Chapter 10
NICK
Nick must have dozed off after he finished tidying up the kitchen.
He wasn’t too surprised. He was bone tired from getting the house ready and the stress of everything just drained him.
And pretending like none of it bothered him, especially when he went down to the village, to make sure those two parts of his life were kept firmly apart…
Or at least as firmly as he could. They had too many meeting points.
He hated the looks he got in Kilfayne, hated the whispers. Oh, he knew what they said about him. And the problem was, they weren’t entirely wrong, were they?
One day, Alex would hear all the gossip and the rumours and everything else, all his secrets stripped bare, and then what kind of look would she give him? It wouldn’t be the look of obvious desire that had woken its twin in him.
Until she remembered herself. And looked at him properly.
Sasquatch. It was almost funny, now that he thought about it. The wild creature in the woods. Was that how he looked to her? Well, if that protected them so be it. The woods were a boundary and he guarded them. He was not so very far from Kilfayne’s own walker in the woods.
He’d just meant to sit down for a while, finish up the emails he’d had to put aside earlier when Patricia called and then…
He woke up still in that hard chair, face on the kitchen table pillowed in his arm, the light of the laptop giving the kitchen an eerie glow and a full mug of stone-cold tea beside him.
Honestly, he didn’t even remember making it.
The kitchen door swung wide, creaking, the night whispering in through the boot room beyond.
The outer door there was open as well and the scent of the woods was rising.
Wildflowers and moss, the peaty, oaky smell of sap and fresh leaves, the warmth of the night…
And the sound, the creaks of branches and the whispering of leaves, the nightsong of the forest.
Was that what had woken him? The door opening? Or the woods beyond? But the outer door had been closed. Locked. He knew that. He’d done it himself.
It wasn’t locked now.
As he stared at it, he heard that sigh, deep and threatening, a sound of satiation and desire.
He was still dreaming. He had to be.
Except he wasn’t.
Outside in the night the wind was rising.
There was a full moon over the trees, and clouds scuttered across it, making a patchwork of light and dark flood over the garden beyond the door and the boot room.
The trees rose like a black wall on the far side of the cottage garden, their deep tangle even darker on a night like this.
And in between, right at the edge of the woodland, he could see a figure. It wasn’t entirely there, nor entirely human. Not really. It was made of leaves and branches, a tangle of vines and tendrils, of fruit and flowers. His imagination, he liked to tell himself.
Even if that wasn’t entirely true either.
Nick sighed.
The figure smiled at him – always amused with Nick’s dark moods, never one to take anything seriously – and then beckoned him forward. It vanished into the trees as if it had never been there to begin with.
The night stirred with expectation. A bird called softly from the trees, a long wavering song. The wild wood waited.
‘All right,’ he murmured in a low voice. ‘All right, I’m coming.’
What else could he do? What choice did he have? He headed out into the night and the woods closed around him like a tomb.