Chapter 6
Chapter Six
HARRISON
She said six. It's five forty and I've already checked the window twice.
The cabin's clean. It was already clean, but I swept the porch, wiped down the table, stacked the wood shavings into the can instead of leaving them scattered. Pulled on a fresh flannel after washing the sawdust off my arms.
Doing all this for a woman who grabbed my hand in a gravel yard this morning and told my brother's wife she was mine.
I haven't sat down since I got back from the timber. Can't. My body's running on something that isn't food or rest, and every time I stop moving, Delaney's voice fills the gap.
You've had your space.
He hasn't been sleeping.
You've been up here with nobody to spend your money on.
Then Paige's, right underneath. Steady as roots.
I'm his.
What the hell am I supposed to do with that?
The woman lied for me. Looked Delaney straight in the eye without blinking and claimed a man she's known two weeks. Threaded her fingers through mine in front of God and Kidd's truck and held the entire line while I stood there with cement in my throat.
And now she's coming up this mountain with food, and I'm checking the window, and that should tell me everything I need to know about how far gone I am.
Hoofbeats on the trail.
Serenity comes through the firs with Paige on her back, saddlebag bulging, hat tipped against the evening sun. She spots me on the porch and doesn't wave. Just gives me that look. The one that says I see you, and I'm coming anyway, so make peace with it.
She ties Serenity at the rail and pulls a foil pan from the bag along with the thermos. Those two dented mugs hooked on her fingers.
"Chicken and dumplings," she says, coming up the steps. "Mama's recipe. Don't even think about telling me you've eaten."
"Wasn't gonna."
"Good. Progress."
She's past me and through the screen door before I can hold it for her. By the time I'm inside, the pan's on the table and she's opening my cabinets for bowls.
"Left of the stove," I say.
"I know where your bowls are, Aiden. I've been in this kitchen before."
She has. I remember exactly where she stood, what she touched, which shelf she pulled the walnut bowl from. Every detail of every minute she's spent in this cabin is filed in my head whether I want it there or not.
She dishes up. Slides mine across. Sits.
"Eat."
I eat.
It's good. Better than good. The dumplings are thick, hand-torn, the broth rich enough my chest loosens a notch. I'm on my second bowl before I realize she's barely touched hers. She's watching me with her chin on her fist, elbow on the table, and something on her face I can't read.
"What," I say.
"You haven't said a word since I walked in."
"I'm eating."
"Uh huh." She picks up her spoon. Stirs. "You gonna tell me about her, or do I gotta piece it together from a two-minute conversation in a parking lot?"
Fair enough. She walked into a fire for me this morning. She deserves to know what's burning.
I push the bowl back. Rest my forearms on the table.
"Delaney Briggs. That was her name." My voice comes out rougher than I want. "Met her when I was twenty-six. Dated her two years. I had my granddad's mill running, had a house half-framed on the back acreage. Had a ring I saved eleven months for."
Paige sets her spoon down. Goes still.
"My brother Wyatt's three years younger.
Charming. Everybody loves Wyatt. He walks into a room and it lights up.
I walk into a room and people check the exits.
" Almost a joke. Neither of us laughs. "They were together over a year.
Behind my back. In my own house, some of it, while I was out working the mill. "
"Aiden."
"Let me get it out."
She nods. Folds her hands.
"When I found them, I went to my mother.
" This is the part. The part I don't usually tell.
My thumb presses into the table hard enough to whiten.
"Stood in her kitchen. Same kitchen she hummed in every morning.
Same kitchen where she cut me the corner piece of pound cake every Sunday because I liked the crust and Wyatt didn't. And she told me she knew. "
Paige doesn't move.
"Eight months, she knew. Made me dinner. Smiled at me over the mashed potatoes. Never said a word." I breathe. "And when it came out, she looked me in the face and told me to forgive him. Told me not to pull the family apart over something like this."
"Something like this," Paige repeats. Quiet. Flat.
"Her words."
"And your daddy?"
"Same. Both of them. Forgive. Move on. Family's family." My throat's tight. "So I got in my truck. Drove until the pines changed. Didn't stop."
The fire's popping. Somewhere outside, Serenity stamps and blows.
Paige reaches across the table. Her hand covers mine. Warm. Solid. She doesn't squeeze. Just rests it there.
"What a load of horseshit," she says.
A sound gets out of me that's either a laugh or something close to breaking. She grips tighter.
"Your mama covered for your woman screwing your brother in your house, and then told you to get over it? And now that same woman flew ten hours to guilt you into paying hospital bills because your brother can't handle it?"
"That's the shape of it."
"Aiden Harrison." Her eyes are bright. Not tears. Fury. "No wonder you don't sleep."
Nobody's ever been angry on my behalf. That's the thing that undoes me. Not sympathy. Not the careful, measured kindness people give you when they think you're fragile. She's pissed. Genuinely, visibly pissed, and it's all pointed at people she's never met, for a man she's known two weeks.
"Your mama," Paige says, calmer now but barely. "Is she a good person underneath all that?"
I have to think about it. Really think.
"She was good to me," I say slowly. "Before. She was warm. She paid attention. Remembered what I liked, what I didn't. She just." My hand turns under hers. Grips. "She loved keeping peace more than she loved keeping me safe."
"That's not love."
"Maybe not. But she's dying. And she's asking for me."
"She is."
"So I gotta go."
"Do you?"
"Paige."
"I'm just asking." Her thumb moves across my knuckles. "Is this something you want, or something you think you're supposed to want? Because there's no rule that says you owe a deathbed visit to people who chose your brother's comfort over yours."
I stare at our hands on the table. Hers small, brown, callused from reins and fence wire. Mine twice the size, scarred from a decade of saws. They look right together. I'm not ready for how right they look.
"I gotta go," I say again. "Not for her. Not for Wyatt. For me. Because if I don't, I'll spend the rest of my life at four in the morning wondering if I should've."
She nods slow. Like she expected that.
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"When do we leave?"
My hand tightens on hers. "We?"
"You walk in there alone and you're a man who ran off and sulked for twelve years.
That's the story they already wrote." She leans forward.
"You walk in with somebody next to you, somebody who gives a damn, it's a different room.
Your mama sees you settled. You say what you need to say.
Then we leave and nobody in that family holds this over you again. "
"You'd lie to a dying woman."
"I'd stand next to you in a hospital room and hold your hand." That chin comes up. "Whatever that makes me."
"Why?"
"You know why."
"Paige."
"You first."
I look at her across my table, in my cabin, in the chair nobody's ever sat in, with dumplings going cold between us and the fire popping and the whole mountain going quiet outside.
She leaned in the rain and I pulled away. She held my hand in the yard and I couldn't speak. She's sitting three feet from me, offering to walk into my worst memories beside me, and she's telling me to go first.
I get up.
The chair pushes back. She tips her face up, tracking me, and her eyes go wide because I'm coming around the table toward her.
"Aiden."
I take her hands. Pull her to her feet. She comes up light, close, her hat bumping my chest as she tilts her head back to look at me. My hand finds the braid at her shoulder. Follows it up to where it starts at the nape of her neck. Wraps it once around my fist.
Her breath catches.
"Three days," I tell her. "I hid in my own timber for three days because of what you do to me."
"I know."
"Hauled loads at dawn so I wouldn't see you."
"I know."
"Carved a spoon at four in the morning and broke it because my hands couldn't hold steady thinking about your face."
Her lips part. Her pulse is going hard in her throat. I can see it above the turquoise.
"You told that woman you were mine." My voice is low, coming from somewhere deeper than my chest. "Stood in a gravel yard and said it out loud."
"I did."
"Did you mean it?"
Her hand comes up. Fists in my flannel. Her eyes don't leave mine.
"What do you think?"
I kiss her.
Not careful. Not the half-reach in the rain where I pulled back. I kiss her with my hand in her hair and her body against mine, and she opens her mouth under me and makes a sound that goes straight down my spine and detonates.
She tastes like coffee. Her hands go from my chest to my neck to my jaw, pulling me deeper, and I let her take whatever she wants because I've been rationing myself for twelve years and I'm done.
The hat falls. I hear it hit the floor. Don't care. My free arm wraps her waist, hauls her closer, and she's up on her toes, pressed against me, and the soft noise she makes when my tongue finds hers empties my head of every thought but this one.
More.
I back her against the table. The bowls rattle. Her ass hits the edge and she gasps against my mouth, and I lift her onto it without thinking, hands spanning her waist, setting her down so she's face level with me. Her legs part. I step between them. Her boots hook behind my calves.
"Aiden." Against my mouth. Breathing hard.
"Yeah."
"Don't you dare pull away this time."
"I'm not pulling away." I take her face in both hands. Thumbs at her jaw. Her eyes are blown dark, green swallowed by black, and she's looking at me like I'm the first solid ground she's found in a long time. "I'm right here."
"You're right here," she repeats.
"I'm right here."
I kiss her again. Slower this time. Savoring. Her hands slide up my chest and around my neck, fingers in the hair at my collar, and I feel her everywhere. Against my ribs. Between my thighs. In my bloodstream, pumping through me with every heartbeat.
When I pull back she chases me, forehead pressed to mine, breathing my air.
"You broke a spoon?" she asks.
"Snapped the handle clean off."
"Over my face."
"Over your face."
She laughs. Wet. Bright. Her forehead drops to my shoulder and I hold her there with both arms, my chin on the top of her head, breathing in.
"I'll call Delaney tomorrow," I say into her hair. "Tell her I'm coming. Tell her I'm bringing someone."
"Good."
"Paige."
"Hm?"
"Thank you. For today. For the yard."
She lifts her head. Looks at me with those green eyes that have been taking me apart piece by piece since she rode into my clearing on a buckskin mare with a thermos.
"Don't thank me for that," she says. "That wasn't charity. That was me looking at you and deciding."
"Deciding what?"
"That whatever put you out here alone, it's done." She puts her palm flat on my chest. "Because I'm here now. So it's done."
I press my mouth to her forehead. Hold it there.
Four in the morning, for six years, I've sat in the dark with nothing but my own head. Carving scrap wood. Drinking bad coffee. Listening to a creek that doesn't care about me one way or the other.
This woman rode into my forest with better coffee and a bigger mouth and decided I was worth the trouble. And I let her.
Granddad would've liked her. He'd have poured her coffee from his own thermos, asked her about that buckskin mare, called her ma'am, and pulled me aside later with that look he got when he meant business.
Don't be stupid, boy. Hang onto that one.
Yes, sir.
I'm trying.