And then there he is.
He gazes down at me, moonlight dusting the curves of his features. Bears don’t have wavy blond hair or cotton T-shirts. I’m so happy to see Wesley Koehler that I’d cry and leap at him, if only I could unstick my feet from the ground.
He waits. Watches. I still can’t talk, and he chooses not to.
Finally, my voice starts working again. “I’ve grown roots,” I say weakly. He must think I’m a huge baby. I can’t deny he’d be right. Tonight I’m sleeping with all the lights on.
Slowly, he holds out his hand, palm up. I examine the pale fingertips from a slight distance, as if this might not be real, but his gesture has a strange effect on my muscles, freeing them. I’m moving before I know it.
I lay my hand over his, which he tugs lightly, reeling me in. Once I’m safely at his side, he lets his hand drop, then motions for me to proceed down one of the trails.
His pace is measured so that I can keep up, the trail just wide enough to accommodate both of us walking side by side. It’s full dark now. I dearly hope I am not hallucinating this rescue, which seems like something I would do were I being eaten alive by a bear and decided I’d rather not be present in the moment. Out of the corner of my eye I glance at Wesley, who’s staring straight ahead. I don’t think my imagination could paint the tension he radiates, though, his awareness of me but refusal to glance my way. Annoyed that he had to stop whatever he was doing and come saveme from being killed by elk or falling rocks or a river I didn’t see coming.
I don’t think my imagination would have the bandwidth, while I was spurting blood like a fountain, to generate realistic details like the small tear in his sleeve, the smear of dirt on his arm, the nick on his jaw from shaving. When my arm accidentally brushes his, I don’t think I imagine how his hand clenches. If I were making this up, the least I could do as a gift to myself would be to design a Wesley who smiled at me. And carried a military-grade flashlight.
We still haven’t spoken when we emerge from the woods, the tide of trees pushing us out and dumping us right on the cabin’s porch. The television is on, subdued voices bumping up against the door. He swings it open. There’s a plate on the coffee table with a meal only half-eaten, handle-end of the fork lying in sauce as though dropped in a hurry.
I open my mouth to sayThank you for finding me, for leading me back, but Wesley doesn’t grant me the opportunity. He yanks the cord for the pull-down ladder and climbs up to his bedroom. Only when I’m directly behind him do I notice the back of his shirt, which readskoehler landscaping, fabric darker from saturation. His nape glistens. It’s cool enough outside that the tip of my nose is numb and my teeth are chattering, but Wesley, not even wearing a jacket, is drenched in sweat.
•••••••
THAT NIGHT I DREAMin black and white. I open the cabin’s front door to find that all the trees are gone, only gently sloping hills and prairie smoke flowers everywhere, everywhere, as far as the eye can see. They slant over and under one another in thebreeze, each monochrome tuft a happy wave hello. The manor soars larger than life, laced up with climbing roses rather than creeper vines. There’s a wrought-iron archway in front—falling stars hotel—and beneath, in vivid color, Wesley waits for me with an unreadable expression, hand outstretched.
I sit up straight in bed.
Chapter 7
I KNOW WHAT WE SHOULDdo with Falling Stars.”
“Animal sanctuary,” Wesley replies mechanically, sipping his coffee. I’ve sneak-attacked him in the kitchen at seven a.m., an hour before I usually get out of bed. I don’t want to think he intentionally gets up an hour before I do to avoid bumping into me, but my skeptical side has its third eye narrowed.
He observes the donuts curiously, which I baked in the midst of a planning frenzy at four in the morning specifically for the purpose of buttering him up. He reaches for the plate.
I open my mouth and a single word pops on my tongue like a bubble. “Hotel.”
He retracts his hand. I watch his guard rise like defenses around a castle. I am full of similes when I haven’t had much sleep.
“You know?” I’m already botching this. “I want to make the house a hotel again, like it was in that newspaper you found.”
“I didn’t find that newspaper, you did.”
I’m trying to make this his idea, so that he’ll be more receptive to it. It requires logic gymnastics. I stack my fingers together on the tabletop like my imaginary businesslady BFF. “Falling Stars Hotel, two point oh. It’s the perfect idea.”
“A hotel,” he repeats.
“Yes.”
Our stares lock, and it’s unsettling how much his attention weighs when he decides to pin me with it instead of looking right past me like he generally does. He has long eyelashes, brown at the root and fair at the tips. The freckles on his cheeks, the gold locks of hair curling every which way above thick, stern eyebrows—the effects of each detail pool into an exceedingly distracting portrait that will derail me if I don’t fight hard against the current.
“No,” he says, devoid of emotion. Wesley does not need or care to be liked at all; I doubt my opinion could touch him. Those who care less always have the upper hand.
I’ve only ever wanted to be liked, and I’ve only ever wanted to be liked by absolutely everybody I come in contact with, however temporarily and inconsequentially. It’s my most dominant and simultaneously weakening driving force, which leads to my toning down various wants and needs in order to make myself digestible, easy to get along with. The essence of Maybell Parrish is painfully sensitive, and if you touched it, it would retract and try to surrender. For better or worse (and I’ve certainly tried to be anyone but myself), I am a wobbly white flag.
No.Just like that.
My natural reaction is to say okay and pack myself up nice andsmall and out of the way, too unobtrusive to be a bother ever again. But even though my idea is only a few hours old, it is burning up in me like a fire demon. Iwantit. Nobody can make it happen for me but myself.
I lean forward, matching his determination. It surprises us both. “Yes.”
