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Only silence greets me, just as it has the last few nights when I left the library and hoped he’d be waiting at the table for me or sitting in front of the fireplace with a glass of bourbon.
My stomach drops a little, the disappointment so twisted when I’m so confused about how to actually feel about the man.
I slip out the front door and onto the porch, where I first met The Beast. Less than three weeks ago, I was so terrified of him that I ran barefoot into the damn woods, completely confident he meant to slice me up alive with the axe in his hand. But the man I thought he was isn’t the one who touched me the other night, who gave me the best sex of my life while assuring I came multiple times before he took his own pleasure.
That man cares, whether he wants to admit it or not.
The cooling early evening air washes over me as I pull the door closed, and I suck in a deep breath and release it slowly.
My car sits in front of the house unmoved, an ominous reminder of how and why I arrived. I skirt around it and head toward the path through the woods I took to the lake the other day.
I should have enough time to make it down to the water and back before it gets dark.
Just a little walk to awaken my body after sitting for so long—and to contemplate the things I’ve found in the journals and what they might mean.
The eerie stillness of the forest around me sends a shiver down my spine more than the cool air does, and I keep scanning the growing darkness, alert for anything amiss.
Weston’s warning rings in my mind.
There are things more dangerous than me out there.
He was just trying to scare me, keep me confined inside the house so I wouldn’t go exploring and stumble upon something I shouldn’t or bother him while he’s doing…whatever it is he does while he’s out here. The man spends all day and some nights in the woods, and he’s just fine.
So, I have nothing to worry about except the conflated stories Weston put in my head—and the potential that I might trip on one of these fallen branches or stumble on the uneven ground.
But now that my foot has healed, it feels good to be out walking again, and the trees open up in front of me, the fading light glistening on the still surface of the water.
Crisp mountain air fills my lungs, and I release it slowly, closing my eyes and letting myself imagine I was here under different circumstances.
It would actually be romantic.
I laugh at how absurd that thought is, knowing what this mountain is for the Barkers, and the sound carries out over the water.
As if The Beast would be romantic, anyway.
But images of all the meals he’s made me, of all the gifts he’s brought, of his calloused hands and rough beard abrading my skin in the most magnificent way flash through my head.
Maybe he can be.
Maybe he has been this whole time and I just never saw it for what it was.
Maybe he didn’t even know he was doing it.
That thought twists a knife in my gut, and I slowly lower myself down to sit on the pebble beach and stare out at the lake, now turning almost a burnt orange in the last vestiges of daylight.
Who is he really?
Because he sure as hell isn’t the man everyone’s warned me about.
A chilly breeze kicks up, and I shiver again, goosebumps breaking out over my arms. The hair on the back of my neck rises, but not because of the cool wind.
That feeling of being watched settles over me.
I turn my head to look back at the trees I just came through and catch a flash of silver. “Weston?”
The trees seem to swallow my call out to him, and no response comes.
Unease coils around the base of my spine, and I climb to my feet, brushing off my ass and hands while I keep an eye out for any further movement.
