Page 31 of Little Bird
A lost soul coming home.
“What?” I ask softly. “Taryn, what’s going on?”
“What makes you think something’s going on?” she asks, sniffing.
I chuckle. “I just caught you crying because you pinched your fingers, girl. I’ve seen you hurt yourself a million and one times, and I’ve never seen you cry over it. So I’m guessing you’re not actually crying about getting a little pinch. The pinch was just the thing that sent you over the edge.”
She grows very still, like an animal who knows it’s been spotted, and I listen as our hearts beat against each other, her heartbeat echoing my own as both slow and find the same rhythm. And when she looks up, she’s all wide eyes and parted lips, flushed cheeks and glowing skin. The shadows are gone, the fear vanished, and when her eyes glance down at my lips and back up, I...
I...
I realize that I was stupid to think I could do this. I can’t deal with the closeness or the vulnerability of the moment. The heavy, intense pressure bearing down on us from all sides as we stand here staring at each other like nothing else in the world matters.
The last time I looked at her like this, she left me, and I’ve never gotten over it.
And the idea of making myself that vulnerable again...
I can’t do it.
I can’t.
I press my lips together, drop my arms, and take several staggering steps back. And then I turn and walk away.
“I’m going to find a Christmas tree,” I say over my shoulder. “We need one for the house.”
I don’t look back again.
I can’t. She’s already seen too much of me, and I don’t know how to handle the emotions blooming inside me at how badly I want her to see more.
Taryn
It starts snowing as he walks away, and I look up, surprised. Above me, the sky is slate gray, with glowing white accents lining the clouds where the sun is still trying to shine through, and I do a double take. When did the sun disappear? Where did the clouds come from? When I came out here, it was clear as day, and now snow is falling quickly, covering the ground in white and quickly hiding our tools.
Our tools.
Gabe.
I look up, suddenly remembering what just happened, and glare at him as he walks into the forest, the axe hanging at his side. He doesn’t look back, of course. Why would he, when he just showed me plain and simple that he didn’t want anything to do with me?
I take one step after him, then another, but pause, caught between fury, rebellion, and something I don’t want to identify. What the fuck is he thinking, sharing a moment like that with me and then walking away like it didn’t mean anything?
What was I thinking, starting the moment in the first place?
It all began so innocently. I came out here to make sure he was okay after the fight I overheard between him and Gunner and found him chopping wood. Easy enough. I’d started to help, the way I always did when we were younger, only instead of being grateful, he’d been angry with me about something, snapping at me like a wounded dog.
And then in the midst of a scuffle over the pliers I got hurt, and the sudden coalescence of pain had been too much for me to handle. It solidified the emotions I’ve been carrying with me for months—years—and everything suddenly felt like far too much. Too much pain, too much fear, too much hope for me to hold in my hands anymore. I’m up here running away from my mother and everything she represents, and if I’m being honest with myself, I’ve been running from her for years. The last four years, for certain.
And the four years before that, when I was here on the mountain with the Hawkes.
And the four years before that, I’m sure, though I was a child then and didn’t think of things that way.
Still, I’m up here because I’m supposed to be hiding and thinking. Figuring out what I’m going to do about my mother and Johnny and how I’m going to stay away from them until I turn twenty-one and can legally keep them out of my life. And instead I’m standing in a meadow with the snow falling around me, wet and flustered because Gabe is giving me whiplash.
I don’t know what to think of him—or the fact that when he offered himself to me just now, I took him with both hands and didn’t look back.
The tears, though... Those were unintentional.
So was the way I reacted to him when he wrapped his arms around me.
