actually liked having her around.
We tinkered with the ancient tractor’s engine, exchanging ideas about what might be wrong as well as several colorful phrases about the piece of shit. Silence fell when I climbed up on a tire to look at a different angle, and when it ended, Axel was putting himself in my business. Exactly where I didn’t want him.
“If you want my advice,” Axel said, as if I gave a shit about his advice at all, “you should woo her a little.”
I dropped to the ground and lifted an eyebrow. “What?”
He laughed, shaking his head. “You look confused. You might have the rugged thing going for you, but girls like to be pampered. Take her out on a date or something. You know, something special.”
I grunted. A date? That meant we would have to go to town. Where there were people. But maybe Axel had a point. Angela deserved the best. And all I could offer was sex and a rustic cabin. Fucking good sex. But women wanted more, needed more, than amazing sex.
I hated to admit it, but Axel was right. I had to charm her, pamper her, play the right cards to stay in this game. Which meant I would have to deal the cards again, would have to figure out how to keep my location and my identity quiet while wooing this woman. But I could figure that out if I was careful.
I also needed to understand why the hell I felt this way about Angela. I picked up a doll in a mudslide and suddenly my whole life was fucked because I couldn’t get her off my mind.
For three years, I’d been fine. And now a pair of green eyes and perfect tits scrambled my mind until I couldn’t think about anything other than what it would feel like to wake up to her every morning for the foreseeable future. Of course, after so long, I needed a release.
It was way more than that, though. And that was a problem. A real fucking problem. If Angela found out what kind of man I used to be, she would run away as fast as her legs could carry her and would never look back.
And I wouldn’t blame her.
Angela
I wandered around Axel’s cabin, which I had to admit was much nicer than Viktor’s. He’d obviously been there longer, had even decorated some. His cabin had more amenities, like a working stove and refrigerator. The sofa and love seat looked comfortable, though I didn’t see a television or computer anywhere. He had some books stacked on a table, and as I reached for one, I heard a loud banging noise. I glanced out the window, which had blinds rather than curtains, and watched the two men from the comfort of a warm home.
Viktor and Axel seemed comfortable around each other, falling into stride as if they did this often. Although I knew for a fact that wasn’t the case. Viktor wasn’t the type of guy to socialize.
Had he always been like this? Why would someone decide to seclude himself? Clearly, he wasn’t the only one. Axel had done the same. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the seclusion, how they were both so removed from any form of civilization.
I was in the process of doing the exact opposite thing.
Working for Ryan as an insurance assessor was a bitch. I hated the job, I hated my boss even more, and the run-of-the-mill thing was enough to push anyone to tears. But it paid the bills, it was work that kept me off my mom’s back, and it was an opportunity I hadn’t wanted to pass up at the time.
Soon, everything would change, though. My mom kept encouraging me to leave, to explore the big wide world, to create a new life for myself away from the childhood I’d had in Grizzly Falls, away from the ghosts my dad had left behind that haunted us both.
At first, I hadn’t wanted to leave. I couldn’t leave my mom behind and alone. But she kept insisting that I would be living for both of us, that I had to make more of myself than I could be in a place like Grizzly Falls. I needed to stretch my wings and fly, she kept saying.
So I’d started looking for jobs. I’d looked in big cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, places my mum had suggested, places that seemed to make her happy. Now, I was less than a week away