Page 1 of Take Me Slowly: part 2
1
LEAH
Thoughts tumbled through my brain,fighting to be heard. None of them made any sense. A smattering of images might have been memories. Unless I imagined them.
Maybe none of it was true and I was losing my mind.
Itcouldn'tbe true.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Try to slow my panicked, racing heart.
Think.
Logically, what could be true?
What was real? I forced my mind back to the present. Right here, right now. That was real.
A cold breeze wound around me and ruffled my hair. The ground was hard under my knees. A sharp piece of gravel dug into my right kneecap. The air was heavy with the smell of trees and fallen leaves.
The creek…
The creek wandered past a couple of small cottages before disappearing into the thick of the forest. The creek they said Coral Clarke fell into. She fell in and was never seen again. That was what they believed for twenty years. That had to bethe truth. Right? My imagination had to be filling in the blanks. Making me think things that weren't true.
I lowered my hands from my face.
Josiah Lachance looked at me, his hands raised in front of him like he wasn't sure if he should try to touch me or not.
"What the fuck are you doing here?" He took a step closer, gravel crunching under his worn black boots.
My brow creased. WhatwasI doing here? I struggled to remember as I climbed back to my feet.
"Nails," I said finally. "You left a bag of nails in town. I drove up here to give them to you." I don't know why that seemed important. At the time it had. Now? It seemed inconsequential.
"I would have gone and got them." He crossed his arms over his muscular chest, his defensive walls right back up in place. "You didn't need to bother."
I ignored him and looked around. "You live here? Is it just you?" I hadn't seen anyone else since I arrived. No one appeared from the cottages to ask what was going on.
The muscles in his jaw tightened. "I told you not to give a shit about me. I'm not worth it."
"I get to decide that," I said, barely glancing at him. I nodded toward one of the cottages. "You live there. Gavin Clarke lived in that one with his daughter." I gestured towards the house closer to the creek.
Josiah's eye twitched. "That's right. So what?"
"Does anyone live there now?" I started toward the Clarke house.
"What the fuck?" Footsteps muffled by the grass underfoot, he caught up to me. "You shouldn't be here."
"Shouldn't I?" I glanced over at him. "If no one lives there, then why do you care?"
"I'm the caretaker here," he said. "It's my job to give a shit."
"Why did Gavin Clarke live here?" The closer I got to the cottage, the harder it was to breathe.
"Fuck." Josiah ran a hand over his dark hair. "Because he was the caretaker. He and my dad used to run the resort. My mother was the cook."
