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Move. Do something. Say something. Because somehow, I knew if I didn’t, Crow would stand there all day watching me. Or hell, maybe he would just walk out with his belongings, and then I’d get this mountain man arrested because I couldn’t make myself do my job.
He took a step closer. Blood rushed through my ears, panic flaring inside me as he reached out toward me, but then he just set a product down on the counter beside me. I breathed out a sigh of relief.
Get it together, Cyrus. You’re being an idiot.
He wasn’t going to do anything to me in the middle of Harry’s Hardware.
Clearing my throat, I walked around the counter to stand behind the register again. “Did…did you find everything okay?” I asked, but of course, he didn’t respond. He just continued to place tools, staining, brushes, and other items on the counter. He had pulled a flat cart with him, stacked with wood and a couple of propane tanks.
I tried to think of something to say, but I was drawing a blank. So I just continued scanning his items, and Crow didn’t take his eyes off me as he finished up. When I got to the big items, I had to step around the counter with the scanner. When I breathed in, I could swear he smelled like Douglas fir mixed with a natural musk that went straight to my head.
I bent down to finish scanning the items, and when I looked up, he was watching me, head cocked slightly as though he was trying to figure something out. This time when I opened my mouth, “I—” came out, but I bit back the rest of my words when he gave me a simple shake of his head.
He didn’t want me to talk to him. The ache in my chest grew, though I shouldn’t have been surprised and I also shouldn’t care.
I went back around the counter and said, “Two hundred and thirteen dollars and fifty-seven cents.” My voice was scratchy, like I hadn’t used it in too long.
Crow paid in cash, setting the money down for me to pick up. When I gave him his change, I did the same, so he wouldn’t have to touch me if he didn’t want to. I smiled, hoping he knew that was done as a kind gesture, but got a frown in return.
Then he reached out, and I gasped again, my eyes squeezing shut, afraid of what he would do. He didn’t touch me, and I knew I should open my eyes, should say something or do something, but I just stood there like that for a few moments, maybe hoping he would touch me while also afraid that he would.
When I heard the bell over the door, I finally looked up, in time to see him disappear from view.
I didn’t know what that had been—my response to him, or what he’d planned to do. All I knew was I couldn’t wait until next month. I wanted to see him again.
*
Thankfully, I was off the next day, because I couldn’t make myself go to sleep that night. I spent hour after hour on the internet, researching everything I could about Crow and the cult. There wasn’t a lot of information, and what was known had been learned after Crow’s dad—whom they’d called The Chosen—had killed his mom. Since that day, only a few ex-members had spoken, selling their stories to the highest bidder. So I wasn’t even sure if any of it was true, or how much of it was.
Others from the cult had kept to themselves. Not to the extent that Crow did, but they didn’t speak about their time in The Enlightened, likely wanting to forget it existed.
Apparently, all the men had been given vasectomies. They weren’t allowed to have children until they were “fully Enlightened,” whatever that meant, and of course, no one had been that except Crow’s dad, the leader. It was why there hadn’t been any other children in the compound. Crow hadn’t grown up with anyone his age, no kids at all. While I’d been teased mercilessly as a child and hadn’t ever had friends, at least I’d known what it was like to be around other people my age.
Did that mean he’d never seen or talked to another person his age until he was sixteen and put in foster care?
I struggled to read through the tears, my eyes blurry, words swimming when they talked about him surviving a knife attack from his own father. How Crow had pulled him off his mom and fought him as his dad had gone after Crow next.
How he’d been bloody and feral, kicking, screaming, and assaulting the police officers who’d come up the mountain and took him away.
How he stopped speaking after that, got kicked out of or ran away from every home he’d ever been in.
I read the same articles over and over again, unable to stop. Each word added another weight around my heart, pulled me down and made me ache, as I took that onto myself like I’d been the one to experience it.
It was often this way for me. I carried the pain of other people, carried it from my mom before she died, and now, though I didn’t live in everyone’s traumas, I couldn’t stop myself from drowning in Crow’s, while at the same time, strangely, being almost jealous of him. Not about what he’d gone through, never that, but that he’d escaped, that he was living on his own terms. Away from all the pain that never left my side.
Or hell, maybe he lived with it too.
CHAPTER TWO
Crow
I couldn’t stop thinking about the beautiful man with the dark hair and broken gray eyes. I didn’t know how to explain them other than that—broken. It had been days since I’d been down the mountain, but I could still feel his gaze on my skin. Not with disdain or disgust like some of the other townsfolk. And not with naked lust either, the way Bruce did before I fucked his brains out every time I needed it.
Maybe I needed to see him. Maybe it had been too long and that’s why I was thinking about the new man in town, this broken man who’d looked at me like he saw me, or wanted to see me, but the thing was, I didn’t want to be seen. Not by him or anyone else.
I spent my morning chopping wood and lining it up in the barn. I tried to get some done each day so I would have enough to get me through the winter. While I had heat, there was something about a fire when it was cold, the wood crackling…helping drown out the quiet.
Over the years, I’d torn down the house I’d lived in with Chosen—my father—and with my mother. In its place was now a large, one-story log cabin that had come from my own hands and hard work. It was bigger than I needed, more rooms than I needed, but it helped me feel less trapped. Plus, in the beginning, I wondered if anyone would come back, but of course they never did.
