Filed To Story: Alpha's Regret: His Wrongful Rejection
I draw in a deep breath so I can let out a long sigh, and my droopy eyes fly open. What is that?
It’s woodsmoke.
Actual woodsmoke, faint, but unmistakable.
Shit. Fire.
The Land Rover is almost out of gas. If there’s a wildfire, I’m screwed. I leap from the bed, kick the quilt away from my ankles, and lunge for one of my last gallons of water. My heart is lodged in my throat as I fling open the trailer door, scanning the woods in the distance for a plume of smoke.
A throat clears. My gaze drops.
Cadoc Collins is squatting by my fire pit. He rises slowly, all muscle and control and frigid calm. The air is sucked from my lungs.
The thin ribbon of smoke that was curling up from the badly stacked kindling at his feet disappears. It’s a miracle he got a spark to catch at all. He’s got the sticks lined up like hot dogs in a pack.
He doesn’t look like himself. He’s grown a beard, and it’s trimmed, but not well. It hides his mouth.
He’s wearing blue jeans, carpenter boots, and a tan sherpa-lined suede jacket.
He stares at me, motionless, as if I’m the interloper. Like he’s waiting for me to say something.
I cross my arms. “That’s not how you stack kindling.”
I wish I hadn’t dropped the quilt. It’s freezing, so my nipples are hard, and if I move my arms, he’ll see them through my white thermal top. I’m wearing the same gray drawstring sweatpants that I’ve had on for days, and the same thick pink ski socks that even bunched, come up to mid-shin. My hair’s so dirty it lays flat on my scalp except for the static fly aways.
Cadoc takes it all in, raking his cold gaze down my front like a razor, making my blood boil.
What the hell is he doing here now?
I squeeze my folded arms tight. “You can fuck right off.”
He keeps his gaze level with mine, unblinking, like I didn’t say a word. Then, with great precision of movement, he peels off his leather work gloves, finger by finger, and shrugs off his jacket. He walks over to where I stand in the Airstream doorway with exaggerated slowness as if I might attack or bolt. Where would I run? I’m stuck in a trailer, and the frames are so rusted and warped, none of the windows open all the way anymore.
Cadoc holds out his jacket. “You’re cold.”
I lift my chin. “I don’t want it.”
“Take it. Please.” I hate his voice. It’s an octave lower, so deep it’s almost a whisper, ragged and tired. Barely held together. He doesn’t get to sound like that.
I swat the jacket away. “No.”
“Please.” He holds it back up. “Take it.”
“You don’t get to tell me what to do.”
He just stands there, holding up his stupid jacket, shoulders squared and chest high like he’s facing some kind of firing squad.
“I don’t want it.” Something is working itself through my veins, something burning, not a blush, a poison. “I don’t want you. I hate you.”
He straightens. Nothing can affect him. Nothing can knock him down.
I knock his arm aside, and now I’m being propelled forward by the raging thing inside me, and I can’t stop. I hit him, but I’ve never hit anyone before, and he doesn’t budge—not an inch—so I hurt my palm on his face, my fists against his pecs.
He lets me hit him, and it doesn’t hurt him, not at all.
I burst into hot tears.
He finally moves, his arm raises, hand hovering, like he’s afraid to touch me. I slam my open palms into his chest, try to push him away, knock him back, just an inch. I’d take an inch.
I know he could stop me so easily, but he just stands there, taking it, and I cry, ugly and snotty, and scream at him, so loud the birds in the trees around us take flight.
“I hate you. I don’t want you. No one wants you. All you are is an empty skin. There’s nothing in there.” I slam my palm into the place his heart should be. “You have no use.
No use.”
And finally, he flinches.
I break down, collapsing cross-legged on the ground, weeping, shoulders heaving, my sobs horrible and loud in the quiet morning, and the loudness makes them come harder and hurt worse.
“Go away.” I can’t look at him. “Go away. Go away.”
He stands over me, motionless except for his heaving chest, legs braced, that damn jacket in his hand, watching me cry.
“Go away!”
Finally—finally—he slowly folds the jacket and places it in front of me on the ground.
Then he digs in his front pocket and pulls out a white square. A cloth napkin. I recognize it. He sets it on top of the jacket.
He reaches behind his back and takes out my slingshot, laying it carefully on top of the pile. It’s the one I lifted off Danny when he ate the cookies I’d hidden in the freezer. The one Cadoc nicked from me that day in the library.
My tears stop from sheer surprise.
He doesn’t know how you’re supposed to do it—maybe he doesn’t even know what he’s doing—but he’s giving me his markers.
“I’m never going to leave you again,” he says as if that’s the final word, turns and walks back to the fire where he squats and pokes it with a stick.
I realize my mouth is open. I shut it. The fever that came over me seeps into the cold ground and my sobs fade into hiccups. I rest my back against the Airstream step.
Cadoc messes around with whatever he’s doing like I’m not over here, a sniveling mess.
“Why are you even here?” I try for tough, but it comes out weak and wobbly.
He glances up from the firepit, and a pale-yellow ray of sunlight hits his eyes at just the right angle so they look alive, glittering and tense. Then, he ducks his head and begins to restack the firewood. He’s doing it all wrong.
“You’ve got to put them crisscross.”
He glances up, quickly masking his surprise and efficiently rearranging the kindling. “Like this?”
“Yeah.” I snuffle and wipe my puffy face with my sleeve.
Cadoc lowers himself to sit, knees bent, and begins sawing two sticks together. He’s serious, hunched, as intent as I’ve ever seen him. He thinks he can start a fire that way? Not with that kind of wood, he can’t.
I consider letting him keep at it, but instead, I haul myself to my feet and climb into the trailer. I grab the long matches, and slide on my fur-lined boots.
The sooner the fire’s started, the sooner I can make tea, and once I’ve had my tea, I’ll be able to pull myself together and kick him out.
The bond has been muted since I left, like music from another room. It’s there, but I can ignore it. Now, it flares like the match Cadoc is striking and holding to a sturdy stick about an inch in diameter, managing to char it black before he’s forced to drop it or burn his fingers.
I sigh and go grab my knife and one of the pine logs that I keep inside so it stays dry. I sit across the fire from Cadoc to whittle a pile of shavings.
Cadoc straightens, propping his muscular forearms on his knees. He’s wearing a long-sleeved green Henley, pushed up to the elbows. I’ve never seen him in anything but a button-down or his Moon Lake Athletics T-shirt. He doesn’t look like himself. It puts me on edge.
All of this puts me on edge. I scan the horizon with my bleary eyes, breathing deep, even though I can hardly smell him, and he’s only eight feet away. “Where’s Seth?”
“I’m alone.”
“No Derwyn?”
The vein at his temple pulses. “No Derwyn.”
I scoop the shavings on top of the fire and give Cadoc a nod. “Try it now.”
On my way back to my seat, I duck over to the trailer and grab his jacket. If he’s gonna just leave it there, I might as well not sit on the cold ground. It’s soft and thick. I fuss until I’ve got the sleeves tucked over my lap.