Chapter 8
The first week at the Goldfinch passes by too quickly. With each day that passes, I fall deeper into relaxation. I’m not sitting or lying around. I’m not being lazy. It’s not that sort of leisure.
I’ve read three books. I’ve eaten delicious home-cooked meals I can never hope to replicate because Marian is a goddess and her “system” in her kitchen produces such goodness I never want to consider eating out again. Yoga is a staple in my life again, not an afterthought of that vague concept of self-care most adults never make time for. Slowly but surely, I feel myself changing after a mere seven days here.
All the crisp, fresh air has reinvigorated me. I suspect I’m one of those lucky people who aren’t impacted by the change of altitude. Hearing birds, chipmunks, frogs, and insects provides a symphony of nature no white noise track would ever compare to. And the glorious sunshine and clear skies add to my enjoyment.
“I think I could love it here,” I admit as I lie on a hammock while Lauren mows in the distance. Marian leans back with me in another hammock. They’re new additions to the rear portion of the property, and I offered to test them out with her. The verdict? Everyone will love them.
“Could?” Marian asks, mocking affront. “You mean you aren’t already?”
I grin at her teasing tone. Lauren sees this older lady as a fairy godmother, but the more I stick around, I come to view her as an aunt. I never had one. Neither of my parents had siblings, and once they were gone, I had no one. No cousins or extended family. Just me. While I see how Lauren was quick to assume Marian in a matronly role, I can’t. I loved my mom, and I could never see someone else as a replacement, even in name.
“I’m enjoying myself,” I confess. Saying I loved anything felt too dangerous. Once the words were spoken—about a person, a thing, a place, or anything—it could be taken away. I don’t need a shrink to recognize that fear. All my adult life, I’ve been terrified to allow an attachment. Except for Lauren. She’s the only person I let in, and even she was almost taken from me.
And getting her out of Jeremy’s clutches hurt me in the end anyway.
“You seem to have fun when you’re helping out,” Marian comments.
“Because it is fun.”
“You don’t miss the classrooms?” she asks carefully.
I do and don’t. This place is so beautiful, so idyllic, that I can see myself living here and being happy in some way or another. On the other hand, I feel like I’m shunned here, cast away from the job that used to define me.
I can’t reply honestly. Speaking up about why going back to my former school isn’t something I’m ready for yet. The second I tell Marian, Lauren will know. And that’s not something that I want to happen.
“Never mind,” Marian says and stands from her hammock. “I won’t push.”
“Why do you ask?” I shield my face from the sunlight as I peer up at her.
“Because I can tell something is missing in your life.”
I wrinkle my brow. “Not you, too.”
“What?” she asks with a smile.
“Are you going to ask me why I won’t give Hayes anything past a hello?” He’s been here with his crew, preparing to lay the foundation for the new house next door.
“Well, he isn’t hard on the eyes.”
Like that’s all that matters.
She shrugs. “I can just tell, Aubrey. Something bothers you, and I have a hunch it’s something missing from your life.” Then she holds her hands up in a truce as she backs toward the house to start on dinner. “I only push because I care.” She smiles warmly then leaves me.
Care. It’s such a simple concept, a transaction of emotion that so many people take for granted. I would know because I’ve seen the absence of it. In my students, particularly. I witnessed much care and emphasis on the expectations to do well, but not so much the care young children need to thrive.
Later that night, I fall asleep after trying to get through the first chapter of a dry science fiction novel that’s been lauded as a “hilarious mix into comedy.” I never DNF—do not finish—a novel, but this might break me. For three nights in a row now, I can’t last to that first chapter break.
Tonight, I regret the last attempt.
A loud crash sounds nearby. It’s so loud that I jolt up from sleep, smacking the book onto my hand.
I breathe quickly as adrenaline wakes me up. Seated in my bed, I wait for a flash of light. I didn’t realize it was supposed to storm, but that had to be thunder. It was just so loud. It shook the floor.
“Fuck!”
I blink, then widen my eyes at the curse. No lightning bolt strikes. Only the fury of one man as he curses aloud again.
Dalton. I lick my lips and swallow, startled by his rough voice.
Has someone broken in? Is someone in there with him? A bat? Random what-ifs fly through my sudden panic. A third time, he grumbles.
“Shit.”
I tilt my head, calming down a teeny bit when I realize it’s only his voice coming from the next room. Only his, so he must be alone and not facing a threat from an intruder. No other sounds, like punches or thuds, follow his profanity.
A glance at my watch shows that it’s four in the morning, and I swing my legs over the edge of the bed. He’s mumbling now, but he’s too quiet for me to make out what he’s saying.
“Dalton?” I wait a moment. “Are you all right?”
His gruff reply comes immediately. “Go back to bed and leave me alone.”
I frown at his order. Jeez. I was only asking if he was okay. “Are you—”
“I’m fine!” he snaps.
I raise my brows, staring at the door. Oh, I know what that word means. He’s far from fine.
I’m about to give up on him though. If he doesn’t want company, then I won’t give him any. But when he hisses, and I can so easily imagine him wincing in pain, I exit my bed. I go toward the door and move the chair over. I left it there all week to block the shared passage, but now, I’m determined to enter his space.
As soon as I step inside, I find him standing next to his bed. He’s wearing light-gray boxers and nothing else. He holds his hand close to his chest, lifting it high, and in his other, he carries a lamp that’s similar in size to the one that sits on my nightstand in my room.
It’s not bright enough to illuminate the entire room, but it does cast shadows of his tall form. Most importantly, it allows me to see the blood dripping off his finger. A lot of blood.
I react, approaching him before I think it through. “What happened?”
“Can’t you listen? I said go back to bed.”
I’ve dealt with many unruly and belligerent children before. Dalton is all man, but my technique has to work on him, too.
I stand taller and look him directly in the eye as I drop into my “teacher” voice. I’m sure it’s an equivalent to a “mom” voice that implies don’t even think about messing with me, punk.
“Dalton, tell me what happened.”
He exhales roughly and glowers at me. “Use your brain. I cut myself.”
Never mind his lack of an explanation. “I see that,” I retort before I pass him and go toward his ensuite bathroom. It’s larger than mine, but I’m pleased it’s stocked the same as mine is. I find a first-aid kit beneath the sink vanity. Then I return to the wounded, growly man.
“Sit. There.” I point at the edge of the bed, relying on my no-nonsense tone to suggest he listen up and listen now. After he lowers himself, I sit next to him and begin to doctor him up. The gash isn’t very long, but it seems deep. Nothing is wedged into his skin, though, so I’m fairly confident I won’t be doing anything wrong by wiping the area clean, disinfecting it with cream, then bandaging it carefully with butterfly closures then liberally with gauze.
“I dropped a glass of water that was on my nightstand,” he says quietly and calmly now. I feel the burn of his attention on me. All the while, he stares at me, watching without a word as I tend to his wound. I’m almost through with dabbing the excess blood and wiping it clean when he continues. “I slipped when I got up to clean it up. Then as I got up from falling, I cut myself.”
I purse my lips, amazed he didn’t manage to cut himself anywhere else with a blind drop like that onto glass shards.
“You should probably get stitches,” I say to break the silence. It’s unnerving me now. Coupled with the intense stare he lays on me, I feel under pressure, under scrutiny.
“Eh.”
I glance up at him, deadpan.
His digit looks ridiculously thick with all the gauze, and it remains pointing between us, a faint barrier. It’s then that I realize how close we’re sitting together. I’m reminded all over again of how flustered I felt near his body heat in the truck on the way to dinner that first night here. Now, he’s practically naked, only in his boxers. I didn’t pay his state of dress any mind while I was focused on helping him, but now that my audition for nursing is complete, the sight of all his bare skin is way too obvious.
And I’m in my rattiest, flimsiest nightie. I shoot to my feet, careful of avoiding his touch as he stands as well.
His hand comes out to steady me when I wobble in my haste to evade him. If he touches me now, if his rough fingers make contact, I’ll burn on the spot. His stare is heavy enough. But his touch?
I swallow. My mouth is dry and I fight the urge to run.
“Careful of the glass,” he says quietly.
I blush, bewildered to be receiving his concern after I so eagerly showed him mine. The need to flee grows by the second, and as I turn, he gently presses his fingers to the back of my arm. My exposed flesh tingles from his touch, and I shiver slightly. It’s too much. The lack of clothes. The privacy we share. The bed right there. And his softer, calmer demeanor. It’s messing with me, making me worry I’ve gone crazy with lust.
“Thank you,” he says sincerely.
I smile, the short and polite one I reserve for acknowledging strangers on the sidewalk when they make eye contact with me. “This doesn’t change the fact that I don’t like you.”
He tips his chin up. In the shadows of the night, it makes him look dangerous and defiant. Why do both of those make him even sexier? What dark magic is this nonsense? He’s annoying. He’s full of himself. He’s—
“I don’t like you either,” he says then smirks.
He’s not my number-one fan, I recall. Remembering that fact sobers me from this weird haze, and it propels me to rush and return to my room without a glance back. I close the door and silently replace the chair to block it from opening. Then I drop to sit in it, befuddled and feeling odd after that interaction.
Like I reminded Lauren, I never really put myself out there to dating. I never allowed myself to be available to date, and now, after the loss of my job and home, I’m nowhere near emotionally ready to be open to date anyone.
Before coming here, dating never crossed my mind. I’m only twenty-five. I have time. Since I left college, my jobs were my life because I had to eke out a living somehow.
Something about Dalton gets to me though, and it’s not just how fine he looked almost naked. It was the soft tone, the patience, that soul-deep way he stared at me like I was a puzzle he wanted to solve.
I don’t know what it is about Dalton that sets my teeth on edge and makes me feel so aware and alive, but I can tell it’s in a good way.
He annoys me, but that’s not all anymore.
Shaking my head, I return to bed, wondering why I let him get to me and what the heck I can do now to avoid him tomorrow.
When I wake a couple of hours later, it’s to an excited Lauren jumping on my bed.
“Just get up already, sleepyhead!”
I pout at her. “Why?”
“Because Caleb is taking us to Copper Mountain for the day. Near Frisco!”
I wake up a bit, yawning. “Us?”
She nods. “The four of us!”
I slump back onto the bed and just barely hold in a growl of irritation.
So much for figuring out how I’ll avoid Dalton today.