Chapter 6
Coffee, Eggs, and Existential Crises
Olivia
The storm broke sometime before dawn, leaving the world washed and still. I could tell by the way the soft light slid through the curtains that it was already late morning—later than I usually slept.
For a long while, I stayed in bed, listening.
The dogs slept heavily near the door, Boone on guard even in his dreams, while June Bug sprawled on her back without a care.
I should have been able to rest too, but my thoughts kept wandering back to the barn—to the bandage, the steady rise of his chest, and the sound of that low hum fading into the night.
My chest tightened whenever I thought about the stranger in the barn, his pain becoming my own.
Yesterday, guilt kept me awake. Today, it was curiosity that was pushing me toward the barn whether I was ready or not.
I tried to tell myself to wait until noon, just in case he was still resting, but impatience had always been my downfall. By the time the coffee pot hissed, I was already pulling on my boots.
“Stay,” I told the dogs, my voice firm but gentle. “No barking, no running. You got it?”
Boone huffed like he understood, while June Bug wagged her tail anyway.
The yard sparkled under the thin sunlight, every blade of grass heavy with condensation.
The air carried that washed-clean scent the mountains always held after a storm.
It felt like the kind of morning that offered second chances.
A few birds called from the ridge—warblers, maybe—and a doe grazed with her fawn near the tree line. Second chances.
When I reached the barn, I paused with my hand on the door, my heart beating too fast for what I kept telling myself wasn’t a big deal.
The barn was quiet when I opened the door, lit by the gray, post-rain light filtering through the boards.
The Sasquatch sat where I’d left him, the quilt loose around his shoulders, his eyes lifted to the thin cracks in the wall where sunlight spilled through like thin streaks of gold cutting through the dim. The bandage still held, though a strip of gauze had shifted along the edge of his arm.
A low creak from the hinges made him glance over his shoulder. That single look froze me in place.
“Hey,” I said softly. “Morning.”
No answer came, but his gaze stayed on me as I crossed the threshold.
“Did you drink any water?” I asked, nodding toward the glass I’d refilled the night before. It sat half empty. “Guess so.”
A slow tilt of his head met my voice, more curiosity than confusion, but he did not respond.
Stepping closer, I reached for his arm to check the bandage. The gauze was clean, with edges darkened only where the blood had dried. When my fingers brushed the edge, a faint tension rippled through his shoulders, but he didn’t pull away.
“Still looks good,” I murmured. “No fever, no bad color. You’re a tough one.”
His eyes never left my hands. The steady rhythm of his breath held a quiet focus I couldn’t miss.
He seemed to be measuring my intent more than my words.
When I finally sat back, his attention drifted toward the worktable along the wall, landing on my daddy’s old radio—the kind that never came in clear but always tried.
The sight of it held him still. A faint furrow drew between his brows before his gaze slid back to me.
“Sound,” he said at last, his voice rough like gravel. The word dropped into the quiet with unexpected weight, like a pebble sinking into deep water.
I blinked, unsure I had heard him correctly. “Yeah,” I managed. “It makes sound.”
His lips formed another word, his voice cautious. “Song.” The word emerged like a memory pulled from the back of his throat. After not hearing him speak for two days, this second word came as a surprise.
“You... you know music?” My voice barely found itself.
He didn’t answer, but his expression shifted, understanding sparkling behind his eyes.
He turned his gaze toward the window, where a shaft of light cut through the dust. He lifted his hand into it, palm open, and watched the light sifting across his skin.
The gesture was so simple, so human, it ached to witness.
“You had people once, didn’t you?” I said quietly. “You weren’t always alone.”
When his eyes met mine again, something moved through them—grief, soft and wordless, stirring like wind in tall grass.
My throat tightened. “You know music,” I murmured, just to break the silence. “Maybe that’s something we can work with.”
The sound that followed wasn’t quite a word or a sigh; just a low breath with meaning buried within it.
I rose to my feet, mostly to steady myself. “You stay put, alright? I’ll bring breakfast. Maybe we can see if that old radio still plays a tune.”
Outside, the fog had begun to lift from the ridge, sunlight threading through the trees in thin, bright lines. The morning felt delicate, as if it hadn’t settled fully into itself yet.
I realized I was smiling.
Although I wasn’t sure what counted as breakfast for a creature like my unexpected visitor—or victim—it felt wrong to bring nothing at all.
So I prepared what I knew: two fried eggs, a heel of bread, and a couple of apples that were just one good day away from spoiling.
I set a glass of water beside it all and carried the tray out before I could talk myself out of it.
By then, sunlight stretched across the yard in long bands. The air was already warming, still damp enough to taste the night before. Boone barked once from the porch, more curious than protective, and June Bug trailed behind me until I waved her off.
“Stay,” I said. “You’d scare him worse than the gun did.”
The hinges protested as I pushed the door open. He turned toward me again, just like before, but this time his shoulders didn’t tense. His eyes flicked to the tray, then back to me, and something softened in his face. He wasn’t used to being cared for.
“I didn’t know what you’d eat,” I said, setting the tray on the old workbench. “So I guessed.”
He watched every motion as I arranged the food, nostrils flaring at the smell of the eggs. When I stepped back, he leaned forward, sniffed once, then carefully reached for the bread. He held it like it might crumble if he wasn’t gentle.
“Go on,” I said. “It’s not poison.”
He looked up at me before taking a bite. His teeth were blunt, more human than I expected, and the sound he made—a half sigh, half hum—almost made me laugh.
“Guess you eat what I eat,” I said. “Glad we cleared that up.”
While he ate, I fetched the little radio from the shelf. The dial stuck halfway between stations, as it always did. Still, after some patience and static, I found an old honky-tonk channel. A fiddle wove through the static like it remembered heartbreak from another lifetime.
He froze. His head tilted toward the sound, and his whole body went still. The bread hung forgotten in his hand.
“It’s music,” I said softly. “A song.”
His eyes flicked to me. A quiet rumble slipped from his chest—almost thoughtful—before he echoed, “Song.”
It wasn’t clear. More breath than word.
I blinked hard, convinced I’d imagined it.
“You… said something?” My voice barely carried.
He didn’t answer. His gaze drifted back toward the radio, toward the fiddle weaving through the static. The old man’s voice followed, rough around the edges with talk of mountains and home.
Then, with the same careful focus he gave every new thing, he touched his chest and repeated it—clearer this time.
“Song.”
My heart stumbled.
This wasn’t mishearing.
This wasn’t luck.
“You really can speak,” I whispered, the truth landing with a weight that stole my breath.
A faint change touched his expression—not quite a smile, not quite sorrow—just a shift that made him look undeniably human. He held still, listening again, as if every note mattered.
The air between us felt different now, charged in a way I couldn’t explain. Something was beginning, and I didn’t know what to do with it.
After a while, he turned his gaze back to me. His mouth opened, hesitated, then he said, “You.”
The sound came out soft and uncertain, the word itself surprising him as much as it did me.
“My name?” I asked. “Is that what you mean?”
When he nodded, my pulse jumped. “Yeah,” I said quietly, pointing at my chest. “Liv. My name is Liv.”
I swallowed. “And your name,” I asked, motioning toward him. “What’s your name?”
For a long moment, he only looked at me. The light from the doorway cut across his face, catching the strange gold in his eyes. I could hear the rasp of his breath, the creak of the floor under his weight. Then his lips parted, and he touched his chest again.
“Vek,” he said.
The word was short, rough-edged, but it held something solid. Like the sound itself had roots.
“Vek,” I echoed, and the name lingered in the air between us, heavier than it should’ve been. Saying it felt like opening a door I didn’t know existed.
He watched my mouth as I spoke it again, softer this time. His eyes darkened with something that looked almost like relief.
The quiet pressed close around us, too intimate, too much. My pulse wouldn’t settle. I needed a breath that didn’t belong to the same moment. “I’ll be right back,” I murmured, finding my feet before my thoughts could.
I stepped toward the doorway, letting the cooler air hit me, the name still curling through my mind like a promise I wasn’t ready to hold. Outside, the air cooled the heat still tangled in my chest. I stood there for a moment, trying to steady my thoughts.
For the first time since that night, I felt something I hadn’t dared to feel before.
Hope.
Hope for what? I didn’t even know.
But hope felt fragile in a way I didn’t trust.—not after everything I’d seen. It pressed against my ribs, too new and too fragile to trust.
For the first time since this whole mess began, I didn’t feel hunted. The woods didn’t feel heavy or haunted; they just felt alive. And the visitor in my barn? He wasn’t a beast anymore. He had a name…Vek.
Behind me, the barn door stood cracked open, the soft sound of the radio spilling out and mingling with the morning breeze.
Through the gap, I could still see him sitting in that slant of light, a quilt draped across his shoulders, his head tilted toward the music as if it were the first thing that had made sense in years.
For a moment, I leaned against the porch post and took a slow breath, letting the weight of it all settle.
He’d spoken. Not just a sound, not a noise—but words. Our names.
And the way he’d looked at me afterward wasn’t wild or strange or threatening. It was human—maybe more human than half the men I’d ever met. Definitely more human than T-Bone.
I rubbed the back of my neck, the truth settling heavy like the humidity. “Lord help me,” I muttered. “I’ve lost my damn mind.”
June Bug barked once from the porch, breaking my spiral, her tail swishing through the puddles. Boone followed her with a low chuff, both of them watching the barn as if they knew exactly what I was thinking.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I said. “I didn’t plan this.”
The wind moved through the pines, soft as laughter. Somewhere up the ridge, a truck engine groaned and faded—the world still turning, unaware that something impossible was breathing in my barn.
I pushed off the post and started back toward the house. “One step at a time, Liv,” I told myself. “Feed him. Keep him hidden. Try not to lose your mind.”
Halfway across the yard, I stopped. The air still held the echo of a storm, the kind that settled deep no matter how warm the air turned.
Vek was in there with nothing but a quilt and a lantern, still damp from the rain.
For all I knew, he had a home somewhere deep in the mountains, and I had him sleeping on an itchy bale of hay.
“Dammit,” I muttered, guilt moving back in.
Returning inside the house, I grabbed what I could carry—an old pillow from the closet, another blanket, and the spare sheet from the spare room.
When I stepped back outside, the dogs followed me to the porch, tails thumping slowly.
They were my loyal shadows, no matter how much of a hot mess I was.
By the time I returned to the barn, the air was already heating from the midday sun. Dust floated through the slanted light in slow, loose spirals. He looked up when I opened the door, curiosity in his gaze.
“I brought you something,” I said, setting the items down near him, bedding and a pitcher of water. “You’ll be more comfortable with these.”
Vek watched as I spread the blanket across the hay and tucked the pillow beneath it. When I straightened, he made that low, soft sound again—a sound that reminded me more of gratitude than anything spoken.
“Yeah,” I said, my throat tightening for no good reason. “You’re welcome.”
He blinked slowly, his gaze following me as I turned to leave.
At the door, I paused. “If you need anything,” I said without thinking, “I’ll be right next door.”
He tilted his head, giving the faintest nod. “Okay.”
The word was rough and simple, but it stopped me cold.
I swallowed hard and forced a shaky smile. “Alright then.”
When I stepped outside, the truth hit me in a quieter way.
Caring for him—checking on him, making sure he ate—felt far too natural for what he was and for everything that had happened between us last night. I didn’t know what to do with that.