Page 24 of Open Your Heart


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“Maybe you and I can get together soon?” The hope in his voice made my heart hurt and I wanted to hang up so I could go on being angry at him.

“Maybe.”

He sighed, and then tried again. “Should I call you tomorrow?”

“Sure,” I said. “Talk to you then.”

“Bye honey,” He said, and then he was gone.

I spent the rest of the morning staring over the railing of the deck, straining to see a mountain lion I imagined stalking through the trees, or whatever was over there howling at night. But the shadowed ground beneath the trees was still and silent, and my only distraction was the constant calling of the birds in the trees above me, and the wheels turning inside my head.

* * *

I didn’t seeCam until late in the day, though his truck came and went a couple times. I’d notice it’s presence or absence in the driveway as I moved around the house trying to get myself organized for the coming week. When I ran out ways to occupy myself, I took a long nap. I didn’t sleep well at night—the big house around me felt foreign and much too empty still—but during the day when I had the filtered yellow of the mountain sunlight to keep me company, I didn’t mind so much.

At five-thirty, I was dressed and ready to go to Maddie’s, waiting for Cam. I couldn’t help peering out the windows, not wanting to be surprised when he came to the door. He emerged from his house as I peeked out the kitchen window, and I felt my heart accelerate a bit, anticipating him knocking at my door a minute later. But he didn’t come around the side of the house. Instead, he moved behind the house and down the hill toward the little creek and the wild hillside beyond, a bowl in one hand and a water bottle in the other. I’d thought they were things he was taking to Maddie’s, but he clearly had other plans for them.

He returned a few minutes later, the water bottle empty and a thoughtful look on his handsome face. He glanced up toward my windows and our eyes met for a minute, my stomach clenching as heat flooded my cheeks. I’d been caught. He disappeared back inside his house and I realized with some embarrassment that I’d turned into the nosey neighbor, spying out my window to keep track of the goings on in the neighborhood. Next thing I knew, I’d be wearing a terry cloth robe while I did it.

I huffed out a breath and straightened up—I hadn’t even realized I’d been leaning forward so far to spy.

I was still in the midst of being embarrassed by my own behavior when Cam knocked at the front door, and my heart skittered around inside me again.

What was wrong with me?

“Hey,” I said, pulling the door open a second later.

He smiled—it wasn’t a wide smile, but I sensed that his guard had dropped a little bit around me, and I was glad. “Hey yourself,” he said.

“Did you see the…the animal?” I asked, figuring it was best to just acknowledge my spying.

He leaned against the door frame, shaking his head. “No, but it’s alive. I could hear it whimpering. It’s back inside a little cave, but I don’t want to lose a hand, so I’m not going in there.”

“Can’t blame you.” I turned and swept my purse off the couch behind me. “Have you figured out what it is?” I asked as we both stepped out onto the porch. I handed Cam the bottle of wine I’d picked out to take to Maddie as I locked the front door.

“Not really.” He handed the bottle back as he opened the passenger door of his truck for me, and I settled inside. He waited and closed the door once I was tucked in, and then came around the front to his side.

It shouldn’t have been a big deal, but that little act of chivalry struck a chord with me. It had been a long time since I’d felt looked after in the way Cam’s small gentlemanly act made me feel. In New York, everything moved at such a frenetic pace, it was very much every man for himself. Andrew would open a door for me here and there, but I took care of myself—even inside the relationship, I’d often sensed that I was on my own somehow. I just hadn’t realized how lonely that was until it was over. Cam’s tiny act filled me with warmth, and I had a reassuring sense that coming up here had been a good thing, though I tried to push it away and keep my mind locked on my target. Austin. Six months.

“Honestly,” he continued once we were both closed in the cab of his truck. “I can’t figure out what it is, but I don’t think it’s a bear or a bobcat, or any of the wildlife we typically get around here.”

“That’s so weird,” I said. “Should we send the rangers out to check it out?”

“More likely they’ll just call animal control. Rangers aren’t really prepared to crawl into dark caves after injured animals. I’m guessing they’ll probably just opt to let whatever it is die in there since it’s not threatening anyone.”

I shivered, thinking of whatever was in there, suffering in the dark, maybe in pain. “Poor thing,” I said.

Cam drove slowly down the potholed roads of the little village, and I stared out the windows at the familiar landscape of my youth. We passed a rock that sloped up out of the ground next to a little green and white cabin on the side of the meadow. “Running Rock is still there,” I said, mostly to myself.

Cam laughed, slowing the car to look with me at the big rock, light grey against the bright green of the meadow beyond. “You call it Running Rock too?”

“I guess that’s it’s name,” I said, just as surprised as he was to find I hadn’t made the name up myself. “I thought only I called it that. It’s the only rock you can run right up the side of if you get a fast enough start down the hill.”

“I know,” Cam said, his eyes meeting mine. “Maddie and I called it that too. Used to run up it every time we went around the meadow as kids.”

I grinned, settling back into the seat as Cam guided the car past the rock. That was one of the things I was starting to remember about Kings Grove—the mountain mentality and the shared lore of the village. These houses had been here, in some way, shape, or form, for a hundred years, and most of the families had been, too. That meant we shared a common knowledge, and a common love, of a place that defied description to those who hadn’t spent their lives here.

I was an outsider in some ways, but I’d still been infused with some of the local magic Kings Grove left on those who lived here. I liked that Cam and I shared that, and that it made me part of a community in some ways. I was realizing that being on my own for so long had been both gratifying and exhausting. It was possible that I hadn’t truly relaxed in the last ten years.

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