Page 3 of The Space Between
I don’t even know his name.
But I already know one thing for sure… he’s not just my neighbor.
He’s a warning.
And I’m not sure I can stay away.
Gruene
The river doesn’t forgive.
People like to think it’s some soft, winding thing that cools you off on a hot day. That it’s friendly… and playful… and slow. But they’re wrong. It’ll turn on you the second you stop paying attention. Especially when it’s rain-swollen and angry.Especiallyin the dark. Especially when you’re driving too fast and thinking you’re invincible.
I know what the river takes.
I know what it leaves behind.
And I know it never gives a damn.
Dragging my towel over my head, I scrub the river water from my face. My skin burns from the coldness of the water and from the way she looked at me.
The new girl… no, thewoman, in Cabin 2.
She sat on her porch, unabashedly watching me like she was made of questions. Her eyes were too wide, too knowing, too… familiar. I didn’t miss the fear on her face at my appearance or the way she gripped that water bottle like a lifeline. She’s seenenough hurt to recognize it in someone else. She didn’t look away from me… on purpose.
No one looks at me like that anymore. Not without pity or gossip in their eyes… in their mouths.
Butshedid. She looked. She wanted to know more.
And I fuckingfeltit as deeply as if her small hands were on my skin.
Shaking out my towel, I sling it over my shoulder as I climb the steps to the loft of my cabin, my keys still in my hand because I forgot to drop them on the counter. The bathroom door creaks the way it always does, wood swollen from years of humidity and time. I kick it closed behind me and reach for the snap of my soaked jeans, pulling them down and letting them fall to the floor. I don’t even care that they’re soaking the wood.
I bet her whole cabin smells like river and cedar and faint traces of her perfume already.
No. That part’s in my head. Because there’s no way I would know if she even wears perfume.
Except… I swear I did smell her when I stalked past, enraged that she was disturbing my solitude. That cabin has been empty for almost a year now. I like it empty. But I swear I smelled something warm and sweet when I stalked past. Like late summer honey, fresh lemon, and sunlight on female,prettyfemale, skin.
Scrubbing a hand through my wet hair, and down over my chin, feeling the raised scar along my jaw through the stubble, I roughly exhale.
Get it together, Gruene.
You’re not seventeen and horny. You’re thirty-three and ruined.
Who gives a shit if Cabin 2 is pretty. She’s none of your business.
Showering quickly, I hastily dry off and grab a pair of sweatpants from the basket near the door. Everything else is folded. Ordered. Simple. That’s how I keep it. Routine is what keeps me from going under.
I flick on the box fan under the window and lay down without bothering to pull the covers over me. I’m hot as hell from the shower and annoyed that I noticed my new neighbor. The river still rushes in my ears, but the silence underneath it is the thing that haunts.
That night. Their last breaths. Everything that followed.
It plays on a loop in my head.
I close my eyes and try to pretend I’m not still underwater, still drowning, still stuck six years back on the riverbank under the broken guardrail. The metal twisted, and the rain so loud I couldn’t hear my wife’s cry… my daughter’s scream.
But it’s there.
