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Like me? I straighten my spine, defiant even when she can’t see me. “You know nothing about me.”

“Oh, honey, I do. Listen, bitch. Knight is mine. Once he realizes what I can do for him and his career, what we can do together, he’ll drop you like you’re an insignificant bug. There’s nothing you can give him anywhere near the opportunities I can.”

“He said he told you no.” My defiance is fading, replaced with uncertainty. It’s not like I know him well. A few days isn’t enough to understand how someone thinks, what their deepest dreams are. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe I’m only seeing what I want reflected back at me.

“A temporary setback. You’re nothing but a side piece. I doubt he even finds that much pleasure when he fucks you. He’ll leave that stupid mountain and return to me by winter. Then where will you be? Ah, off to find another bed to warm. I suppose there’s plenty of lonely men in those god forsaken mountains to keep you busy.”

Is she calling me a… a slut? I don’t know how to respond to that.

In my stunned silence, she laughs. “Start packing your bags, bitch.”

Added to Pete showing up, this is more than I can assimilate into my already strained emotional focus. I press the button disconnecting the call and return the phone to the cradle.

I haven’t felt this lost since the time I left my dysfunctional family to start life on my own. The only steady presence in my mind is Knight. What do I do?

I can’t stay.

I don’t want to go.

Tears trail down my cheeks. I let them fall without brushing them away. Sorrow and confusion shudder through my body and I wrap my arms around myself. This personal hug helps, but not enough. I need Knight, but I don’t want him to see me this way. I have to go… somewhere…where he won’t witness my breakdown.

I do what I do so well. I run.

ten

Knight

The nightly circuit of my property doesn’t take long and I’m anxious to return to Clover. In opposition to that longing, I also want to give her the space she might need after Henderson showed up. While she speaks mostly in generalities about her emotions, she hasn’t said much that goes beyond surface level.

Shit, I’m no better. That has to change. For both of us. I need her to stay with me, want her next to me for the rest of my life. No matter what battles we may face, internal or external. I need to tell her that. Plain and simple. So there’s no doubts. Because it’s far too easy for her to doubt my actions, or subtle words. We both need to hear me say ‘I love you’.

With luck and patience, hopefully soon she will say the same words to me.

Enough time has passed so I take a fortifying breath and open the cabin’s back door. The cabin is too quiet. Clover isn’t waiting for me. Panic rises and I rub at the center of my chest. She must be in the bathroom. The door is open and the room is dark when I peer down the hall.

Is she curled up on the couch? Five strides take me close enough to see only the folded blanket. No Clover.

Where is she? Ah fuck, she didn’t run away did she? She wouldn’t face the unknown of the mountain at night, would she? I check the front door. The safety latch is secure from the inside. She hadn’t left that way. And I’d had the back of the cabin in view most of the time I was outside. Where could she have gone?

My gaze sweeps the room finally landing on the fireplace mantle. Her display of stones is still there. She wouldn’t leave those behind. That means she’s still here as well.

Finally I find my voice. “Clover?” There’s a desperate hitch in how I call her name. “Clover, where are you?”

Straining to hear an answer, anything, I catch the sound of muffled crying coming from the back of the cabin. I should have checked the dark bathroom. “Clover, I’m here. I’m coming.”

The hall light is enough for me to see she’s not in the bathroom. The closet? “Clover, darlin’, where are you?”

Then I notice bare toes peeking out from behind the washer. I move closer to discover her huddled as far into the space between the machine and the closet wall as possible. She’s drawn her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around her shins. Her forehead rests on her knees as her back rises and falls with her soft sobbing.

I fall to my knees before her and tentatively stroke a lock of hair back behind her ear. “I’m here.”

“I—I know. I shouldn’t be.” Her voice is muffled. She lifts her head and the sorrow in her tear filled eyes slams into my chest like a runaway freight train.

“Clover, what did I do?”

“Nothing.”

“Then what happened? Why are you hiding here?”