In Strange Woods - Claire Cray Page 0,83

the blank look on James’s face, neither did he.

“Real truth is divine and unknowable,” Beau said, and took a drag from his cigarette. “It’s like a boulder hidden in a deep, impenetrable forest. A sacred stone, like Tomowanos. But no one can ever find it. The best we can do is scream into the trees, and then listen closely. If we hear an echo of our voices, we’ll know that they reached that sacred rock, and were reflected back. Distorted, of course. Fragmented. Transformed by an instant of contact with the divine. But that’s the point. The echo is the closest we’ll ever come to the truth we can never know.”

As James and Hunter stared, Beau peacefully took another drag and turned his eyes back to the trees.

“Tomo-wah-nos?” James repeated curiously.

“A meteorite from the Willamette Valley, sacred to the Clackamas people.” Beau smiled wryly. “It’s in a New York museum, now. Stolen away. But maybe one day it’ll come home like you.”

James was right. Hunter did like Beau. Somehow, he was not what Hunter had expected—he was significantly weirder. In a good way, though, that seemed to run in the family.

“Are you going home?” James asked, looking at Hunter again.

“Yeah, I’d better. Early day tomorrow.”

“I’ll walk you.”

Hunter nodded goodbye to Beau, who smiled at him in his wild, dreamy way, and he had to admit…maybe Beau had been baptized in a cold stream in November. Anything less bizarre would have been just as hard to believe.

Instead of going back through the cabin, he and James walked along the wide wraparound deck instead, their boots thudding softly on the old cedar planks. It had been a heavy evening, and Hunter wondered if James had yet felt any relief or satisfaction at all.

“How you feeling?” he asked.

“Sad.”

Hunter briefly put a hand on his back, and James suddenly pulled him to a stop. They stood facing each other in the shadows at the front corner of the deck, Hunter waiting curiously.

“I wouldn’t be here without you,” James said, staring at him with quiet intensity. “And I don’t mean the log truck. I mean if it hadn’t been for you, I don’t think I could have slowed down long enough to figure out that I could…that this place could save me. Thank you.”

Hunter held his gaze, feeling a warm hum somewhere deep in his chest that he didn’t know how to articulate.

“I really like that you’re part of it,” James said slowly, like he wanted to get it right. “That you were here tonight, and your grandmother was there back then, and…it feels like we…like you’re family, too. I mean, not family, but…” He paused. “But family.”

How could Hunter express how that made him feel? All he could think of was grabbing James and holding him close. But he hesitated. It wasn’t like they were alone at his trailer, or in James’s room at the Sea Witch, the places where they’d been carrying on. They didn’t just grab each other and hold each other at random, on neutral ground. They weren’t in a relationship.

Which was unbearable, he now realized. It was unbearable how bad he wanted this thing between them to be bigger, realer—how bad he wanted to be with James, wanted him to stay. And it didn’t matter how many times he told himself to stop dreaming. It didn’t matter that he could count the days they’d known each other on one hand. It didn’t matter how extremely unlikely it was that someone like James would trade his big, exciting, cosmopolitan life for an old-fashioned, isolated, backwoods place like this.

It didn’t matter, because Hunter’s heart had made up its own mind. It had broken its leash and was running wild, and there was nothing he could do to call it back.

“So,” he heard himself say. “When do you go back to New York?”

“Oh.” James finally looked up at him again with an expression that teetered between hope and worry, a combination Hunter didn’t quite understand. “Well, Sully’s been taking care of a lot from here. It seems less overwhelming now. The estate and everything. Turns out Domino wasn’t as helpful as I thought he was.”

Hunter nodded wryly. That was a dark understatement.

“Beau’s record, too.” James smiled a little, his eyes warming. “It’s getting expunged. Sully says it’s no problem. But you should have seen Beau’s face when I asked if he’d ever want to grow weed legally. Turns out he doesn’t believe in commercial agriculture.”

Hunter had to laugh. Beau was all right. “I’m