Page 30 of Mountain Man's Valentine
10
Cole
What didI do to deserve this angel in my bed?
I did nothing to deserve her, because I’m not a good man. She called me ahero, but I am anything but that.
It doesn’t matter now, though. It doesn’t matter how many lives I’ve saved, or how much fucking money I’ve made in the process. It doesn’t matter how there was one life I could not save.
It doesn’t matter how Val came to me, and it doesn’t matter that I let her slip through my fingers a year ago.
It doesn’tmatter. All that matters now is that we have each other.
It’sallthat matters.
I feel myself falling asleep peacefully for the first time in years. When I close my eyes, I am still and calm with Val beside me. She’s carefully taking down the barbed wire I’ve wrapped around my heart.
It’s not going to happen overnight. I’m not going tohealin a fucking instant. This isn’t some fairy tale, where I save the princess and I’m cured and healed and fucking perfect when I feel the fair maiden’s kiss.
But now I canstart.
When I awake with her the next morning, it’s like I never went to sleep. My sleep over the past two years has been fitful and filled with bad dreams and sudden awakenings. But not this time. With her, I can suddenly breathe, and I can feel the good and sweet things again. It’s not perfect yet. It’s not going to be. Itshouldn’tbe perfect yet.
But she is perfect.
And now I can start.
I disentangle from her, but it’s hard. My heart clenches when she sweetly rolls over, her fingers grasping for my body, though I’ve already gotten up. I quietly let myself out of my bedroom, and as I cross my home, I realize yesterday was the first day in alongtime that I appreciated the sheer wild beauty of this place, of the wilderness, of the land and the sky that I see just outside my window.
Outside.
I will take Val into town today. Yesterday was the most romantic day of the year. Let’s make today top it.
I’ll do it for her. I will throw a rope down the sides of the walls I’ve put up around my mind, my home, my heart, and instead of asking her to climb up and get inside here with me, I will knock them down so I can beoutsidewithher.
Because I can’t hide her inside her forever. I will give her everything and anything she wants, but I need to get out, too. For both of us.
I decide to go into my home office after putting on a pot of coffee. I have to make some calls. I have to tell my staff that they are to take the day off. They’ve been telling me for two years that I should have an assistant, that I shouldn’t have to call every single one of the members of my personal staff every time I have an announcement to make, but even though I’m a developer and I’m a fucking ace with tech, I don’t like sending emails and I want to keep my relationship with my staff personal.
So I ease into my desk in my dark little office, illuminated only by the white light on my security monitors, and I call each of my staff members to tell them to take the day off.
They’re all thankful, of course. It’s cold up here, and truthfully I would have given them the day off even if Ididn’thave Val wrapped up in my sheets right now. The weather is too bad to make them come to work today, even though most of my staff lives right in town on the main strip, in the apartments above the bakeries and cafes and bookstores on Main Street.
I’ll bring Val there today. She will love it. We will pop in to one of my favorite wine shops and the shop that creates unique craft chocolates. I’ll have her try some new things. I’ll show her the sweeter things in life. And I’ll show her me. All of me. Even the parts that I don’t like.
Because she’s already shown herself to me, and she is the sweetest thing I’ve ever seen.
I fold my hands up and put them under my chin, surveying my security monitors. Everything will be quiet today, I know. The people trespassing on my property won’t be back for another year. My business will keep running, and the app with continue to save people, god willing.
My eyes drift over to the framed photo I keep on my desk. Her hair is dark, and her eyes are like mine, big and curious. Or at least, that’s how mine used to be. She was never any different from me. We were thesame. We were like the sameperson.
That’s what my parents, long gone, used to say.Take care of each other, they would always say to us. They’d say it like it was a fuckingjoke, though. They’d say it like they were telling us to make sure to brush our teeth twice a day, like it was some common wisdom that we would never be able to forget, that they were reminding us of just for the sake of doling out parental wisdom.
Take care of each other, they’d say.You’re all that each other’s got.
We were thesame. The same dark hair, the same big, curious eyes.
And it made sense, of course, because we were twins.
