Chapter Five
Atlas
Heavy rain clouds sit over the house as I slide down onto the floor with Jen, a fork for each of us already dug into the gooey-sweet blackberry pie.
“This is my grandma’s recipe. Her crust, anyway. The filling is something I found online.” She takes a bite of the pie. “Do you like it?”
“You know, all these years of blackberries and no one ever made a pie with them. It’s delicious. Flaky, sweet, and perfect.”
Jen side eyes me. “You don’t have to pretend to love my pie because we fooled around.”
“I’m not pretending. It’s really good. Honestly.” I take another bite. “You bake a lot?”
“Umm… depends how much work I’m trying to avoid. Lately, I’ve been baking non-stop. I just learned a new apple cider donut recipe if you’re interested.”
I can’t help but grin. “I’m interested. Always. I would never say no to apple cider donuts, but I’m curious what work you’re trying to avoid.”
She sighs loudly and drops her fork in the pie pan before reaching up onto the counter for a bottle of water that’s been sitting there since I arrived. “I’m a writer.”
“A writer. I didn’t see that one coming. Not sure why I thought maybe you’d be a nurse or a schoolteacher or something.”
“Nope.” She shakes her head. “Nowhere near as useful. I sit around making up stories all day, and lately, I can’t even do that.”
“Writer’s block?”
She shakes her head and twists her hair to the side of her shoulder, her cheeks still red from our fun. “I don’t believe in writer’s block. I think I’ve just hit a wall. I can’t tap into that version of me anymore. I don’t know why.”
“Version of you?”
“I write under an alter ego.”
“Okay, this is getting interesting. So, you have multiple personalities?”
A bit of laughter spills from her throat. “Something like that. I used to be so good at getting into that headspace, but my last book has been sitting on my laptop untouched for two months, and despite the fact that I have a Friday deadline, I don’t know what to say.”
“What do you write?”
“Paranormal romance.”
“That’s a thing?”
She nods and slides her fork into her mouth, licking the sweet berries off the metal. “It’s a huge thing. I write vampire men, mostly. It’s a pretty successful genre.”
“Vampire men? Not sure I can compete with the immortal experience of a vampire. What do you do to refill your creative reserves?”
“My creative reserves? Are you an artist? You’re talking artist talk.”
“No,” I laugh, “but my sister is, though. She’s always talking about filling her bucket and finding inspiration.”
“What kind of artist is she?”
“Painter. She does a lot of landscape work. Sells it down at the market every Saturday. She’s always talking about how to fill her creative well.”
“It’s a real thing. I’m hoping this move helps me somehow.
It’s nice to have space again. Reed never wanted land, so we lived in this little housing development a few miles from the highway.
It was a nice home, but it wasn’t the best for creative exploration.
” She tucks her fork into the pie again and scoops another bite.
“That transition to suburbia must have been hard on you having grown up in the woods.”
Her dark gaze meets mine as though she finds warmth in what I’ve said. “It was. I always tried to convince him to buy property, but he wouldn’t budge. When we got divorced, looking for land was the first thing I did. Your parents’ place reminds me so much of the acreage I grew up on in Wyoming.”
Blackberry juice drips onto my shirt as I say, “You never said what happened there.”
“My mom got sick, the house and the land got to be too much for them to maintain, and they needed the cash flow to buy a new, smaller place. The people that bought it from them sold it two months after the sale to a developer, and now I don’t even recognize it.”
“You went back?”
“Once. I thought maybe driving by would give me that nostalgic hit I needed, but I found a circle of ten brand new homes with white vinyl fences and perfectly manicured lawns. It was all gone. The oak trees my dad planted when I was born, the golden rod, the rock garden, the ATV trail, the gravel driveway… everything.” A tear wells in her eye.
“It’s stupid how emotional I’m getting over all this, I know that, but there was something about that place that made me who I am.
I wish I’d taken more memories, more rocks from the garden, something… ya know?”
“I don’t think that’s stupid.” I rest my hand on her leg. “I feel the same way about this place. When I found out it had been sold, it felt like a family member had died.”
She draws in a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “And I’m the murderer in question.”
I laugh. “Found you holding the knife.”
A slow smile builds before she bites it back.
“When I was a kid, I was always a little different from everyone else. I wasn’t athletic like my sister or super smart.
I was emotional. I could sense everything around me and I felt those feelings super deeply.
Connecting with my family on that level was hard, so I’d go outside, I’d sit at the edge of the woods, and I’d talk to the trees, for hours sometimes, picking blades of grass while I whispered everything in my heart to the pines.
” She goes quiet for a moment before glancing toward me.
“When the rest of the world was in chaos, I could always count on the woods.”
“I see why you’re a writer.”
She shakes her head slowly and glances down at the pine floors. “I’m not sure I’d be good at anything else. Emotions are the only thing I’m good at, and I’m not so sure the world sees that as a positive thing outside of creative work.”
“That’s on the world then. I’m pretty sure planet Earth has enough tough guys. Folks like you are rare and should be protected at all costs. Empathy like yours is an asset we should all admire.”
Our gaze holds on one another as she says, “Why are you doing that?”
“Doing what?”
She shrugs. “You don’t have to pretend to like my pie or my sensitive personality because you want to have sex with me. I’ll just have sex with you, and I’m not that empathetic. I’m a bitch.”
I laugh, my cock growing hard at her straightforwardness.
“I know you’re hurt, I know you’ve had a lifetime of people telling you that something is wrong with you for being who you are, and I know you’ve got these walls up to protect yourself, but I’m going to show you that you don’t need them with me. ”
She rolls her eyes and stands from the ground before tossing her fork into the sink. “You should go.”
“I know you don’t want to get hurt, and this feels scary to you, doesn’t it? It feels scary because he always made you feel like you were too much. I won’t make you feel that way, little bunny.” I brush a strand of hair from her face as I talk.
“This isn’t about you making me feel anything at all,” she huffs, arms crossed over her chest. “This is about you coming to a wedding as my fake date to make my asshole ex and his twenty-something girlfriend jealous. Don’t make this more than it is. It’s not good for either of us.”
Usually, I’m the one holding everyone at arm’s length. I’m not used to being on this side of things.
“We still have to talk details for the wedding. I need to know your favorite color, whether you love coffee or tea, and where you want to be in five years. Details are what’s going to make this work.”
“My favorite color is green, I don’t like tea, and I don’t know anything beyond the present. Now if you’ll excuse—”
“Don’t you want to know mine?”
Her eyes roll to the side as she glances back at me. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue,” I grin, “I like black coffee, and I plan to be living on this property again someday. Speaking of this place, let’s go take a walk out into the back forty. It’s a great stroll this time of the year with all the leaves changing, and we can see if my old hunting blind is still standing.”
“What?”
“It’ll be fun.” I reach for her hand. “Come on. We can take a walk, come back, order some food, bake, and we’ll talk about your book. I think I’ve got some ideas that are going to blow your mind.”
She hides another smile. “You really think you’re the first boy to offer me a romance plotline?”
“No, but I know I’m the last.”
She shakes her head. “You won’t be, trust me. Men come from far and wide with ideas they think are genius for my stories.”
“But I’d bet none of them are holding your hand.”
There’s no response to this statement. She only glances down at our hands intertwined as she slides on her shoes and steps out into the chilly afternoon with me. Thankfully the rain settled while we finished the pie.
“I have no idea why I’m going along with this. I should be inside looking for more of your family’s secrets in the walls.”
“Well,” I squeeze her hand as we walk across the back field toward the treeline, “I’d bet you’re onto something. Dad kept all kinds of things in weird places. I wouldn’t be surprised if you were renovating a few years from now and found another box of money or a safe with old guns and ammo.”
This gets me a genuine smile. “Your dad sounds like an interesting guy.”
“He was interesting, alright. Paranoid to the max, but he could do just about anything, and if he didn’t know how, he taught himself.”
“My friend Mabel always says, ‘don’t marry the guy that has a guy, marry the guy that is the guy.’ It always stuck with me.” She glances at the grass, a cool breeze blowing across the field.
“Why do you think it stuck with you?”
Her gaze lifts from the ground and meets mine, our feet now planted in the grass as the trees rustle in the wind. “I don’t know. I guess I’ve never had a guy like that. A guy who takes care of everything.”
I squeeze her hand tighter and bite back the emotion swelling up from my chest.
What the fuck is happening to me? Why do I feel so damn close to this woman I barely know? I know why I want her body, and I understand why someone would want her heart, but I’m not usually that guy.
I don’t catch a bunch of feelings, I don’t dwell on my emotions, and I’ve never in my life wanted to tell a woman I’d fix all her problems, but here the fuck I am, and I mean every damn word of it.