She shrugs. “I’m not like, woo-woo spiritual or whatever, but, yeah, I mean— I think mother nature, or whatever… it’s like whatever you need to go through, that’s the path you’re on. It kind of forces you to come to terms with yourself.”
“So, you don’t think I’m ridiculous for feeling like this about him? After only a week of being around him?”
Abbie laughs. “I mean, some people believe inlove at first sight. So how implausible is it that you might feel strongly about the guy who saved you, nursed you back to health, and fed you homemade sourdough?”
Put like that, it does make sense.
“And no offense,” Abbie goes on, rolling her eyes, “but I think you should drive right back up there and demand to talk to him. It’s so annoying when people give up on stuff that quickly, you know? Like, literally, just talk. No offense.”
“Ladies?” Someone in a blush pink pantsuit appears at our table, smiling. “Just letting you know we are cleaning up, and we’ll have to clear out the event in ten minutes, according to the venue’s policies.”
Abbie and I look up for the first time. “Oh, sure, yeah, sorry.”
The woman smiles and walks away, and when Abbie and I exchange contact information, it doesn’t feel quite as empty as I thought networking might.
Maisie is gone when I get home. I throw my bag on the recliner, pace for a second, then sit down at my computer, plugging my phone in and opening it up like a hard drive to pull the footage from it.
Sometimes, when I’m making content, it feels like a grind. Like pulling teeth.
But sometimes, I get into a creative flow. Everything — ideas, design, editing — comes easily, and the result is usually satisfying. And right now feels like one of those times.
I sit at my computer for hours, cutting and splicing, putting together a story I’m proud of. The result is a video that feels, just a little bit, like magic.
CHAPTER 20
ROWAN
It’s been a full week since I walked Lola back down to her car.
Last night, another storm rolled over the mountain, shaking the cabin each time thunder crashed, and I lay awake staring at the ceiling, imagining Lola in the city.
Would she be afraid? Would she be alone and trembling, her chest rising and falling quickly like it had when she was here?
Or is there someone else there to comfort her? A different man to put his arm around her, make her tea, soothe her fear away?
That idea pissed me off. I tossed and turned for the rest of the night.
And now, I force myself to get out of bed. I’ll need to cut more wood, since it rained nonstop while she was here; I burned through my dry wood stash pretty quickly, and now I need to cut green wood to set out so it has time to dry, or I’ll run too low.
Plus, the physical labor keeps my mind off things. For the past week, I’ve been up from sunrise to sunset, tackling every projectI’ve been putting off. It’s killing two birds with one stone; this place is in great shape, and I’m able to keep Lola off my mind.
Mostly.
Cheese whines at me as I leave, keeping her in the cabin. After running into that bear the other day, I don’t want to let her run loose. Plus, I won’t be able to keep an eye on her while I’m chopping wood.
I bring the wheelbarrow with me, wheeling out a way from the house and looking for a good candidate to break down into wood for my pile. My muscles are sore from yesterday, cleaning out the water drums, but I ignore their protestations, hefting up the ax and pushing through the pain.
I don’t think you should hide forever, Rowan.
Grunting, I push the thought of her from my head and focus on what I’m doing. Swinging the axe, feeling the satisfying split of the wood starting in my hands and traveling all the way up my body.
Swing, hit, split. Swing, hit, split.
It’s tiring enough that I’m able to stop thinking altogether. Everything around me fades into the background.
Including a Douglas fir, which must have been struck by lightning or hit by something over the course of the storms. I’m so involved in my wood cutting that I don’t hear the sound until it’s impossibly loud, like popcorn.
There’s a kind of shifting in the atmosphere as I look up, just in time to hear the loudcrackand see the tree’s sway. At first, it’s kind of mesmerizing, and I stand there with my axe held loosely in my hand, awestruck at the sight of such a huge thing movinglike that, its branches wavering like a person trying to catch their balance or like the hair of a girl on a roller coaster, moving in the wind.
