind him, the sound echoing through the mountains like its own peal of thunder.
I’m seated on the porch swing, letting it gently move back and forth with the wind.
There’s a rocking chair beside it, but he lowers himself onto the empty space beside me instead, pushing us with a kick of his feet. The springs groan with the movement.
“How was work?” I ask.
Jack’s eyes land on mine in the dim light. “Long. I shouldn’t have gone out last night. I was exhausted.”
I hum beneath my breath, looking out at the flashes of lightning brightening the sky like fireworks.
He’s quiet for a moment, and I can feel the weight of his stare on the side of my face. “I saw you out at Matty’s.”
I turn back to face him. “I saw you, too, but you looked busy, so I didn’t come say hi.”
His gaze holds on mine, eyes dark. “I wasn’t too busy.”
My throat feels tight under the intensity of his gaze. “Well, next time I’ll say hi.”
“Good,” he says, finally turning his attention from me and out to the storm raging around us.
I breathe in a lungful of the damp, mountain air and pull my knees to my chest, wrapping my arms around them. The blanket I brought out is a warm flannel, soft beneath my fingertips, and I twirl a piece of the fringe between my thumb and pointer finger.
“I’ve always loved storms,” I say.
I can feel Jack’s surprise, considering the circumstances.
“I used to always sit outside the Airstream and watch them. Probably not the smartest to sit beside a giant metal box during a thunderstorm, but I always did anyway.”
“You were inside when the tree fell though, right?”
“Mmhmm. I don’t know why, but that night I didn’t really feel like sitting outside. I had rented a movie from the video store and—”
“The video store?” he asks, interrupting me with a laugh.
I glance over at him, a smile playing at the edges of my lips. “You haven’t seen it in town?”
He shakes his head, still smiling, the laughter lingering in his eyes. “No.”
“It’s one of the last ones still open in the country.”
“This town is weird.”
“I’ve always thought so, but I haven’t really been anywhere to compare it to. Is it really that different from all the other small towns in America?”
“It’s one of a kind,” he says, voice softer than I would have expected, like Fontana Ridge has wriggled its way beneath his exterior. “Something special.”
“Mmm,” I hum. I turn back to face the storm, feeling the wind on my face, pulling at the loose pieces of my hair that have slipped free from my braid.
“If I had gone outside that night like usual, the shelf that fell in the Airstream wouldn’t have hit my head.
” I glance back at him to find his eyes already on me.
“But then again, I wouldn’t have met you either. ”
“Fate’s a bitch, huh?”
A laugh rockets out of me, and I bury my smile in my knees. He bumps his shoulder with mine, his body so much warmer than my own. I’ve probably been out here for too long; the temperature has been steadily dropping all day, and with the wind it’s chilly. But I don’t want to go inside.
“Do you miss your Airstream?” Jack asks.
I shrug, unsure how to answer. I do miss it, but I also haven’t minded being here nearly as much as I expected to. “I miss having a place that was mine,” I tell him. “The cabin is nice, but it doesn’t feel like home.”
“Home,” he says into the night, voice tinged with something I can’t quite name. “I haven’t been anywhere that feels like home in years.”
“Do you miss that?” I ask, tipping my chin on my knees so I’m looking at him, cheek pressed into the denim.
He’s quiet for a long minute. A flash of lightning that illuminates the stubble growing on his cheeks. Two cracks of thunder. “I didn’t use to.”
“And now?”
His eyes settle on mine. “I don’t know. Maybe. I miss Montana, and I miss home,” he answers. “But they don’t necessarily feel like the same thing anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
He lets out a breath and pushes us again with feet in mismatched ankle socks.
“I miss the wide open skies, the mountains, the smell of the wildflowers in spring and the horses on the ranch I worked on in high school. And I miss the little apartment I lived in with my mom and Evan. The pancakes she would make us on Sunday mornings—the only day she ever had off. How when we couldn’t sleep, she would let us climb in her bed and watch Cheers.
But Montana doesn’t feel like home without her anymore, you know?
I miss Montana, and I miss home, but I don’t really feel like Montana is my home anymore.
” He looks at me. “Does that make sense?”
His words feel like needles piercing me in all my softest places, giving shape to the thoughts that have been tumbling, formless and jumbled, in my head for years.
It’s different, of course. But I feel like I’ve outgrown myself, outgrown the pieces of me that feel like me.
I’m wandering, aimless, in the same place I’ve always been, watching everyone move on without me.
Fontana Ridge feels like home, but for some reason, I don’t feel like I fit in it anymore.
The Stevie-sized shape in Fontana Ridge has stayed the same, but I’ve changed.
“Yeah, it makes sense,” I manage to get out. “Do you think you’ll ever go back?”
He stares out at the storm instead of looking at me, but I don’t turn away from him.
The porch light casts him in a warm glow, making his hair look more golden than usual.
There’s stubble on his cheeks, and for a moment I wonder what it would feel like beneath my fingers, how the scratch of it would feel on my palms.
“I should. I know I should,” he finally says.
His voice is a deep scratch. “I’ve just never been able to make myself.
But my brother, Evan, has a daughter now.
And I’ve been missing her entire childhood.
Every time she Facetimes me, I barely recognize her.
She’s growing so fast, changing so much.
And sometimes I wonder why I can’t just make myself go.
Why seeing my niece isn’t bright enough to burn up the dark clouds that always hang over me when I get anywhere near that town. ”
He turns back to me then, eyes locking with mine in the darkness. “I should just get over it, huh?”
I shake my head, and lean in until my shoulder is pressed to his, trying to give him strength, reassurance, anything to make the haunted look in his eyes disappear. “No, I don’t think you should.”
“But I should try to go back, right?”
His body is so much warmer than mine, and I’m not sure who is giving who strength now. If maybe we’re both holding each other up. “I don’t think I can answer that for you.”
“No, I don’t guess that’s fair of me,” he says. His gaze slides to mine, and his lips hitch in the tiniest of smiles. “But I know what you’re thinking.”
I lift a brow in question.
“You’re the most loyal person I know. You think I should go back, see my family. My hometown.”
I don’t say anything, and his smile grows wider.
He lets out a breath, and the temperature must have dropped lower than I thought, because it puffs in the air.
A gust of wind whips past us, and I shiver against it, pulling the warm flannel up under my chin.
Jack lifts his arm and wraps it around my shoulders, hauling me even closer so we’re pressed side to side.
“You make me want to be a better person, Stevie Lynch.”
For a moment, I think I feel his fingers tug on the loose strands of hair that have fallen from my braid, but it has to just be the wind.
“I think you think I’m better than I am,” I whisper into the night.
“You say I’m loyal, but I think I just need to be needed.
Everyone has someone—my friends, my parents, even the old bitties in town have each other to sing duets with at karaoke night.
But I’m alone, and I don’t mind it, I really don’t, but…
I don’t know. I just… I think I stay because if I leave, then I’m really all alone.
And I have no one who needs me, no one who can call me when their person isn’t available.
If I’m not here, I can’t even be someone’s backup call. ”
The words surprise even me. I hadn’t realized that’s how I felt, but now that they’re out, floating away on the heavy, damp breeze, I realize they’re true. That no matter how embarrassing, it’s how I feel.
I feel the tug again on my hair, and I know for sure this time that it’s not the wind when Jack’s fingertips, chilled by the night air, brush against my nape.
It sends a shiver down my spine that I hope he doesn’t notice.
When I look back at him, his eyes are fixed on mine, brow furrowed.
Two lines at the top of his nose. Lips pulled taut.
“You deserve to be more than someone’s back up call. ”
I swallow against the lump rising in my throat as his fingers slide against the slope of my neck again, smoothing down the loose hair lifted on the breeze. “I know, but I’m willing to settle for that.”
He shakes his head, pulling me even closer. He doesn't say anything, and I appreciate it, because I feel scraped raw, and I think he might be too. We are land ravaged by storms, trees snapped and bare, grasses flattened.
But at least we’re not alone.