Wild Star: Under the Stars Book 3

by Raleigh Ruebins

  “It’s beautiful here,” I said, “And simple. And everyone is nice. I don’t know, I really love Fox Hollow so far.”

  He stared to the side, shaking his head slightly. “Two weeks ago I would have said there was nothing good here at all.”

  “Two weeks ago?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” he said, staring at me now, his eyes a shock of blue under the dark hair and hood. He shrugged. “Well, you’re here now, and that’s kind of the only cool thing that’s happened in as long as I can remember.” He said it nonchalantly, like he was describing a fact in a textbook.

  And it took me totally by surprise. “You… you don’t hate me?” I asked.

  “Why would I hate you?” he said.

  “I don’t know, I just thought you’d given up on talking to me after last time I saw you, since I didn’t hear from you. Thought maybe I was too pushy. The weird older next door neighbor who wants to walk your dog and is overly friendly.”

  He puffed out a quick laugh, his lips twitching almost into a smile before slipping back into dejected gloom. He looked so vulnerable, so young; I knew he was 26 but there was something innocent about him, something he tried to hide with his attitude and dark clothes. It only made me want him more. “You’re definitely not too pushy. I didn’t call because I didn’t want to burden you,” he said.

  “Walking Chewy is hardly a burden. And neither is talking to you, Grey.”

  He chewed his bottom lip, then let it go. Finally his face fell into a more resolute expression, less pained and more resigned. “Okay. I can give you an extra key to my place—I’ll bring it over tonight. I apologize in advance for the state my house is in. You can walk her any time in the afternoon. I feed her around 5 or 6, she isn’t picky, food’s on the shelf.”

  I nodded.

  “Are you sure you’re okay doing this?” he asked again.

  “Very sure.”

  He let out a long sigh. “Thank you. It really… really means a lot to me.”

  He left and then came back two minutes later with a key, a leash, and a couple of written notes about Chewy, plus his phone number.

  “I’ll start tomorrow. I can’t wait,” I said, standing near the front doorway.

  He laughed, finally seeming a little more relaxed. “Hope you still feel that way when you see how crazy she is. Please call or text me with anything you need to tomorrow.”

  “I’ll take good care of her, Grey. Good luck at work.”

  He nodded and held my gaze for a moment, then turned to the door. “Thank you, Adam. I’m going to make it up to you.”

  Walking Chewy gave a rhythm and routine to my days that firmly solidified Fox Hollow feeling like home.

  She was crazy, and barked at everything from leaves to ants to thin air, and in the perennial mist and rain I had to clean mud off her paws almost every time we got back to Grey’s house. At first she’d been reluctant to have a leash put on her, but as the days passed she became used to me, and soon would greet me, happy and wagging, at the front door every afternoon.

  When I went inside to feed her I tried hard not to pry around Grey’s house—but I couldn’t help noticing a few things anyway: the simple furniture, the stacks of books everywhere, the relative lack of decoration on the walls. There were plenty of neon dog toys, dog beds of various sizes, and general things for Chewy, but not much that seemed like it was Grey’s.

  There was one exception: a bookshelf in his main room that was filled with tons of DVDs, mostly of older movies. It seemed like Grey must be a movie buff, because while he had certain titles I knew and recognized, he had even more that I’d never heard of. He had a small TV nearby and I could picture him, lounging on his bed, watching movies at night until he fell asleep.

  But the best thing about walking Chewy had nothing to do with the dog herself.

  Every night, Grey would bring me something new. It was his form of “paying” me for taking care of the dog. He paid in gifts instead of cash, slowly bringing me a never-ending parade of items that showed how much he appreciated my help.

  The first night I hadn’t been expecting it at all. He’d showed up at my door past 10 o’clock, holding a strange thing in his hands. It was a little glass bowl with soil in it, with tiny succulents, moss, and slate stones inside.

  “It’s a terrarium,” he said, holding it out to me, I took it, my hands brushing his cold fingers for a moment in the exchange.

  “Grey, this is incredible. Where did you find this?”

  “I, uh, I just threw it together. Extra glass jar we weren’t using at work, stones and moss from the lot behind work.”

  “You made this?” I asked, incredulous. The work was stunning, seeing it at close range, every stone and plant arranged perfectly and with care.

  He just shrugged. “I needed something to do. Today was slow as hell. Guess nobody wanted any ice cream. And I wanted to give you something as a thank you.”

  Grey was downplaying an unbelievable gift that he’d clearly spent time on. But I’d accepted it graciously, setting it on my windowsill in the living room, right where I could see it every morning.

  I’d thought that would be his only grand gesture, but the gifts kept coming.

  The next night, he showed up with a wooden crate full of fresh mangoes that a regular at the ice cream shop had brought in to share with the pastry chef. A couple days later, he brought a chess set, made from fine, handcrafted wood, that he got for a dollar at a yard sale on his lunch break from work. Another day it was a birdfeeder, which I’d put on my back deck and already had seen a hummingbird come by.

  He acted casual and self-effacing about every gift, never taking credit, even though every last one of them was unique, somehow newly precious. I hardly knew what to do, and wanted to repay him now, after getting so many of his gifts.

  I had been walking Chewy for two weeks, and Grey had brought me something almost every day.

  Every gift just served to widen the expanding affection I had for him. I started to look forward to his daily arrival. When I woke up I’d see his gifts around me in my room; when I went to bed I’d dream of blue eyes and dark hair. In dreams he was often just at my doorstep, an imitation of real life, but in others I dreamed of warming the coldest parts of him, or what the skin at the small of his back would feel like underneath his sweatshirt.

  And sometimes in between, half-awake in the middle of the night, my brain would be just tired enough to give into the obvious truth: that I wanted Grey. Badly. A deep, inescapable want, one more possessive than I normally had for people, that had probably started weeks ago but had grown into something surprising and urgent. Half-awake, I’d think of what he’d feel like from the inside. How soft his hair would be gripped in my fist, and what he might sound like if I made him come.

  I’d touch myself quickly, methodically, part guilty and part drunk with lust.

  The thoughts pressed at the corners of my mind at night, but in the day I didn’t let them see the light. Because ostensibly I was helping Grey, I was being a good neighbor, a good Samaritan, a worthy addition to the kind people I’d met in Fox Hollow. Grey was bashful and humble around me, always rushing home after giving me his gifts, claiming exhaustion. I had no idea if he thought of me at all, other than as his older neighbor who walked his dog.

  So I let my feelings live inside me, a low, persistent rumble, thriving only from the brief moments I’d see him at night.

  On a particularly gloomy Sunday, where the sky was so dark at 2 p.m. that it almost looked like night, I had the day off work and Grey had gone in to the ice cream shop. I had walked Chewy, fed her, and secretly spent an hour in Grey’s living room, reading one of the books he had at the top of a stack by his bed. It was just an old Victorian novel, but I got sucked in, and before I knew it, an hour had passed as I read while listening to the rain tapping against the windows.

  It was a sweeping romance novel, the kind I hadn’t picked up since I’d been forced to in high school, but now I found it startli
ng and beautiful, its every sentence aching with emotion. Is this what Grey read in his free time? I would have expected him to sooner read something like Ernest Hemingway or Cormac McCarthy. Grey had such a dry, brooding disposition on the surface, but it seemed his shelves were full of lush, romantic books and movies.

  I went home knowing that he’d probably show up sooner rather than later that night with some gift in hand. Freezy Sweet closed early on Sundays, and he should have been back by 6.

  But time kept passing, and Grey didn’t show up. It was 7 o’clock, then 8, then 9, and I hadn’t seen him at all.

  It was nearly 10 p.m. when I heard the familiar knock at the door.

  I swung it open and found him drenched from the rain, as I’d come to expect, eyes tired and lashes strung with raindrops. Tonight, he held a big bouquet of damp flowers in one hand and what looked like a half-empty liquor bottle in the other.

  “This is all I’ve got,” he said, voice muffled from the rain, as he held out the flowers and bottle. It had certainly misted and drizzled a lot since I’d moved to Washington State, but this was a full-blown heavy rain, unusual even for here.

  “Jesus, you’re shivering. Come inside,” I said. He obliged, walking a few steps into the living room, and when he pushed back his soaked black hood, I had to force myself not to stare. Because it almost felt like vertigo, seeing him like that, fresh from the rain with his cheeks reddened and a giant, vibrant floral bouquet at his chest, a riot of pink, yellow, lavender and green. It was beauty, in both its starkest and its most immediate forms, here in my living room and slowly dripping onto my rug.

  I went to get a bath towel and returned to the living room, draping it over Grey’s shoulders.

  “Sorry it’s just stupid flowers tonight,” he said. “Someone left this bouquet at the shop yesterday and never came back to pick it up. The rum’s leftover from a new cake our pastry chef was trying, but she said this one doesn’t have the right spices to it. I gotta admit I’ve already had some of it tonight.”

  He looked to me with a slow smile, and I realized that he was a little tipsy. I’m not sure if I felt bad for thinking that it was kind of adorable. “Grey, these are unbelievably beautiful. You don’t have to keep acting like your gifts aren’t special.”

  I took the flowers, crossing to the kitchen and searching for a vessel to put them in. I had no vase, but had acquired an old glass pitcher, and it would have to do the job. I placed the stems inside and brought the bouquet to the table, the floral scent already filling the room. “Did you have to stay late at work tonight?” I called to him back in the living room.

  “No,” he called back, and I headed back and found him standing right where I’d left him, huddled under the big towel with the liquor in his hand. “I stopped at my mom’s after work and ended up cooking dinner for her. She wasn’t feeling too hot today.”

  “Ah, I’m sorry,” I said, not wanting to push the subject too far. Grey seemed to have complicated feelings about his mother, and I knew how that felt better than anyone.

  “So you wanna share?” he said quickly, holding up the bottle as the brown liquid sloshed inside. I watched a rivulet of water slide down Grey’s hand, onto the bottle, and then drip onto the floor. “Still a good amount in here. I’ve only had two drinks tonight. Or maybe three, I don’t know.”

  “Oh,” I said, surprised at his offer. Usually he made a hasty exit after dropping off his gifts. “Of course.”

  “I mean, only if you want to,” he said. “If you had other plans for the night, then whatever. I just thought drinking at home alone would be a little too depressing even for me.”

  If only he knew how utterly thrilled I was that he wanted to have a drink with me. “I’d absolutely fucking love to,” I said. “Go ahead, have a seat. I’ll get us some glasses.”

  “Ah—I’m pretty sure I’m gonna soak your nice new bed if I sit down on it,” he said, looking to me from under his lashes. “I don’t wanna ruin it.”

  “Right. Shit. Let me get you some warm clothes.” I crossed to the hall closet and fished out some sweatpants and a dark thermal shirt.

  “Thanks,” he said when I pressed them to his hand, and he handed me the liquor. I left him to change in the living room. I suddenly was keenly aware that having a house the size of a studio apartment left little privacy, so I went to the kitchen and poured out rum for us. A low buzz coursed through my body and realized that I was inordinately excited.

  Finally I was going to be able to spend time with Grey, time that wasn’t just an exchange or a quick conversation in the yard.

  And I kind of could not fucking wait.

  Four

  Grey

  I didn’t think it was possible, but Adam was about ten times more beautiful when I was drunk.

  Or, really, I think he was just always that beautiful, but when I was drunk I let myself admit it, let my eyes linger on him and my mind run wild with how goddamn attracted to him I was.

  “I don’t have any mixers or anything,” Adam said, appearing in the doorway. “You good with just the rum?”

  I nodded. “Prefer it that way anyway,” I said, reaching out to grab one of the glasses from his hand. He sat on the bed right next to me—and I don’t know what I expected, because other than the bean bag chair there really was nowhere else to sit—but my heart rate picked up as soon as his body was next to mine.

  “Cheers,” he said, and after clinking the glasses together I threw back a sip.

  “Mm,” I said, “You like it?”

  “I love it,” Adam said. “Thanks for bringing it. My clothes fit you okay?”

  “They feel great,” I said, running my hand along the front of the shirt. “So warm. I guess I could have gone home and changed but… it’s a whole lot cooler to say I’ve worn something of Adam Fara’s, isn’t it?”

  Oops. Already my filter was starting to slip. Or maybe it had already slipped, long ago, hence inviting myself over to Adam’s house—which I still could barely believe I did.

  It had been such a long week, and I was practically delirious, underslept but restless. And I hadn’t even planned on drinking with Adam, but stepping into his warm house, having him drape me with a towel… I didn’t want to leave.

  Adam had a sense of calm to him that I didn't even know was possible. I hadn't seen it on anyone else, and I didn't know if that meant I hadn't met enough people or if Adam really was unique. It wasn't a calculated calm, not put on to show a good face in public, but clearly a deep, genuine contentedness. Was that what years of fame and success afforded a person? Did nothing bother him? It was so different from the world I knew. At first his calm demeanor had rattled me—it had felt like an affront, a mockery, waving in my face everything I knew I could never be.

  But now, here with Adam, I didn't feel out of place at all. I was slowly realizing that he didn't seem the type to judge anything, really, that I could have admitted the darkest things to him and he would still put an arm around me and tell me I was okay.

  That was a little scary, but really it just made me feel comfortable. A feeling I couldn't usually access around most people.

  And now I was in his clothes, on his bed, sharing a drink with him, and his body was so close to mine I could smell his clean, woodsy scent.

  I realized I had to say something to him before I made a fool of myself, staring at him like a drooling dog.

  “Had a customer at the shop today who said you guys cleaned a house for them a few days back,” I said. “John Bays?”

  “Oh yeah?” Adam said. “I remember him. He hired us to clean his huge house before a party. I swear to God he must have been planning a sex party—there was a huge bucket of condoms stationed right by the door.”

  “No way,” I said with a quick laugh. “He came in to buy a bunch of ice cream cakes, and he was talking about some handsome guy that was on his cleaning team. And I said, ‘Yeah that’s gotta be Adam—tall as hell, super nice, inordinately handsome?’”

  Ad
am’s fake broke out into a slow smile, his big eyes meeting mine. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but… did you just call me handsome, Grey?”

  I shrugged, realizing that if I was doing this, I was really going to go for it. “Yeah, you are. Not exactly a secret. Most of Fox Hollow isn’t made up of former music stars who are six foot four. You stand out.”

  Adam snorted. “Are you drunk?” he asked with a crooked grin.

  “No,” I said quickly. “Okay, maybe a little. Doesn’t change the fact that you’re hot.”

  “Oh, come on. If you’re trying to say you couldn’t have anyone you wanted, you’re crazy.”

  Now it was my turn to laugh. “Anyone I want? That is wrong on so many levels, you don’t even know…”

  “You really could,” he said, hiking one leg up onto the bed and turning toward me.

  I shook my head, then took another sip of rum. “Everybody here either already knows me or they’ve left town. Haven’t dated anyone since Tara left and even before her, everything was fucked up with Bryce. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about my shitty life.” I brought my hand up to my neck, rubbing against the muscle where it met my neck.

  “Can I ask you a question, though?” Adam said.

  I nodded.

  “How come you’re still here if you hate it so much?”

  I looked up at the ceiling, taking a deep breath in. I sipped at the rum, needing more liquor before diving into the many reasons I was still in Fox fucking Hollow. “Main reason is money. I can’t save up enough to move to Portland because all my money goes to bills and mom’s stuff every month. And she’s not exactly young, so if I did move, I’d have to find her a place there, which seems utterly impossible. So it’s like, I missed my chance to go for college, and now that ship has sailed, and I feel so fucking stuck here.”

  I met his eyes again. “And I thought I wasn’t here to talk about my life. What about you? Why the hell would you come here when you could go anywhere? Don’t you have tons of money?”