Chapter 11
ELEVEN
There was medication to suppress nightmares, something I learned as a ten-year-old living on half-night’s sleep.
I had a recurring nightmare that’d resurface every year: a house invasion in some random cabin in the middle of nowhere.
The goal was to figure out how to bar the door.
How to trust the locks would hold and then, find a place to hide when they didn’t.
I self-soothed by preparing. Nothing I did could ever prevent the inevitable. But having a checklist or things to do and places to hide in the cabin helped me weather the storm.
I’d never experienced a house invasion outside of my dreams. But the possibility lurked in the recesses of my subconscious.
And now that Rae was here, my nightmare felt real again.
Shadows took shape, crawling around me while I slept.
And I made a list on how to cope with what was front on me.
What was real and what was being exaggerated thanks to my heightened anxiety.
“There was dirt in your bed,” Wilson had insisted when I’d woken with an ache in my neck and the goal to do anything but talk about the night before.
“Our whole front yard is dirt. I brought plenty of it inside.” Yes, the nightmare had been so plausible while it was happening.
But much like every time I resurfaced from house invasion panic, my senses returned.
My bedroom floor had never been the cleanest. And I hadn’t been as focused on indoor chores versus outdoor ones. I’d be better about cleaning days.
“Hey.” Rae was a few paces ahead of me. Kat took advantage of her lack of experience and my proneness to daydreaming.
“Yeah?” I blinked myself into the here and now with the woman I’d paid an exorbitant amount of money to read me a bedtime story.
“When did you start riding?” Rae tried to look over her shoulder but got spooked when Kat picked up her pace a couple of notches.
I squeezed my knees gently on Frog’s side, urging him to catch up. “My mom got a job doing finances at a stable one year. We got a discounted rate on lessons.”
“That sounds nice.”
“It was my version of heaven.” I smiled, remembering how thoughtful my mom could be when she wanted.
My parents weren’t neglectful, per se, but they weren’t there to pick me up when I fell either. From the moment I learned to tie my shoes and make a sandwich, I was expected to take things from there. Self-soothe and self-congratulate.
“She kept finding me outside the pens after school. Since we moved around a lot, I was the worst at making friends. I never really learned how to communicate in time to form relationships. You want to know the best thing about horses?”
“They don’t care if you can string together a coherent sentence?”
“Exactly.” I patted the side of Frog’s neck. “And according to the stable hand, they were excellent judges of character. They always came up to me for pets or treats. Thus making my head swell to almost the size of yours.”
Rae tilted her head back as she laughed.
Her hair brushed back and forth in the wind, a mesmerizing wave.
My palm still burned from when I caught her before falling.
Rae’s long strands had kissed my skin like a gentle whisper.
Because her body had briefly pressed against mine, I wondered if I smelled like her.
I wondered if it was strange to want to and quickly decided it was.
“They sensed you were kind.”
I smiled. “Something like that. They accepted me. And I felt like I was worthy of friendship for the first time…I cried myself to sleep for a month when my dad decided he wanted to spend the next year working at a national park. Once we moved, I lived for any excuse to ride again.”
“I’m guessing those didn’t come around too often.” Rae’s smile faded when I shook my head. “Why did they move so much?”
“They were roamers.” I nudged Frog left at the fork in the road.
We still had about twenty minutes until we got to town.
“Staying still made them anxious. They wanted to see everything. Dreamed about being city people and country people. Living in the mountains and near the sea. They said life was far too short to just live it one kind of way.”
Rae looked down for a second, mouth pulled into a tight line as she thought. “We have something in common, finally. My parents didn’t like to stay still either. Can’t help everyone on this planet like that.”
If she wasn’t smiling, I’d say there was some bite in her tone when she said, everyone. Resentment. But her eyes remained clear, brow unbothered. Rae ran her fingers through Kat’s mane without a care.
“How’d they get into hunting?” I’d searched for hours online about her parents, but information on them was scarce.
They barely got more than a paragraph in their bio on the Guild’s official website.
The picture of them had been old, too, a shot of a wiry man with thick curls, light brown skin, and skin tags sprinkled across his cheeks.
He had an arm wrapped around a dark-skinned woman who wore circle-shaped glasses.
Her hair was buzzed short, and she had a slightly gap-toothed smile.
They couldn’t have been over thirty in the photo.
“My grandpa,” Rae said. “He grew up in an old town where, when people died, they would often linger in alleyways and attics. Everyone kept quiet about it, too religious to want to study over prayer. But Grandpa studied. And he learned how to help some of them move on. He taught my dad, and when my dad met Mom in college, she told him about her cousin who’d been showing up long after a drowning accident.
He went back home with her to help, and the rest is history. ”
Kat slowed down for a moment, getting distracted by a patch of grass on the side of the road. She munched as I asked Rae, “Do they still hunt now? With your sisters?”
“No, they’re retired. They occasionally consult on jobs. They live right outside the Guild headquarters, so they’re just a walk away from all the action.”
“Are they proud of you going out on your own? Starting something like they did?”
Rae smiled to herself. “I think they think I’m silly trying to build something new next to a system that already works. Dad said it seemed like a waste of time considering the number of resources the Guild’s hoarded. Not his exact words.”
She continued to mindlessly comb through Kat’s hair. Her smile faded as she got lost in a thought.
“It’s commendable,” I said. “Wanting to do something different. You told me you wanted everyone to feel like they could defeat their monsters. And you’re giving them tools to do so. That’s not a waste of time.”
Rae met my gaze; the small smile on her lips made her eyes brighter than an early morning sun. “See, that’s why I wasn’t sure if I could believe you. You sound so honest when you’re lying.”
“I’m not lying.” I held up two fingers. “Swear.”
“You’re commending me for shilling out fake weapons to fight fake monsters?”
“After these past couple of days, I believe you think this is all real.” She’d spent the night setting up cameras and going over protocols.
Her team’s equipment was extensive; boxes and boxes of things I couldn’t even begin to put names to.
A gag didn’t warrant this much commitment.
Especially when they hadn’t even filmed a video for their socials once since they’d been here.
“And those attendees at the event sure as hell believe. So, yes, it’s commendable that you want to help them. Not everyone’s willing to decenter themselves and fight someone else’s demons.”
The compliment didn’t land as I thought it might. Rae tugged her gaze away from me, directing it to the fields that stretched back toward Elmwood.
Kat had her fill of grazing and started forward, ready to resume the lead. The horses’ hooves clicked on the dirt road, the only noise between us in the silence.
I replayed my words again, trying to pinpoint exactly what I had said wrong.
This type of thing used to happen often while growing up.
I’d say something to a bunch of kids. They’d stare at me in silence before either laughing and turning away or grimacing and turning away.
And I’d swear up and down words didn’t work the same for me like they did for others.
Some people could say complete nonsense that’d somehow earn them praise.
I was in the camp of saying something mundane and earning scorn.
Times like these, I folded inward. Batten down my hatches. But before I could commit, I perked up at the sight of a tree right off the edge of the road.
“Let’s stop here really quick.” I got off Frog and started toward the tree.
Rae followed suit, hesitating for a second to ask, “Should I tie her to a post or something?”
“No, she won’t wander. Neither of them will go far.”
“And cars?” Rae looked behind and in front of us. The long gravel road stretched for miles, home to nothing but emptiness.
“We’re the most action this road’s going to get today.” The grass I stepped in was almost long enough to swallow my knees. “Do you like peaches?”
Rae’s eyes widened at the peach tree I stood under. She closed the distance between us, tilting her head up to marvel at the plump, fresh fruit. We both took a deep inhale, filling our lungs with the sweet scent.
“Wilson makes a life-altering peach cobbler.” I dug in my back pocket for a cloth grocery bag. “With you all here, he’ll make it without me having to bargain.”
Rae helped me pick the best ones. I laughed anytime she released a gasp and murmured about how bright and big they were.
“Taste one.” I nodded when she studied the peach I offered.
“Is it…like free of worms and stuff?”
I shrugged, used the bottom of my shirt to wipe it off, and then took a bite. The juice tickled down my chin, warm and sticky. Rae’s gaze tracked the movement when I wiped my chin with the back of my hand.
“It won’t kill you.” I offered her the peach again. “If it does, I’ll go first, and maybe your team will find my ghost and have enough time to figure out how to save you.”
Rae snorted but took a bite. I’d expected her to taste the other side, but she went right for the spot I bit off. She closed her eyes as she chewed.
“Not to be dramatic, but I think this is the fruit they had in the Garden of Eden.” Rae’s lips were glossy with juice. She took her time licking it off.
Our fingers brushed as I reached for the peach again.
I held my breath, counting to five before releasing it because that helped whenever my heart pounded a mile a minute.
Here was this woman who could command a room with a simple half-smile.
And here I was, barely able to spend more than a few minutes in someone’s presence without them losing interest.
Except that hadn’t been true with her. Even now, Rae watched as I bit, studying my movements as if her survival depended on it.
“Just when I figured there wasn’t much to enjoy about being in a small town,” she mused, still watching my mouth. “Fresh fruit. Peace and quiet. Perfect breezes. It’s…reviving.”
I smiled. “That’s exactly what Alpine did for me when I first visited as a kid.”
“Right, you’ve been here before. You ending up here is destiny, you think? Or do you not believe in that either?” she teased.
“I don’t believe in it,” I confirmed and handed over our peach. “I do believe in obsessive romanticism. I’ve always wanted to know where roads ended. Always wanted to have a home at the end of one.”
I loved that when I crossed the threshold of my house, it smelled like Wilson and me. No new carpet, fresh paint, or linoleum. Our house was full of apple spice, pine, and leather. Use had softened everything. It was all indisputably ours.
“How about you?” I asked. “Do you like the RV? Not knowing where you’ll end up next?”
She laughed softly, opting to study the tree instead of meeting my gaze. “It’s in my blood.”
I raised a brow, surprised. “That’s not an answer.”
“I enjoy meeting new people. Seeing new places. I don’t think I was made for roots.”
I tucked her words into the back of my mind as a reminder. Not made for roots. I’d used that to wash over me like cold water when I got all dreamy and wondering about her, me, and what-ifs.
“It’s a beautiful gift.” I turned back to the tree, resuming my collecting. “Being able to connect with new people. Charm them.”
“It’s a skill I’ve worked on over the years.”
“Worked on?”
“I used to be extremely argumentative. Picked fights at the academy with anyone outside of my family.” She held the bag steady for me to drop in more fruit.
“It was a defense mechanism after years of trying to get my family to listen to my ideas. Safer to challenge others than the root of the issue.”
“Makes sense.” I slipped the last couple of peaches into the bags, retrieving it from Rae. “And now, you can just flirt with anyone who looks your way.”
I wanted it to be a light and silly comment. But the words came out like a judgment, prickly and hot. Like I carried disdain.
Rae didn’t bat an eyelash, but her smile faded ever so slightly. My stomach turned. I tried to think of a way to stuff the words back down my throat. I’d choke on them if it meant making her smile again.
“Flirting’s fun,” Rae said simply. “Maybe trivial, but hell, the job can get dark. And I like to find bits of light where I can.”
“I didn’t mean anything by…I’m sorry for saying it like that…”
“It’s fine. It’ll take a lot more than that to offend me.” Rae tossed me a rogue peach. “Are we done here? Seems like you have a good batch.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, limply holding on to the peach.
She started back to the horses without a word. I followed, silently cursing myself.