to close.
I gritted my teeth. It wasn’t a question. It was an assumption. He knew I was a city woman. Expensive car. Unable to handle myself in the outdoors. So, it played that I wouldn’t know how to make a fire.
Instead of answering him, I made my way over to the fireplace, gingerly and awkwardly and without offers of help. He just watched me struggle to crouch down, heft two pieces of wood in first, then the tinder, then more wood. Then strike a match and light a piece of newspaper to ignite the kindling.
I was slow, but confident in my motions. Didn’t rush it. I was stuck in a memory. In nostalgia. That didn’t happen often. Snippets of my past packaging themselves into something palatable, something comfortable.
It soothed me. The fire. Its ability to create warmth, life, at the same time it could burn everything to ash, destroy everything in its path.
Once the fireplace was roaring, I leaned back ever so slightly, far too arrogant to turn my head and make eye contact with Saint, who hadn’t moved.
Not even a grunt of approval.
There was a beat of that yawning silence that even the fire couldn’t fill. Then boots thumping on hardwood.
Heat that only a male could produce hit my back. My spine stiffened. I didn’t move.
“You got no excuse to be sittin’ in here cold now,” he rasped. “I keep you stocked with the wood, you keep the fire burnin’.”
And, as if that wasn’t a completely ridiculous thing to utter in someone’s ear, he left.
The door closed on the way out, keeping the heat in, but letting his warmth out.
I stayed to watch the fire for the rest of the night. To feed it.
Chapter 8
“I found her by chance. I didn’t usually look for them in small towns. They were missed easily. Too many variables. Curious neighbors. But she didn’t have neighbors. Not for miles. No one to hear her scream.”
One Week Later
Saint was true to his oath.
My firewood stocks remained healthy. As if by magic. There were no more late-night meetings. Not even a glimpse. Just a woodpile that never went down, despite the fact I hauled it in continually.
Despite the effort and pain it took, I kept the fire burning, and the cold out of the house at least.
Katy was true to her promise and my scripts came in.
Margot was kind enough to pick them up for me, along with supplies.
Which was mainly wine and whisky, with some food scattered in.
She knew I didn’t eat much, and instead of harping on about “putting meat on my bones” or some such thing a woman of her age and personality might make, she said nothing.
Didn’t push her time on me, as if she could taste the blackness of my mood. Nor did she seem offended when I didn’t even thank her for the effort, time and expense of it all.
I wanted to thank her. Something in me desperately wanted to thank her. Smile. Maybe even hug her. Like the woman who had once lived in this house certainly would’ve.
But that wasn’t me. I didn’t have the tools for that. Instead, I handed her a wad of bills she didn’t try to shrug off. I liked her more for taking it. Not holding onto some false kindness, that she didn’t want the money. That she was doing this out of the kindness of her heart. I didn’t know her financial situation, but I could guarantee mine was better. Unless she was some eclectic millionaire, which would’ve been interesting.
Whether or not she was, she took the money. My version of a thank you, a smile.
Katy texted intermittently to tell me the dangers of taking too many painkillers and mixing them with liquor. Dangers I, of course, ignored. The only way to take painkillers was with a whisky chaser.
Especially when I hadn’t written a word since that night. I’d had plenty of nightmares, so that wasn’t the problem. It was him. The lack of him. He was my story. He carried horror and hell around with him.
It frustrated me. Infuriated me.
He was a fucking muse.
I didn’t believe in muses.
In people carrying around the ability to control an artist’s lifeblood. Their creation. It was bullshit made up by men as yet another way to control a woman, by slapping the label of muse on her, objectifying her in yet another way.
Of course, people inspired me. Their flaws, faults, their depravity. I collected it all and mixed it with my own nightmares, created a