by Maisey Yates
He was nice. The customers were—by and large—nice. She had definitely been in worse situations. The floor wasn’t sticky, the bar itself clean, with wood-paneled walls and a mix of lodge and nautical details paying decent service to the little town that sat at the base of the mountains and on the edge of the open sea.
That was another bonus. A step out to the parking lot, and she had an ocean view. That was tough to beat. She loved the ocean. She hadn’t seen one until she was nineteen years old, and ever since then she’d felt like she wanted one in sight at all times. That made this place nice for more than one reason. But she still couldn’t imagine staying.
She wanted to get to a city. Somewhere a little bit more anonymous. Where she could blend in and not end up left with cars in her care by overly trusting country boys. Sure, the hospitality could be nice, but it was also very personal. She wasn’t a huge fan of personal.
She took her apron off and stuffed it beneath the counter, rounding the bar and walking into the main dining room just as Aiden walked through the door. Right on time. Right like he said.
It figured. This guy probably wouldn’t even drive across the street without his driver’s license, much less renege on a scheduled time to meet someone. He was...good.
She was pretty confident about that. And there weren’t a lot of people who she would label good. This guy was.
It almost made her feel guilty about what she’d said to him earlier regarding sucking certain appendages. In the spare few minutes they’d spoken, he’d never acted like he was only talking to her to curry sexual favor.
But sometimes she just liked to cut to the chase and accuse people of the things she was most afraid they would do. It minimized the pain when they inevitably disappointed her.
Still, so far it didn’t seem like he was hiding a secret inner pervert waiting to take advantage. She could only hope that stayed true.
Even if he is? Does it matter?
Her stomach tightened as she looked at him, his handsome face and truly noteworthy physique.
Getting physical with him wouldn’t be a hardship, that was for sure. But there was something about him that made her hope—deeply, stupidly—that he turned out to be what he seemed, and not something else. Some part of her was actually hopeful that this guy was good. That he wasn’t like the rest.
Hell, someone had to be. If a strong, upstanding farm boy who dragged his father out of dens of sin and forgave down-and-out waitresses who borrowed cars—without asking—to get home wasn’t salt of the earth, then who would be?
“You’re here,” she said.
“Just like I said.”
She smiled. “Yes. Just like you said. So, how far out of town is your place?”
“About fifteen minutes. Going to have to drive back there, then down to...where you live?”
“I don’t live there,” she said. “I’m kind of passing through town. My car broke down and I needed to earn some extra money so that I can get it fixed.”
She wasn’t sure why she was explaining all of this to him. Not only had she confessed that she was basically homeless, but for some reason she also felt the need to justify it. Which was stupid. She’d gotten past feeling the need to justify her existence a long time ago. It was what it was. Sure, a lot of people thought that someone like her should be living in a different situation. That a girl who was young, reasonably attractive, clearly in possession of all her mental faculties, should have gone to college. That she should be starting her career. Basically that she should be anything other than a transient bar wench.
But those people didn’t know her. So they didn’t deserve her story. Yet here she was telling it for his benefit. And she couldn’t stop herself. “I’m staying at a campground. Kind of over by the beach.”
“Which one?” he asked.
“Copper Campground. Since this is Copper Ridge, it seemed like it was probably the main campground. The hub, so to speak. I like to be where the action is. I thought maybe the real up-and-coming squirrels hung out there.”
“And?” he asked.
“They are pretty metropolitan for squirrels.”
“I meant, and what’s your situation? How is it you’re camping out for... How long did you say you’ve been here?”
“Two weeks. And the situation is that I don’t have a car. Ace was willing to give me a job on the temporary basis that I needed.”
“Are you headed home?”
“No. I’m headed to some places I’ve never been.”
They walked through the parking lot and he opened the driver-side door to the car. “You don’t have anyone waiting for you?”
She stared at the open door for a moment, torn between feeling something that was almost...good over the gesture and wanting to run the opposite direction. He was too good to be real.
“No.” She sat down in the driver’s seat and jammed the keys in the ignition. “Which is great, really. I’m kind of off grid.”
He arched a dark brow. “So you’re a drifter?”
“Yes, but in the romantically applied sense of the word, rather than the vaguely skeezy one. I’m kind of like a feather. I waft in the breeze,” she said, offering him a smile that was pretty damn fake if she said so herself.
The truth was, there wasn’t much that was romantic about her existence. But sometimes, when she told the story of how it all worked, she pretended that it was. She pretended that all the places she’d seen had possessed something magical about them, when in reality, it was usually just more of the same: sad small towns and crappy roadside motels.
But in memory, things could be different. A little bit brighter, a little more fun. When she thought back on the night she’d ended up wandering the streets of some tiny town in Kansas, getting rained on and ending up sleeping in some back alley covered by cardboard, she pretended it had been some kind of important formative experience. When in reality it had been the most miserable, traumatizing night of her life.
Yeah, memory changed things.
She didn’t lie. At least, she didn’t fashion lies out of nothing. She was a master of embellishing the truth. At adding jewels and glitter to her circumstances, so that no one would notice it was all plastered onto a cheap cardboard facade. But then, she did it for herself as much as anyone else.
“Okay. Well, as long as you don’t intend to kill my entire family and steal their identities, you can follow me back to the homestead.”
“In all my years of drifting I’ve never committed mass murder, so I don’t see why I’d start now.” She closed her eyes and took a deep breath of the damp ocean breeze. “Yeah, no. Not feeling homicidal today.”
“Good to know.” He slammed her door shut and walked back toward his truck, and she waited for him to get in and pull over to the driveway before she followed suit. She wasn’t quite sure how she’d gotten roped into this, but it definitely beat walking home, even if it would take her a little bit out of her way. And he said it had helped him. It wasn’t terrible to help somebody. It had just been so long since she’d done it she had kind of forgotten that it almost felt good.
It was difficult to worry about the circumstances of others when your own were so dire.
The drive on the gently winding rural road passed quickly, and before she knew it she was pulling into a dirt driveway that wound back into the trees.
Branches from the ragged pines reached into the driveway, scraping against the sides of the car as she drove on. She could only hope this wasn’t some kind of elaborate scheme to collect insurance money from her or something, by blaming her for scratches on the car. In all honesty, that seemed a little more likely than him just “helping her out.”
She pushed that thought to the back of her mind. It didn’t matter either way, since she was the worst person on earth to try to commit insurance fraud with. She didn’t
have insurance. Though that could probably get her in trouble. She chewed her lip as she turned that thought over, her eyes glued to the taillights on Aiden’s truck.
Maybe he was a member of a cult out here in the woods. A cult that frowned on drinking. Maybe she was being lured here to be sacrificed to the forest gods. Unfortunately for them, if they needed a virgin sacrifice, they were shit out of luck with her.
Actually, a cult kind of explained Aiden and his general nice-guy appearance better than anything else. Certainly better than genuine kindness.
They rounded the last curve in the driveway and a small, stereotypical vision of a farmhouse came into view, a single porch light shining brightly by the red front door. “You are now entering...the Twilight Zone,” she said to herself.
She parked the car beside Aiden’s truck and waited. She felt frozen for some reason, not really wanting to get out and deal with whatever was going to happen here. Not because she actually thought it was a cult that wanted to sacrifice her to a deity, but because she sensed that there might be cookies and kindness afoot. And both made her terribly nervous.
Well, cookies in isolation didn’t make her nervous. But she was accustomed to the store-bought variety. Not any that were made with actual human hands and love and other things she generally avoided.
She heard Aiden shut his truck door and she let out a long sigh. She turned the engine off and got out, the gravel in the driveway crunching beneath her feet. “Okay,” she said. “I’m ready to get back to my campground now. Tent sweet tent and all.”
He nodded once. “Go ahead and get in the truck.”
She turned, ready to do just that when the front door opened and a woman peered through the slim crack. “Aiden?”
He froze, his posture going stiff. The glow from the porch light outlining his physique, drawing her eyes to his broad shoulders. She had a sense, in that moment, that he carried quite a bit on them. “Yeah, Mom. It’s me.”
Oh. He lived with his parents. Interesting.
“You have a friend with you?” The older woman sounded hopeful.
“Just giving her a ride,” Aiden said. “She helped me bring Dad’s car in from town.” She noticed he didn’t offer any further explanation for that.
“Well, why doesn’t she come in and have some tea?”
She had sensed it from the moment they pulled up. The warm country vibe was undeniable. The place reeked of hospitality. Which was strange, given what she already knew. That his father was an alcoholic, and that Aiden seemed to be taking care of everything.
“I shouldn’t,” Casey said. “I’ve been working, and I’m tired.” Silence descended for a second before she realized that she had skipped pleasantries. “Thank you. I appreciate it.” She didn’t really.
“Have you eaten?”
She hadn’t. And she was actually really hungry. But she had consigned herself to a growling stomach tonight. “I...”
“Let me make you a sandwich.”
Aiden was stiff as a board beside her, clearly uncomfortable with the entire situation. Well, he could join the club. What was it with these people and their aggressive need to do nice things? Aiden didn’t even want to do something nice for her, and yet he seemed powerless to do anything but. She did not understand compulsory niceness.
She also couldn’t turn down a sandwich. “I... That would be nice.”
“I thought you were in a hurry,” Aiden said, obviously not feeling as obligated to be hospitable as he’d been earlier.
“I said I was tired. Not rushed. It turns out my sandwich needs outweigh my sleep needs.”
“Well, come on in,” his mother said, her tone cheery, as though it were the late afternoon and she was inviting them in for an after-school snack. At least, that’s how she imagined something like that might go. She wasn’t really familiar.
The older woman turned and walked back into the house and Casey gave Aiden a sidelong glance. Suddenly, she realized she had never formally introduced herself. Not that he was the first guy she had spent time with who had never bothered to ask for her name. But this wasn’t exactly the same.
“I’m Casey,” she said. “Since I’m about to take a sandwich from your mother, I figured you might want to know.”
“I didn’t really,” he said.
“And why are you suddenly being a dick?”
“It isn’t you. It’s her.”
But he didn’t offer further explanation. He just headed toward the house, walking up the stairs with heavy steps. She followed him, not waiting for an invitation, because she had a feeling he wasn’t going to give it.
He held open the front door for her and she stopped, looking at the wreath on the door. It was woven together with twigs and flowers. Fake of course, and a little worse for wear. Still, it was a nice effort to cheer up the space, and for some reason she was seized with the desire to touch it. It was such a strange, homey little thing. The kind of thing you would never find on the doors of the motels she typically stayed at. Certainly not on the tent flap she called an entryway.
“Are you going to go in?”
She looked up, her eyes clashing with his. “Yeah,” she said, feeling stupid at having been caught in a feelsy moment.
The entryway was as well-worn as the wreath on the door. There was a threadbare rug placed over scuffed-up boards, accented by faded wallpaper and framed pictures that looked like they’d been cut out of a calendar sometime back in the 1980s.
Aiden’s mother walked back in, her hands clasped in front of her. “Why don’t you sit in the living room?”
She turned and went back into the kitchen and Aiden looked at her, then turned to the right, leading her into a small, square room next to the entryway.
She sat down in a floral armchair and Aiden took his seat on the sofa across from her.
“Well,” she said, patting her thighs with her palms. “This is...not what I expected, considering our introduction.”
Aiden rubbed his hand over his forehead. “My dad is probably passed out in the bedroom. That’s why she has us in here and not in the kitchen.”
“Wow. Way to shatter the whole Leave it to Beaver thing I was building up in my head.”
“Sorry to disappoint you. Imagine how I feel.”
“Yeah, that brings me to my next observation and question. You live here? Why?” She looked him over, making a show of it. And taking her time because, hell, why not? He was hot and she wasn’t blind. “I mean, you seem perfectly able to live on your own. To get a job and pay for a place to stay. You are...absolutely able-bodied.” She made that last part sound as lecherous as possible. It wasn’t hard to do.
“So are you. And yet, you’re living in a tent in a campground.”
“Touché. Extenuating circumstances.” She waved her hand, as if pushing said circumstances out of the way. “I assume you have them, too. And I’m curious about them.”
“Yeah,” he said slowly, “I have them. Who doesn’t?”
“Good question. But not the one I asked. Why exactly do you live at home?”
“For starters, I don’t live in the house.” He leaned back on the couch, pushing his hand back through his dark hair. It was a nice hand, as she’d already observed. Strong. Capable. Unf. “I live in a cabin on the property.”
“Nice. Very nice.”
“I work on the farm, because of course my dad’s general state makes it difficult for him to do that with any consistency.”
“Okay, I can see that.”
“This place is my legacy. I’ve been working on it since I was fifteen years old. It’s mine. But my name’s not on the deed. Technically, it still belongs to my old man. So, if I want to work it, I have to work around him.”
She nodded slowly, feeling a little bit guilty for giving him a hard time. It was easy for h
er to make light of other people’s circumstances. She spent so much time doing it with her own it was second nature. Sincerity was a whole lot harder. “Okay, I get that.” She leaned over, resting her forearms on her legs. “So, what about your mom? She seems nice.”
“She is. Too nice. She always wants to help other people, but she doesn’t realize how much of it we need. How much she needs.”
“Because of your dad?”
“It takes most of our resources just to keep this place afloat. Plus, there’s supporting his drinking habit. But she wants to give to all kinds of charities, and feed hungry-looking waitresses that show up at the door.”
“Well, I do appreciate that. I was going to skip dinner tonight.”
He looked slightly abashed when she said that. She hadn’t intended to make him feel bad. If there was one thing she hated, it was pity.
“Sorry. I shouldn’t begrudge you a sandwich.”
“Begrudging or not, a sandwich is a sandwich. I don’t particularly care if you’re happy about me getting it.”
“Sorry. I’m being a dick.”
The apology was a shock, and she didn’t really know how to take it. “I don’t particularly care whether you’re a dick or not. I was just curious why.”
“Does it make a difference?”
“Not really.”
They heard footsteps in the home, and their conversation stopped as his mother walked in with a plate that had two sandwiches sitting on it. “I thought you might like one, too, Aiden,” she said, her voice soft, her smile kind.
Casey was frozen for a whole ten seconds, wondering what it must have been like to grow up with someone who made you sandwiches. She was very skilled at making her own. A lot less skilled at accepting things like this from people.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Thank you,” she mumbled.
“I’ll leave you,” she said, turning and walking back out of the room. Again, Casey had the feeling the older woman was treating this like an after-school playdate. But she had a hard time thinking anything negative about it because it was so necessary for her right in this moment.
