6. MATTHEW
Chapter six
MATTHEW
READY OR NOT, WE WORK
Atlas walks ahead of me, his hands out a little at his sides, fingers brushing against the soft tips of the long grass.
The hint of what I’m sure are scars peek out from under his pushed-up sleeves, but I don’t ask him about them even though that was my first thought.
I don’t know all that much about Atlas. I do know he likes to spend his alone time totally naked, though—a sight I now have embedded in my mind after I came to ask him about the stables we were having installed.
I don’t remember seeing the scars then, though my gaze was sort of distracted at the time.
Maybe they don’t run that far up his arm.
It could be from anything, really. He could have fallen off a horse, been in a car wreck, been in a fight, anything.
“Are you getting this all down?” Atlas calls back.
“Sure am,” I lie and scramble to mark the last few sections we travelled through the thick brush.
He continues to lead the way and I follow close behind, dotting the path on the digital map, marking where there are trees we’ll need to remove with a little x.
The ground is pretty uneven, and I make a mental note to ask Dean what kind of gravel they used for the walking paths through the property.
It’d be nice to carry the same along the horse trail.
We’re out there for over an hour, when he decides we need to go back to the start and retrace our steps to make sure we’re not missing a better way.
I don’t argue that with how slow we’ve been moving, if there were a better path, we’d have chosen it.
I just continue along behind him back to the road.
“I’ll be right back,” he says, jogging toward the house.
“I’ll just wait here,” I say, as I lean against the railing of the horse paddocks and start scouting ahead on the map. There was a creek I saw on the maps I checked out back at my place that I think could be nice to take the trail across.
Something nudges my back, and I jolt, almost dropping the tablet.
“Holy shit, Loki, you scared me,” I gasp, and he shakes his head like he’s laughing at me. “Was that your plan, boy? Were you sneaking up on me the way people like to sneak up on you?”
I shove the tablet in the back of my jeans the way Atlas had it and run my hands up the sides of Loki’s long face. He lifts his head a little in approval.
“When we have this new trail ready, I’ll be sure we take you through it first. Would you like that?
” I ask, and I hear a chuckle behind me and turn to find Atlas’s bright blue eyes on me.
He’s holding two old scythes. Rust covers both the blades from years of probably sitting in some forgotten corner of a tool shed, but something tells me they’re still pretty fucking sharp.
“Are you ready to work?” he asks, holding one out.
“You want us to start clearing the grass already?”
“You got a better way to keep on top of where we’ve plotted out?”
I don’t. The grass was so thick in some places that it swallowed up our footprints the second we lifted our feet, but I’ve never used a scythe before, and one wrong move could easily put one or both of us in the hospital, or worse.
“You look worried,” he says.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m up for anything you want,” I reply, and it comes out far more flirty than I intended. His eyebrows pick up a little, and I can see the hint of a smile teasing at the corner of his lips.
“But?”
“I’m not sure what you want is a trip to the emergency room.”
He laughs. “How about we just start with manual labor and go from there,” he replies as he passes me the smaller of the two scythes. “I’ll show you how to use it safely. Don’t worry, it’s not that hard.”
On his way past, he gives Loki a pat.
“I see you’re enjoying yourself out here,” he tells him.
“You know you’re talking to a deaf horse,” I laugh.
“Doesn’t mean he doesn’t understand what I’m saying.”
“No… it doesn’t.”
We start with a lesson in scythe cutting out by the road where the grass is already short.
When he’s confident I have the sweeping motion down, we move into the bush.
I go in first, staying to the left of where we’ve mapped out, and Atlas follows behind, sticking to the right.
It’s harder than I thought. The blade slices through the grass easily enough, but when it catches on a shrub, the vibration rolls through the blade and up the handle into my hands, and the blisters from yesterday’s mucking sting and ache, loosening my grip more than I’d like.
We pause to check the map every five minutes or so of cutting, and I feel like I’m just getting the hang of things when Atlas calls out, “Stop!”
I freeze mid-swing and a small brown-gray bird flutters around a shrub on my left. I follow its high-pitched song to where it’s started to build a nest in the thick of the shrub I was just about to slice through.
“What is it?” I ask, trying to get closer, but the bird flutters away.
“An Indigo Bunting.”
“It’s brown, though.”
“Yeah, it’s a female. It has a touch of faint blue in the wings and tail, but it’s the males that really live up to their name. They’re early this year. I didn’t expect to see them until the weather warmed up a little more.”
“Why don’t they nest higher up in the trees where it’s safer?”
“Why don’t chickens fly?” he asks, like that is in any way related.
“Chickens don’t fly because their heavy bodies are too large for their small wings. I’m pretty sure these birds can reach the treetops just fine.”
“The correct answer is, because they just don’t.”
“But that’s not the correct answer.”
“What did we agree to earlier?” he asks with a raised brow and a smile teasing at his lips.
“Fine. You’re right. Okay?”
He nods in approval, and I glance around for where to go next.
“We should cut through that way instead,” I say, moving on. I’ll look up the real reason later. “Will there be others?”
“Could be a few females. Keep an eye out for the male too. He’ll be around here somewhere, guarding his territory.”
“What, like, there’s just one guy and how many females?”
“It’s not uncommon for them to have two or three. They basically have their territory that they stick to, and can attract more than one female to it.”
“Well, aren’t they players?”
“I guess so,” he chuckles, and we get back to clearing the grass from the trail, slower now that we’re keeping an eye out for more of the Indigo Buntings.
I catch sight of the male about ten minutes later, and then Atlas spots another female on the other side of the trail. Their song is kind of like the sparrows we’d get every now and again in the city. It’s prettier than the coos of the pigeons that normally frequent the windowsills back home.
When we finally get to the end of the section we’d plotted out, I drop the scythe to the ground and plonk down on the grass beside it, stretching my fingers in and out, feeling the stretch and sting of the blisters as I try not to wince at the pain.
“Harder than it looks, huh?” Atlas asks, resting his scythe on the cut grass beside mine like he’s setting down a valuable antique.
“Are your hands still vibrating too?” I ask, and he chuckles and sits beside me. I instantly get a lungful of his delicious musk scent.
He turns his hands over in front of him, the calluses on his palms catching the filtered light.
“A little.”
“Do you think we’ll get this side done today?” I ask.
“Maybe. I guess it depends on how deep we go. Pass me the map.”
I hand over the tablet, and he zooms out.
“I’m thinking we continue up this way until about maybe here, then we can start wrapping around.”
If we do that, we’ll completely miss the creek I saw on the other maps.
You can’t see it on the tablet, with the tree cover so dense, but I’m not sure I should say anything.
It’s not like he’s wanted to hear any of my ideas for this place.
Though he was pretty keen to know how I could pet Loki. Maybe. Fuck it.
“I’m pretty sure there’s a creek about here,” I say, leaning in to point it out on the map. My shoulder rests against his, and heat floods through my shirt and travels up my arm.
“Beaker Creek is on the other side of the property,” he says, and I nod.
“I know. This isn’t that big one, it’s smaller, and looked like it came down along this way,” I say, tracing the path on the map for him to see.
“I don’t remember seeing a creek out on this side of the land last time I was out here. Are you sure?”
“Pretty sure. It was on a map they used when the Royals place was up for sale. If we take the trail deeper, it could be really pretty for the guests, break up the scenery a little, you know, so they’re not just riding through trees.”
He makes a sort of hmm noise as he zooms in on the digital map in the location I pointed out.
“I guess we can check it out,” he says, and my chest swells.
“Really?”
“Yeah, why not. If you’re right, it would be a good spot to stop to give the horses a drink too. Come on, let’s go,” he says, climbing to his feet.
“You want to check it out now?”
“You got better things to do?”
“No, I just thought… Never mind,” I say, and I stand and go to pick up my scythe.
“Leave it. No point cutting the way if we end up not going that way for the trail.”
“Oh, right, yeah, good point,” I say, and he holds out the tablet.
“Go on, then, lead the way to your creek.”
I take us through the trees toward where the creek should be.
The ground slopes down, making the walk easier, though what goes down will have to eventually come back up at some point, and given my thighs are already burning from bracing my body to swing the scythe for the last hour, I’m not particularly excited about the walk back.
The deeper we go, the more I know Atlas has to be losing trust that this creek is even there. In truth, even I’m starting to wonder if I remember the maps correctly. I’m about to give up when I hear the faint trickle of water up ahead.
“Do you hear that?” I ask, turning to Atlas.
“Sounds like we found it,” he says, and we break through the section of trees ahead to find a rocky creek with slow-running water. It looks to be fed from further up on the Beakers’ property and runs down toward the back of the Royals’ land next door.
“It’s so pretty. The guests will love it, don’t you think?” I ask, and he scrunches up his nose a little.
“What?” I ask.
“We can’t bring the horses down here,” he says, and I sigh.
“Why not?”
“You noticed the incline on the way here, didn’t you?”
“Of course.”
“And what happens to the bottom of a creek when it rains?”
“Oh, shit. Yeah, this whole area would fill up with all the runoff from up higher,” I say, turning to look up the hill where the water is coming from.
“Exactly. From the looks of this area, it was probably about five feet deep last wet season.”
“Really? That much?”
“Yep.”
“Well, there goes that idea, then,” I say, and I start to head back through the grass.
“Not entirely.”
I spin to face him.
“What do you mean? You said it yourself; we can’t have a horse trail through a flood zone.”
“But we can follow this to see where it leads. There might be a section higher up that would be perfect.”
“You think?”
“Only one way to find out. You know you’ll have to come up with a name for it, seeing as you found it.”
“It’s on the Beakers’ property. They’ll want to name it.”
Atlas shakes his head.
“They’ll tell you the same thing I just did. You found it, you name it.”
“What does a person even name a creek?”
“How about Matthew’s creek?”
“Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it?” I laugh. “How about Indigo Creek?”
A soft smile spreads across his face, and he nods.
“I think Indigo Creek is perfect. Now, let’s see what’s feeding this thing.”
“Then can you feed me?” I ask, and it comes out really fucking flirty. “I mean, can we eat? I’m hungry. Can we get food? Fuck, stop me anytime.” I sigh, scrubbing my hand through my sweat-covered hair.
He shakes his head just slightly, lips hinting at a smile before he turns, replying, “I’ll see what I can do.”