“The only time I ate the dirt was when you dropped your shovel in front of me as I was walking and I tripped on it. And you laughed and laughed.”
“It was kind of funny…” He sticks his hands under the water, turning the sink brown with dirt while wearing a nostalgic grin on his face.
“He’d better drive us home,” I whisper.
“No, you need to run home.”
I look at him in horror. “No. I think I worked plenty hard putting in a fence. That should cancel out any running for the next month.”
“You’re awfully optimistic,” he says as he hands me the towel to dry my hands.
Once we’re finished, we head out to the dining room where Dave has chicken from the grill waiting for us.
“Sit, sit. It’s so nice having some company!” Dave says. “The off-season gets pretty quiet and boring. You guys planning on staying longer? I know you only paid through the end of the week.”
While we haven’t been at the cabin long, it feels nice having a place where we aren’t running or in constant fear, but I don’t know how long it’s safe for us to be here.
“We’ll talk about it, but we might stay another week if you’ll have us,” Shepherd says.
Dave looks delighted. “Of course! I’ll even knock off some cost if you’d like to continue helping out around here. I have a garden to turn over and trails to trim, and oh my, the list goes on.”
“We’d love to help,” Shepherd says, and while I’m not sure “love” is the word I’d use, it did feel good helping out someone today.
Twenty
The moment I hit the pillow, I’m asleep, tired and sore from the past two days of helping out Dave. But I find myself waking in the middle of the night for some strange reason. Something’s pressed against me, so I reach over, assuming it’s Shepherd, before finding the soft hair and beefy body of Bear.
Of course it’s the dog spooning me. I roll onto my side and reach over before patting the area next to me, finding it empty. When I grab the phone we’d gotten during yesterday’s trip into town, I use the light to shine onto the bed to confirm that I’m alone.
It’s one in the morning, so he might be watching TV or maybe he couldn’t sleep. For a while, I debate between staying asleep before the worry that something else is wrong forces me up. I’m sure everything’s fine. He could be going to the bathroom or getting a drink.
But I find myself wide awake as I realize that I need to make sure everything’s okay. I have this ridiculous fear that Shepherd is going to realize that I’m not worth it and he’s going to rush off, leaving me alone to fight my demons.
“Shepherd?” I call as I head into the main room.
Bear jumps off the bed to follow me because he has this weird obsession with following me everywhere, even into the bathroom where he stares me in the eyes.
Beyond the noise from the dog’s claws on the wooden floor, silence greets me.
“Shepherd?” I call, a bit more panicked now. He wouldn’t have left without saying anything, right? He wouldn’t have gone anywhere, right? Or did something happen to him?
The cabin isn’t large or hard to search through, so the moment I realize he’s not there, I move to the window where I see Shepherd sitting on the porch in the light from the night sky.
Relief washes through me as I grab a coat and pull open the door, letting Bear out first before following after.
“Shepherd?” I ask.
He looks over at me. “Did I wake you? Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”
Relieved, I walk over to the edge of the porch and sit down next to him, my legs dangling off the ledge. The cool air instantly cuts through my coat, making me realize he doesn’t even have a coat on. “What are you doing out here?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” he says.
“It’s cold out here, aren’t you cold?” I shrug one arm out of my coat and drape it over his shoulder so it’s awkwardly covering both of us. It forces us to sit even closer and I wonder if it bothers him, but I made him promise to tell me if I ever do anything that does.
“I’m not sure I even know how to feel anymore,” he says as he holds his hand out. His fingers look red, so I