Archive of Our Own

At first, you knew him only from whispers cupped in hands. 

Tall, they said. Handsome. But, oh! Rude. Funny way of speakin' too. Conspiring old ladies sipping rumors about the newcomer in the canned goods aisle. Keep away from him, hon. Who knows where he's from. 

Three years earlier, when you had ran and dropped anchor in the ramshackle fishing town, you had garnered the same reaction from the rabble - so you joined in their wariness and hesitation, just smug as a house cat to be on the other side of it, then.

Never caught a proper look at him until you crossed his path two months after he arrived. 

It wasn't often you made the trip into town except for Sundays. But then he was in front of you in the pharmacy line, this redwood of a man. All mahogany and height, age rings in his cross-section, dirt under his fingernails. Hardly looked people in the eye, just tapped thick, hair-covered knuckles on the counter.

"Staying long, hon?" the cashier, Mags, had pushed. Dragging her feet. Wanting a nice, long look at the stranger at her till. 

The stranger had dipped his head, the dark hair on his neck twisting, then paid for his bottle of clacking acetaminophen and left. Pushed past you without a second glance. 

Mags couldn't believe the gall of him. Couldn’t even give me his name! Like he has anywhere else to be - couldn't even stop for a chat. Then, He's working in the lumber yard, you know. Heard he's stayin' up on your hill, hon. Looked at you very seriously, glasses hiked up her nose until they pressed into her white eyelashes. He gives you any trouble, you come to me. Dean'll sort him right. I worry about you up there.  

Always worry for the people up the hill. 

The newcomer sat heavily in your chest from that moment on - ferrous tungsten on your sternum. 

So, he was staying. Had a job and everything. So, he bought out that property next to yours. You finally named the burgeoning feeling one morning, sipping coffee on your porch. 

It was irritation. Territorialism. 

Didn't he know that this was your escape? Your hibernation stockpile? You felt like a bear at the mouth of a cave, this coastal town tucked into a soft bed of thresh behind you. Hackles raised, piloerect. 

Who was he to show up and claim it as his own? 

Your hill

- but it was the old man's first. 

It started as an ember, a yearning, for something other than the life you had shaped in your parent’s image.

You had done ‘good daughter.’ 

Homework done at the kitchen table. Mass on Sundays. University across the border. Cushy career on the heels of graduation.

It was on one of your daily commutes that you started itching. Sweating on the swaying train. Tall, concrete buildings turned oppressive, looming over you, vertiginous. Suddenly, you realized that there was nothing and no one keeping you tethered to the life you had molded yourself in the city. 

Just telephone-friends and an empty apartment. Christmas cards from your folks in a house you had never been to. Didn't even have a dog that would miss you. 

It was a dream that turned into a fixation. To be cradled by nature - something that could not care and so was excused from the breaking of your heart when your embrace was not returned - bloomed until it was an unignorable ache in the lining of your skull. The ocean crashed between your ears, white caps swelling, and suddenly all you could do was be swept into her undertow. 

Swallowed up like Jonah - love, cupped in your hands like a newborn, with nowhere to go except for deep beneath the waves. 

The call of the wild, or some such. 

Once you got a bee in your bonnet, there wasn't much anyone or anything could do about it. The blinders clicked into place. 

Your coworkers called you crazy but didn't try very hard to stop you from packing up your life : one pathetic grey tote in the trunk of your car. 

Mom and dad tutted - throwing your life away - and lost your number. 

You drove until the plains grew horns and rose to the skies, until the air smelled of pink salt and petrichor instead of soiled pavement and cardboard canola. Sour yellow fields turned to rich bellies of green - rippling ferns, springy moss, mud and witch's hair and dew drops. Sunlight glancing off cupped puddles of rain. Fog rolling in over the slate mountain peaks. Pines and evergreens so tall you could almost fall over searching for the tops of them. 

You had never seen the sea, but how she called to you. 

You followed her voice up the surfer's road on the coast and stopped for gas in a little town, and when the cashier looked at you with suspicion and unease, you realized that you were as much stranger to him as he was to you and that this meant rebirth. This meant space to carve out for yourself in your image - whatever that may be, a cave painting, a message to the future from someone who gave you your nose and cheekbones - until you belonged and this place belonged to you. 

You traded your tired sedan for an ancient Ford; all torque on the floor and much more than you could handle. It belonged to an old man who only let you take the keys if you promised to let him teach you exactly how to treat a manual diesel.

Slept on the beach in the thing, rocked to sleep by the crashing waves and the smell of old cigarettes and dirt. 

Driving and maintenance lessons turned into church and Sunday lunches at the old man's cabin outside of town. The body and blood and one meal a week you could rely on - Corpus Christi and venison stew. Post-mass lunches became dayspring fishing trips and getting scolded for making too much racket. Fishing became watching the grandkids when his family rolled out west and where have you been stayin'? 'Here and there' my wrinkly ass. Got a spare bedroom. I won't hear it! Was Linda's craft room, she'd want it used. Just don't go mucking anythin' up.  

Shaking the first time you used a bolt-action to bring down a coltish doe, the old man clapping your shoulder. You did fine, kid. Cleaning the maple leaves from the gutters; cleaning the skin off bucks. Burning shrubs. Rendering tallow. Wrapping thick rope around a stump to pull it up by the roots; failing; watching the old man rage at the stubborn thing. Pretending not to see the glass in his eyes when he came home from a hunting trip to the garden in full bloom, resuscitated under your ministrations for the fist time since Linda's hands tilled the soil. 

Moments, pebbles of time, tumbling through your mind like glacier runoff. 

This small notch in a life was whittled just for you by careful, arthritic hands - but it wasn't quite yours. 

You were only folded in. 

The old man got older, and soon enough two years had passed and he bruised like a plum at the slightest bump. Set your nerves right off whenever he went into the woods alone - cantankerous, ornery, mulish bastard - wondering if he would make it back alright. His daughter, on her biannual visits, whispered through tea steam around a midnight kitchen table how she worried over him. Out here all alone ... especially after Mom died. I know he has you, dear, but you can't look after him all the time. No, no - we can't ask that of you either. I'd come out here but ... the kids.  

She was right, you knew she was. But you couldn't agree. It tasted too much like betrayal to admit that you couldn't be with him at all hours of the day. You had work to do around the property and the old man was prone to solo woodland expeditions, claws dug deep into his dwindling independence. 

Finally, almost inevitably, he fell one day bringing wood in and that was it. A blood-drenched, shaky-handed drive down the hill, a horrible night in the tiny clinic, and the next morning the old man signed the deed off to you. 

A man of few words, him. 

Pull your boots, was all he said, gauze wrapped around his sun-spotted head. Stain and reseal the logs next summer. Keep Linda's blue curtains up in the bedroom.  

And he was gone. Took your sedan to his family back east like it was some migration bird. 

You walked the length of the old man's cabin again and again like some spirit with no passage to the afterlife. Feeling like a painting left behind because you were tacked to the wall, your only witness mark the line of dust around your frame. No coins atop your eyelids for the farrier. No jewels in your mouth. All you had was a blood-filled heart, far heavier than a feather, and the comforts of a creature that was not you:

Dusty board games in the back of the closet. Inches carved in the doorway - babe, then child, then teen, then surpassing the height of their father. Pink arm floaties for trips down to the lake. Fingerprints in the pine beams. Sippy cups in the cabinets. 

The old man's hands were everywhere.

The thought of touching any of it, moving these imprints away into some dark place, built up in your mind until it was Goliath. 

Because what if your grasp passed clean through, and you had to confront the fact that you were not the ruler of this land.

You were only its steward. 

You stole the newcomer's name from the rumor mill, but he gave it to you the next time you saw him. 

" -John Price." Two syllables chuffed to you from your passenger seat. 

"I know."

In the weeks since your encounter at the pharmacy, you had wondered after the man on the hill with you. The townsfolk's sermon on the Sabbath was gossip dripped into your ear like hot honey. Doesn't talk to anyone. James offered him a drink after work and he said no, can you believe it? and Angie brought him a pie, and she hasn't even got the dish back. I thought the English were supposed to be polite.

Half of you hoped this spurn from the locals would drive him off. But you heard his old, red truck roar to life every morning - four on the dot, engine echoing over the pines - and gambled that John Price was not a man who bent. 

Works like a draft horse, James says. Says he likes him, he's just quiet is all. Wonder if he's here for good. 

It was on one of your outings to town that you found him.

It was peak rut and snow was coming soon, and while you caught or shot or grew your food, there was a hole in your sole and an ache in your back. Couldn't make new boots and certainly couldn't make Tylenol, so down the hill it was. A series of switchbacks made up the shared road down from the hill, and it was around the bend of one of them that you found John - cursing under the hood of his truck, smacking the steaming engine like that would make it behave.

How tempting it was to leave him there, but that wouldn't be very neighborly of you, would it? Love thy, and all that.  

Tammy echoing from the day before. Invited him to my birthday last week - thanked me but said no. Shy, I think. Needs a friend. It was the greatest offense in that town; not being kind or helpful. If John was going to stay, he was going to learn how things were done around there. 

You threw the Ford in park and joined him in the rain, chirping a "Hey neighbor!" that was returned with a dip of his chin. "Engine trouble?"

Looking up at him, close to for the first time, you found him to be a stocky, broad thing. Soft mass over thick muscle hidden beneath a padded, red flannel. Messy auburn hair and a beard wrapping around his jaw, flecked grey with time and twisting with his frown. 

You noted that his eyes were the exact color of the greying skies above.

And that he was handsome, just like the old ladies had said. 

John said that it was running hot and kept misfiring on the climb and you asked if he had checked his oil level. He grumbled an mhmm and you asked after the pressure. John grunted a nuh-uh and said he didn't have a gauge. How lucky that you happened to have one in your bed. 

The old man had taught you a thing or two before he had left, and if you were a betting woman, you'd say his high-pressure oil pump was shot. Couldn't tell for sure, though, without getting into the guts of the thing, and that required pulling the cab. Also lucky that you had a crane in the shop back at the cabin. 

John watched you work, even rested a steadying, respectful hand on your back to keep you from toppling over when you stepped on the grill for a better look. When you were finished, he helped you down.

No skepticism, you noted, when he asked for your diagnosis. 

"Don't know yet," you said. "But you shouldn't be driving it. Good thing you're facing uphill. Come on, we're going to town."

"What for?"

"Rob." You packed your oil pressure gauge back in your tool kit, nice and neat like you were taught, and tossed it in the bed of your truck. "He'll tow you up to my place. Got a shop there where he can figure it out."

You weren't certain what made you so determined not to take no for an answer. Maybe it was that ember again, that call of the unknown. Maybe it was the guarded, willful set of his strong jaw. But you hopped in your driver's seat and waited for him to join you - which he did after a few moments staring at you from the road. 

John told you that you shouldn't be letting strange men into your truck, but buckled his seatbelt anyway. 

"You're not a strange man," you laughed. "You live next door."

"How do you know that?"

He was Nazirite in your cab, a sturdy thing with uncut hair taking up too much space in the passenger seat. Filled the air with the smell of sawdust, and sweat, and stale tobacco. 

"One thing about this town you'll have to learn: everybody knows everything ," you told him. 

John swallowed, Adam's apple bobbing in the scruff of his throat, and held his hand out to you. 

Calloused, scarred, dirty.

But large, warm. 

Engulfed your own when you shook it and he breathed in, spoke. "I'm -"

Rob was happy to help. Borrowed a hitch link from Angie and rumbled his flatbed up the hill to tug John's rusted truck to the shop. 

Dale heard about the trouble and hauled Tammy and Malcolm up to check it out. Angie couldn't help her curiosity and showed in half an hour with her tools and a blackberry cobbler. 

John seemed a tad overwhelmed by it all as the fleet turned up on your front lawn.

Didn't show it much, though. Shook hands politely and introduced himself to people who already knew his name; accepted a clap on his shoulder and a cold bottle of beer. 

Angie and Tammy boiled the kettle. Heated the cobbler up and dug out some freezer-burnt ice cream from your ticking fridge. Dale, Malcolm, and Rob held their chins and hemmed and hawed over John's truck that then sat in the shop. Made distant plans to lift the cab off the chassis and rummage around the innards left behind. But soon enough the smell of vanilla and sugar and cloying berries wafted over from the cabin and all work was forgotten.

John was corralled into your kitchen and pestered over bites of dessert - where was he from, why he was here, did he have a wife, kids, why not, was he looking. One word answers between second, third, fourth helpings until he looked a tad green around his gills. 

Malcolm unearthed the whiskey you had hidden under the stairs, the liquor-dog, and then it was a party. Someone put a record on. Rain pattered solemnly against the blue-tin roof, the women chattered about their children left for the city, and Kenny Rogers crackled against the needle in the living room. Life and warmth kicked up in the lonely cabin like a two-stroke chugging awake. 

And John sat quietly through it all, holding court in a corner until Tammy reeled him out. 

It was amusing - his efforts at distance. He was one of you now, whether he liked it or not, past transgressions of manners all but forgotten. 

"This is our girl," Tammy told him proudly when he crossed the room to you. She crushed you against her broad side, the too-hard hug of a woman who spent her life on a fishing boat. "No one to take care of her either."  

Heat pooled over your face and dripped down to your toes as John's eyes flicked from you to her. You made a squeaking excuse and escaped to help Dale dry the dishes. 

Eventually, the sun dipped behind the mountains and the flock of trucks left one by one with promises to return the next day; a Saturday, no work for anyone. Hugs goodbye for you, handshakes for him. Good man, and we'll get that truck right as rain, and I'm still waiting on that pie dish! They rolled down the hill and out of sight, and you were left with John on your front porch. 

"They're ... helpful," he said, staring out at the painted sunset. 

You laughed. “They’re meddling, but they’re good folk. You made it through initiation just fine.” 

He had downed two fingers of your cheap whiskey, and it brought a heady red flush to the tops of his ruddy cheeks. Made him look like a windswept sailor, sea-legged but hale. 

“Come back for breakfast,” you continued. “Cavalry is sure to show up at dawn.”

John huffed his assent. 

"Want me to drive you home?" you asked. 

"You're alright. I'll leg it."

"I'll walk you."

And he scoffed out a laugh, crossing his arms over his chest. "You're not walking back alone in the dark. I'll be fine. Night."

You watched him go, picking his way down your driveway. Sure strides, hands by his sides. Just before he disappeared behind the tree line, you called out to him. "You better bring that dish tomorrow or Angie's going to show up at your door with another!"

He didn't turn, just waved a hand back at you before he was out of sight. 

James was right.

John was quiet, and you liked him. 

That night, a thundering storm beat against your roof and kept you from sleep. Good thing, too. You wouldn't have noticed the water seeping through the cracks until it was a puddle you stepped into in the morning. 

You grabbed buckets from the attic and placed them under the leaks. A moonlight solution to a dawn problem, but at least your floor wouldn't rot.

See, you wanted to say. You didn't need someone to take care of you. 

But the infection had already begun.

You were yawning when John knocked on your door as soon as the sun reared. Nearly tripped over the full buckets on the floor because you were walking with your eyes closed.

He didn't take up your entire doorway when you swung the wood panel open, but it was a close thing. Sleep in his eyes and in the low rumble of his brusque mornin'. You waved him in, the exposed flesh of your legs pebbling in the frosted morning air, and led him into the kitchen.

You said nothing about the buckets and John didn't ask. 

Coffee was brewed and John took his mug with a thank you. Drank it black like you did and downed it like it was a task - just waiting for the next one to sneak up on him so he could pummel it into submission. He had the tact to wait until you reached the bottom of your cup before asking after breakfast, a coy smile playing across his soft features. 

That was the thing about John, you decided as you observed him over the rim of your mug.

He was a lesson in contrasts. 

His demeanor and stance were blunt, hard lines and harsh words - but his edges were tapered. Plush. He held a gentleness in his great mass. When he set his mug down on your kitchen table, he took care not to clink the ceramic against the oak. Turned the handles of doors before he closed them. He existed in his size - yes, was sure and deliberate in it - but he was mindful of it. 

"Can you sing?" you asked. 

“No.”

“Get up and help me, then.”

You whisked the pancake batter and cracked the eggs; John watched the bacon sizzling in the pan with the same intensity you began to suspect he wielded upon everything under his charge. 

On the fifth time you opened your fridge - and the elderly thing hissed its discontent - John said that fridges shouldn't sound like that. 

You waved him off, protective of the appliance. She was cranky in the mornings, that was all. 

"I'm fixing her," you said. 

And when he leveled you with a dubious look, you followed it with a grin. "Any day now."

Rob and Malcolm showed up just before the bacon burned. Rob fretted over you wearing shorts, alone , with a man in your house. Sent you upstairs like a scolded child to put some real clothes on! When you came back down the dishes were rinsed and in the sink and all the heavy boots had left your entryway. John's mug sat alone on the windowsill, left apart and unwashed. 

You grabbed your gear and found the three of them in the shop on their backs below the red beast, barking at each other in the way that men did when they were sweaty and frustrated. 

Hand me the fifteen-sixteen. Huh, don't know Malcom - maybe the one that says 'fifteen-sixteen' on it! Hurry up! 

When you poked your head in and spoke, Rob smacked his forehead on the steel frame. 

"Good here? I'm - woah! Rob? You okay?"

A string of mumbled curses followed by: "All good, kid."

John shuffled out from under the truck on his back. Had to lift his head to look at you down the line of his body. Oil-stained cotton shirt riding up his torso, the dark dusting of hair that ran from his navel into his waistband exposed. 

"Where you off to?" Malcolm asked, sitting on a cracked leather rolling stool. King of the toolbox, wielder of the flashlight. Poor bastard - he was in for it that day. 

"Buck chasing." You gestured to the bolt-action strapped between your shoulder blades. 

Malcolm nodded. "Heard him last night. Storm riled him right up. Tammy's chasin' too, don't shoot her."

"No promises. See you later."

Rob chimed up, voice echoing around the metal intestines he was neck deep in. "Probably not! Kids'll be in for lunch."

"Kiss them for me."

"Will do, kid."

John waved you goodbye and you were off. 

Hunting buck was a patience game. 

They were the masters of the wood, not you. A good hunter remembered that. A good hunter reminded themselves that to catch their prize, they had to know their prize. 

And you had a feeling that buck was a careful one. 

You heard the old man's words rattling between your ears. Never cross their trail twice. Watch the wind - he'll smell you before you see 'im. Don't over scout. Track in the rain. Them big boys are big for a reason, kid, learn 'im. 

Your plan that Saturday wasn't to bag the buck - you just wanted to read his scrapes. Learn his movements, habits. Follow his hoof marks in the bare dirt while you still had it. 

There was a tranquility in hunting - a state of thoughtlessness that bordered on meditation. It was just you and the trees, the strain in your muscles and crisp breeze on your cheeks. A goal in front of you - a reward at the end. Midday, the sun crept in from behind the cloud cover; trickling through the canopy, scattering precious light all the way down to the pine-needle rug. 

This was your favorite time. A special, fleeting treat when the sun won and the rain hadn't yet dried. 

You closed your eyes and let the rays leech into your bones, held in a pocket of warmth under a gap in the canopy. Smelled terpenes there, resinous earth, sap and ozone and damp moss. Saw scraped knuckles wrapped around a terracotta mug, heard the billowing smoke droll of a laugh like felled timber. 

The wind shifted, and you the voice came again. 

You just told 'im exactly where we are! Pack it up - we're not finding 'im today. 

Gotta be trickier than that. 

The shop and cabin were quiet when you returned just after evening began. 

The water buckets in the kitchen were emptied and a new one was placed in the corner, catching a drip you hadn't even noticed. John's mug sat on the windowsill still, its handle shifted from how it was set before. 

He would be back. 

Coffee with John became a practice - even after his truck was fixed and he had no reason to stop by in the mornings anymore. 

Your weekend visitor, walking down as the sun rose, new desire path in the forest blooming beneath his feet. 

You would meet him on the porch and take steaming sips in your rocking chairs, letting the heat bleed into your stiff hands. Sometimes the morning frost was too biting for you, but you hid it because John liked waking up with the cold air. 

(Didn't hide it well enough sometimes. On those days he would dig a knitted blanket out from your closet and tuck it under your folded knees for you.)

John was perpetually a tired man. Worked like a dog and didn't eat enough - too exhausted after a day in the yard to cook much. The blue charcoal splashed underneath the cherry red of his water line spoke of sleepless nights. But he came alive on Saturdays with you. Showed up with determination in the slant of his mouth. He would tell you about his project for the day and ask you about yours. Collect your opinion on how he should fix his cabin up like rainwater in a barrel, always pocketing your two cents. 

Sundays were slow and lazy - after church of course. 

The invitations to join you at the whitewood chapel in the center of town were always denied. Said he didn't have much use for God anymore; asked you what use you had and you couldn't quite answer. 

(Maybe you thought by showing up every week you could be consecrated, too. Transubstantiated, physical into the ephemeral, and you would become your substance - not your accidents. Craft an immortal soul with your bare hands so something would linger.)

(Maybe you just liked the pretty hymns and bells and chatting with the ladies afterward.)

(Maybe it was simply habit.)

On Sundays after mass, John wanted to take walks through the forest. Name the hooting birds in the branches. Turn logs over to show you the banana slugs hiding beneath. Sometimes you would load up in his truck or yours and float down to the beach - crack oysters from the rocks, briny and fresh, and laugh at the faces he made when he ate them. On Sundays John wanted to ask you questions - an unyielding, clinical dissection you offered on a platter.

Never liked much when you asked questions back. He said very little, and any answers had to be pulled out of him like molars. 

But you learned that he was military before he came to town - Then my knees went. Gettin' old - and that he grew guarded when pushed about it. 

You learned he had been married and divorced. Said it just didn't work out when you pried. 

Learned he called you 'love' after two glasses of whiskey.

'Sweetheart' after three.

Learned that John needed to be needed. Wanted something to take care of - just couldn’t bring himself to be taken care of. So Monday would rear and it would be five days until you saw him again.

A creature of routine, that John. You had slipped in with the draft - a hidden observer, staying downwind. 

Because John grew shifty when you came too close. Would start cracking jokes about his age, the ache in his spine. I got pairs of boots older than you when he would catch himself leaning into you or tracking you as you crossed rooms. 

The time came to test his mettle, and you chose one Saturday morning to 'forget' about your standing date - made sure you were out on the beach before the sun thought about rising - and he blew a gasket. Quietly, of course, as that was John's way - but his mug was washed and put up in the cabinet when you returned at noon. Your apology was a steaming bowl of stew on his doorstep for Sunday lunch, and John grumbled and glared but ate the whole thing right there on the portico. 

Now steeped in the culture of that town, he apologized for making you apologize by spending the entire following weekend sealing your roof. In thanks, you knit him a sweater. In return, he fixed your fridge. 

Just a thank you. But then a lot of ' just a thank you' s kept happening. Tools banging at dawn, warm sourdough and raspberry jam, changing lightbulbs, knit hats.  Watching his eyes shadow when he would try and refuse the dinners you pushed on to him and you would tell him you liked cooking for him; that you were practicing, too, for when you had mouths to feed. The old man's cabin had never been in better shape. John had never been better fed - nice and soft for the winter.

You knew you had strayed too near when he stopped by one Saturday and didn't get out of his truck. Skittish as a hare. 

Told you he was having breakfast with Malcolm and James down at the diner. Probably wouldn't see him tomorrow, either. Lots to get done. Maybe next weekend.  

Caught the scent, the hawk. Took flight and showed you his tail feathers. 

You heard your buck calling that evening. 

Set out bright and early for him the next day. Patrolled the south-facing slopes, the cedar thickets and the sunny glades. It was mid-December and post-rut, and you knew he was out there somewhere. Wary. Survival driven. Regaining his energy. 

Layer up, kid. Gonna be sittin' here a while. He's resting now. Smoke 'em if you have 'em. 

You didn't mind - it would take as long as it took. You weren't going anywhere. The buck would be bedded down, only moving to and from his food source. If he had mated, he would be tending and you wouldn't see him again until next season. 

If he hadn't, he could be drawn out with calls or rattles of the last-season rack strapped to your back. A phantasmal stag in his territory, moving in on his does. 

You hadn't even brought a gun with you on that chase. 

No, 

you just needed to make sure he was still there. 

"Spendin' a lot of time with that John, hon," Tammy said, digging a hook out from where it had caught in the rough skin of her thumb. 

That dawn found you and the older woman scouting Browns and Cutthroats on a freshwater river an hour inland. The only sound the screams of your reels as they soared through the wet air, casting long until the lures hit the calm surface, and the wake-up birds singing their good mornings. Gentle waves lapped against the aluminum hull of the Johnboat, the zephyr rocking its inhabitants into a lulled repose. Peaceful. Still. Fog tumbling over the trees like a loon call. 

Of course Tammy couldn't help disturbing the waters. 

When you hummed noncommittally, she frowned and smacked her lips. Let the topic drop for all of five minutes before she had to drudge it up again. 

"Lotta time," she shrugged. "All I'm sayin'."

"Are we catching fish or talkin' to ‘em?"

That got a laugh out of her. A great, belly thing that was sure to cost you an hour of bites. "Oh, you sound just like him." Then: "Wonder how he's doing out east."

"The old man? Probably buck-shotting pigeons and scaring his daughter half to death."

Another chuckle. "You're probably right. I miss him, I do, but I'm glad we have you, my girl." A pat of her calloused hand over yours. "He would've liked John."

You reeled your line in with a sigh. There would be no catch that day, not when Tammy was there to chat. 

"John thinks he's old," you said, turning to her on the bench behind you. Leaving out the 'too.' Your hand was a fragile thing that had to be revealed delicately, because words spread around that coastal town like the wildfires that plagued its summers. 

Tammy gasped, hand to her breast. "He said that?"

"Not in so many words."

"As if any woman wants some yearling who doesn't know his head from his ass." A scoff and a shake of her head. "I mean - Malcolm's not much older'n you and some days I doubt he could close an umbrella. No, you need a man. A husband."

You raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, maybe not need . But it would be nice, wouldn't it? Someone to clean your gutters. Fill that old cabin up with little feet."

"Tam!"

"I'm a nosy old lady, ignore me," Tammy said. She looked away from you and cast once again, the crawling sun dancing off the water and reflecting in the folds of her kind face. Stoutly ignoring your gaze. "All of mine are grown up and gone - I just want some chubby cheeks to pinch."

You shrugged, even though she wasn't looking at you. "It'd be nice."

Tammy tried to hide her grin underneath the rim of her hat. Meddling genius - baiting earworms like the shimmering, feathered lures bobbing on the surface of the river around you two. 

We'll have to set some traps for next time, she said when you packed it in for the day. Bribe 'em out with some scrap bait. 

You found that you agreed. 

Malcolm was a kind, helpful sort. 

You had told him in no uncertain terms years ago that nothing would ever happen between the two of you and he was content to be your friend and leave it there. But only Malcolm and you knew that. 

After the third weekend that John didn't show, you made yourself a nice cup of chamomile and stood at your front window watching the fat flakes of snow outside fall steadily to the earth. Two days of heavy precipitation - the kind that dumped from the sky like the cloud's buckets finally tipped - and you were snowed in. 

Normally, you kept on top of such things with your snowblower. 

Unfortunately, the power belt snapped and you just hadn't had the time to get a replacement. 

Conveniently, Malcolm had a snowblower too. 

What have you been doin' up there? Star gazin'? I can be by around lunch, he said. Sniffing to be fed. You told him to stop in after six; that you had some steelhead you needed to cook up. The glutton showed five minutes after six, calling out to you, stuck at the end of your drive. He parked at the mouth of the road and got to work, lugging the droning machine back and forth through the drifts. Meanwhile, you got a fire going in the pit in front of the cabin - wrapped the scaled fish in foil and slow-cooked it over the coals. 

At quarter to seven the sun was well into its descent, so you knew John was coming as soon as his headlights turned around the switchback bend. The red truck crawled to a stop beside Malcolm's classic Bronco and the window was rolled down. What John said was lost to the droning, but Malcolm shut the blower off and waved. 

"Rescue mission!" he said. 

John set his wide shoulders back, tilted his head to scan the demarcation line of knee-deep snow halfway to your porch. "Big job," he said.

Malcolm laughed - "Don't you worry, big John. I'm bein' compensated!" - and gestured to you. 

You waved and smiled and flipped the fish in the pit. 

A goodbye was said and John rolled away. Malcolm gave up for the day when the sun left and the smell of browned butter and herbs grew too loud to ignore. The two of you ate the fish around the campfire, right out of the foil with your fingers, and then went inside when he started shivering. Like a dog to a bone, Malcolm noticed the bottle of whiskey out on your coffee table and proposed a toast. 

And then another, and then another. 

He wanted music, so you threw a record on - perhaps a little too loud for a work night - and then chatted with him to the early hours about any and everything. The morning birds began to call and you snatched Malcolm's keys from his fumbling grasp. Told him no way you were going to let him drive and that you had a perfectly good spare bedroom. Before he was sent off to bed, Malcolm leaned against a doorway to look back at you on the couch. 

"Caught that John's eye, you know," he said. 

You told him you didn't know. How could you? He didn't even stop by for coffee anymore. 

He pointed a wobbling finger at your nose. "Should've seen his face! Thought he was gonna jump out that truck n' hit me - swear I did."

"Go to sleep, Malcolm."

The light in the spare bedroom was shut off. You kept the lamp on your bedside table lit. 

An hour later, you heard John's truck wake up with a roar, headed to the lumber yard. Heard it slow down as it passed the Bronco still at the end of your driveway. Heard the tires hit the wheel well when it peeled away with a tad too much force. 

The next morning, a Thursday, there was a knock at your door and a sour-faced John standing there in his work covers. 

You already had a pot brewing for two. 

The cold months passed in a sleepy daze. Your little town fell into a torpor, and unspoken dormancy, whenever snows blanketed the land. Heart rates slowed, breathing latened. Families denned down in their homes and waited for the thaw. 

John denned with you, even though he pretended not to. 

The last week of March brought with it a squall, the last, valiant effort of winter to leave its mark. You knew it was coming. Felt it in the air. John helped you bring the canned preserves up from the cellar, stocked you up on flour and sugar, matches and candles. Extra blankets from the attic. Wool sweaters and the old man's socks he had forgotten in the back of the dresser. Brought the camp stove in from the shed for when your power would inevitably go - something you dreaded. 

It's silly, you had told John when he stopped by once for your opinion on wood stain colors. I don't mind being alone much - it's when I feel like I'm not that I get antsy.

For it was on the dark and quiet nights when you felt visited. 

Spirits made of memories that were not yours haunted the halls; blue curtains billowing with a draft you could never quite find the source of. When the cabin felt ancient and full, and the shadows of feet stood just on the other side of every door. 

Winter waged a midnight-war outside, the power gave, and you stole through the log house like some shade of history, tallow candle dripping wax over your palm. Lemon and honey tea brewed over the sputtering camp stove. A nest of furs and blankets in front of the wood-burning hearth - drawn to the light and warmth like a moth, like you were some bygone cave-dweller with only the flames to keep the night and all her wicked promises at bay. 

The wind howled, and you pretended like you didn't hear whispering in the song.

John came - of course he did - and chased away every fear which hid in the shadowed corners of your living room. 

He was good at that. There was a steadiness just in his presence, a confident assurance that could settle your bruised nerves just from his proximity. You would worry your nails down to the quick, work yourself into hysterics over this or that, and John would be there. I'll take care of it. Don't worry. 

It was his fault, really, that you were spoiled with it. Problems would bloom and your first thought was I’ll ask John. He’ll know. 

You fretted like a hassle-worn grandmother when he blew in with the flurries - "Get in! You'll catch your death out there!" Ran your hands over his snow-covered arms partly to get the flakes off, partly because he was letting you. You had to stretch your arms to reach the dusting on his shoulders. The snow soaking into his jacket bit at your fingertips when you brushed at it, but there was a heat there underneath your palms. John Price was a wood burner all by himself.

"Came to see if your power was gone too," he said, then allowed you to corral him into the room and shrug the wet fabric off his torso. 

"Whole town will be out 'till morning," you confirmed. You snapped for his damp hat and socks too, then for his jeans and flannel when you rifled spares out from the hall closet. Set him down in your nest of furs and rubbed his rigid, glacial hands between your own until his joints had movement once again. 

(You give a mouse a cookie ... )

He protested when his hands were sufficiently warmed and your ministrations were no longer necessary - but then bit back a groan when you pressed your thumb into the meat of his rough palm. John's blue eyes disappeared behind his lids as you worked the muscle, strained from hours in the yard, and twitched and swallowed until the flesh yielded beneath your fingers. 

"Better?" you asked when you were finished. 

John opened his eyes and flexed his large hand, holding it up in front of his face. He looked rough-hewn in the dim candlelight, cut from stone. Masculine and hearty, flickering with the flames. In the time he had spent on the coast, he had let his beard grow in over his chin - a real mountain man now - and it tinged a little more ginger than the auburn hair on his head. 

"Feels good," he said, and heat and pride flooded the tops of your cheeks. 

You thanked him for coming, vulnerability leaking into the words, and John only nodded. Said he knew you didn't like the dark and acted like it was only natural for him to not let you be alone in it. Agreed when you asked him to stay. 

You dug out the bottle of bourbon you kept stashed just for him and passed sips from the cool, glass rim back and forth - tasting oak and charcoal and the twang you learned as him - until your bones grew hot and loose and your smiles came lazily. You drank and chatted idly and watched the line of his throat bob as he swallowed, fingers itching, until the smell of him - sawdust and ozone and smoke - fogged your mind and you had to do something with the restlessness building beneath your skin. You fished a weathered Scrabble board out from the attic and set it up in front of the woodburning stove. 

You were both too tipsy to try very hard; instead, John's eye caught the scribbled name on the back of the box and inquired after it. 

"The old man who owned this cabin before I did," you told him. "That's his daughter's name."

John grunted and twirled a letter tile between his fingers. 

"You want kids?" you asked.

"I did."

"Did?"

John built a word with one hand as he rested his head in his other palm. He was lying on his side across from you, propping himself up on one bent arm in the nest of furs. "Was never the right time. Work kept me busy. Then my ex-wife wanted to wait. Then she wanted a divorce." He sucked his teeth. "Too late now."

"That's silly - 'too late.'"

"Just being practical."

"It's a shame, that's what it is. Man in his prime given up on kids."

John scoffed, a huffing sound from the barrel of his thick chest. "Prime?"

"Sure," you shrugged. Kept your eyes on the card where you were scribbling in his score, newborn bravery shirking beneath his heavy gaze. "Handsome, handy, hard-working. Any girl'd be lucky."

"You're being silly now."

"I'm not. Hand me the bag, it's my turn."

John contemplated in silence until the game was over before speaking again, dumping tiles into the crushed velvet pouch. "You?" he asked. 

"I want a litter - but I'd be happy with a few."

He could see through you as easily as wind through a crystal chime. "How many is 'a few?'"

You smirked, chewing on the inside of your lip. "Four."

He laughed, bright and loud and rare. John was scant with his smiles, laughs, but when he gave them they lit the sky - more precious and warm than the first spring thaw. You were greedy for them, and the few you had gathered you hoarded just below your ribcage for safekeeping. 

"I already have names picked out," you continued. Hunting for another flash of his white teeth. 

"Bet you do. Husband won't have any say?"

"Husband'll love me enough to let me have my way," you joked. "They're good names, too. Strong names."

"Maybe he can pick the middles."

You tilted your head. "I could be convinced."

John's eyes burned from the rim of the bourbon bottle, all crackling heat and the blown-out pits of dark pupils. "Bet you could," he stated, as low as timber rucked over coals. Matter-of-fact, like he knew exactly how he could convince you.

Suddenly, you didn't feel much like joking anymore. 

"When are you gonna kiss me, John?"

You regretted the words the moment they slipped out. Maybe he doesn't know had needled its way into your chest, though, and the bourbon pulled the pins from your tongue. You were using a sledgehammer to crack a nut - but you had been delicate thus far, and it wasn't getting you anywhere.

Maybe he needed a little wind in his sails. 

So you let the moment hang, wanting to see what he would do with it. Let it dangle between the two of you in your sweltering living room like the glowing bulb of an anglerfish - waiting for the bite.  

"You want a kiss?" he asked, the muscles in his jaw rippling.

You nodded - growing shaky and skittish the longer he stared. There was opportunity in the heavy air, you could smell it, suspended in time on that stormy night. You could be just two creatures in the darkness, reaching for one another to keep the long shadows away. 

You could see his lips forming around the excuse, so you nipped it before it could bloom. "Just one?"

One. A few. Four. A litter. 

His grimace was a tug at the corner of his mouth, a glimpse of a canine. "It's trouble."

"Gonna make me beg?" you asked. When he didn't reply, just hefted his chest up and down in heavy, labored breaths, you assented. "Please? Don't you want to know?"

John took a swig from the bottle. Then another. Then he placed it on the wood floor beside him with a sigh - a man staring down the barrel of the inevitable. "Come here," he whispered, the words torn from his throat like he couldn't help them, couldn't stop their ascent from low in his chest. 

You crawled to him over the pelts, tugged forward by a hook deep in your belly shaped like his hands, and he met you halfway. Sat up in the winking hearth light and moved his heavy limbs until you were cradled, kneeling, in the open yaw of his thighs. Next to him like this, the expanse of his mass compared to yours was staggering. John was a big man, a bear of a man, but it was never more evident than right then - encompassed entirely by his body and he wasn't even touching you yet. 

Yet, your mind keened. Yet. 

"Don't move," he said, an intensity on his face that brooked no argument. Your heart was a racehorse, kicking against its cage behind your breast. Pawing at the dusty earth - just waiting for the starting gun. It felt natural: listening to John. His steadying presence settled on your clammy skin like a cedar balm. 

Not a muscle twitched as he reached his big hands up and rested them on the sides of your neck, thumbs hitched in the corner of your jaw. It could've been the bourbon, that lightness dancing in your head like so many champagne bubbles, but the excuse left the moment after it came. It wasn't the liquor - it was John. Just John. His gentle touch stoking you up like a sunrise. Finally, finally, touching you. Callouses on the sweep of your cheekbones - skin to skin at last. 

He leaned forward and grazed his lips over yours, just the barest of brushes, and it was the dawn. First light over the mountains, the crisp aurora of dayspring. Dripped clear water from his mouth to yours, petrichor and minerals and the sweet bite of amber. You could feel the sunlight on your face in the dead of a winter night. 

You were terrified to move, to do anything that would scare him off because you liked him exactly where he was: running his warm mouth over your own, tickling the hollow of your cheek, the soft skin beneath your ear, with the whiskers of his beard. Not kisses, not quite, but a facsimile of them - passes of lips until you were panting in the crib of his spread legs. A desperate, aching puppet with your strings cut on his order. Taking whatever is given and grateful for it. 

A small whimper escaped you when John nipped at the shell of your ear, and he spooked like a startled mare. Retreated entirely, the heat and heady smog of him curling away and leaving you cold, barren. 

Because he wasn't yet brave enough to cross the line of what he thought was impropriety. If you didn't move, and nobody spoke, and his tongue never tasted the salt on your skin - all of this could be pretended away come morning. 

John told you to go to bed, love - ground out, mortar and pestle, from the granite behind his teeth - and you crept up the stairs on padded paws. Trembling like a fawn, kicking yourself and your ham-handedness. The cotton sheets itched and tugged at your skin as you tossed, sleep a fine thing, and you could hear John downstairs turning too. Heard the clink of the empty glass bottle, the swinging of your front door as he snuck out for a cigar.  

He apologized when you appeared in the kitchen as the sun rose. 

Bit too much to drink last night, he said. Poured you a coffee and put his boots on. You're a good girl, don't go wasting your time on an old dog like me. 

Left with a blast of glacial air, steel toes stomping over the porch and down the front steps.

Trying to outrun the bourbon-soaked memories of yesterday. 

You could almost see them snapping at his heels.

With spring came visitors to your little town. 

Children and grandchildren flocked to the coast, a perennial pilgrimage at the turn of the season when all the hibernators awoke. 

Most notable that year were the three strange men who roared in driving a sleek, black Jeep. Large and loud and dangerous looking - the vehicle and the men within. Parked and leaning their muscled frames against the Jeep, lighting cigarettes in the rain and smirking. Threw the town into a tizzy until John's red truck pulled up next to it in the grocer's parking lot.

Mags and you peered out from the grocer's tiny window, squashed against each other for the best view. 

"Ah, good," she whispered, so close you could smell the mothballs in her pocket. "John's here. He'll sort 'em."

But then John stepped out of his truck with a smile, shaking the hands of the men and clapping them on the shoulders. Mags hummed, surprised. "Oh! He knows them!" Left the window, content with the newcomers now that they were friends of John's. 

"You know he was having company, hon?"

You told Mags that you did, but John hadn't mentioned a thing about guests and your interest was piqued. You wondered if he was going to, or if he was going to avoid you until they left. 

You got your answer that evening: four men crowded in beneath your awning.

John rubbing the back of his neck and avoiding your eyes, inviting you for dinner up at his place. He hooked a thumb at the three strangers in turn. "Simon, Johnny, Kyle. Worked together," he said, looking put-out and uncomfortable. You had a sneaky feeling the dinner invitation was forced upon John by Simon, Johnny, and Kyle - but it did nothing to dissuade you from accepting. 

You were far too curious to say no; far too amused at John Price feeling awkward. 

The three men waited politely on your front lawn as John helped you with your coat; a beloved new habit of his. He would pull the sleeves up your arms and settle it over your shoulders. Untuck your hair from the collar and smooth it down for you. Sometimes he would even zip it up to your chin on chilly days, and you would fuss - for his benefit - but the ritual always set you blushing.

"Don't have to come, you know," John mumbled, jostling you as he fixed the jacket around your torso. "They wouldn't be offended."

You quirked an eyebrow, neck straining to look up into his grey-blue eyes. "Hiding them from me?"

He frowned. "Hiding you from them ."

"Come on - I want to meet them."

"You say that now," he warned, and led you outside with a hand at the small of your back. 

Kept it there the entire walk up the hill to his cabin. 

You didn't miss the possessiveness in the gesture. John hadn't put his mouth on you since that stormy night, but since then his hands held magnets. Could hardly keep them to himself. Always respectful, always chaste - but always there, too. Helping you up stairs, over rocks. Ruffling your hair when you said something funny. Resting in the crook of your waist as he passed in your small kitchen. 

You had to take your little victories where they came. 

John's cabin came into view, everyone piling in through the small front door, and it was your turn to be overwhelmed. His friends - old colleagues - seemed like good folk, if a tad large and wild.

Simon frightened you a little - if you thought John was big, he was a mountain, scarred and dark and stoic - but he nodded politely when you spoke and always kept his mass on the comfortable side of looming . Johnny - everyone calls me Soap, but ye dinnae hav'ta, lass - was loud and boisterous and you could hardly tell what he was saying half the time. Especially not when he had a few beer in him and his Scottish brogue came out in full force. And Kyle was kind, asked you plenty of questions about yourself and seemed genuinely interested in the answers. 

The three of them acted like junkyard dogs that had never been housetrained, but they made John smile, so you liked them too. 

They shared war stories over the steak and potatoes John served - a true man's meal that you couldn't stop giggling about - and called him 'Cap' and jeered in the way only true friends could. They admired him, you realized. Trusted him with their lives. Had to, you guessed, if the stories they told about him were true. It was hard to reconcile the surly, merciless image they painted with the man you had come to know. 

To you, John was comfort, reassurance. John opened stuck jars, and liked the beach, and hid his laughs behind his knuckles. 

Captain Price, it seemed, was the thing that went bump in the night. 

But it was just another piece of his puzzle to be fit in with all the rest. You were grateful for any scrap, and to finally name the shadows that sometimes haunted the corners of his eyes. 

"What do you do for fun?" Kyle asked you over dessert. (Roasted pecan pie you had given John two days before.)

You shrugged. "Garden. Fish. Hunt."

"What d'you hunt?"

"Whitetails mostly."

Johnny spoke up, reaching for a second piece of pie. "Ye a good shot?"

You felt a tad awkward around all the new faces. A little on edge under Simon's dissecting gaze, timid around a table of strange, large men. If Rob was in his grave instead of his waterfront cabin, you're sure he would be turning over. When you opened your mouth to mumble an I'm alright, however, John answered for you: 

"She's good." A curt nod and a shovel of dessert into his mouth. 

It brought a furious flush to your cheeks that you tried to - discreetly - cool away with the back of your hand. (You decided quietly that, as he noted the movement, maybe you didn't like Simon all that much after all.)

Dinner was finished, plates were licked clean, and Johnny offered to help you with the dishes while the others went to play cards in the living room. John objected, but you told him that the cook didn't clean up and shooed him out of the kitchen. You dried and Johnny washed, chatting animatedly about how much he loved the coast. Reminds me ah home, almos'. Cannae go back there, lass - maybe ah'll come here. His electric blue eyes sparked with amusement when you told him you were sure John would just love that.  

"He's got a coorie place 'ere," Johnny noted, splashing his hands in the sudsy water. "Ye like it?"

"John's cabin?"

Johnny inhaled an 'aye,' a funny, whisper of a sound. 

You followed his eyes as they tracked around the kitchen. It was the first time you had been in John's home - the furthest you had ventured before was his threshold - and you were surprised by what you found. It smelled like paint thinner and wood stain, sawdust, caulk - but also of John: detergent, cedar, motor oil, the aged tobacco of the cigars he pretended he didn't smoke anymore. 

A cozy, two-story in a state of half-renovation. Clean, yes, almost obsessively so, but projects littered the space. He had taken your advice: replaced the crooked old cabinets with hand-carved open shelving. Barn sink below the window to look out into the front yard. A tiny coffee nook with seating facing east. John had rooms to spare and dreamt of an addition around the back.

It was warm, and intimate, and quiet. Flickering lamplight and woolen blankets on the sofa. Him in the cracks of the floorboards.

Yes - you liked it. Told Johnny as much and a thick smile split his face. 

He helped you place the last of the plates on the top shelf, then whispered, "Was mighty curious what kept the captain out here in th'middle o' nowhere. Dinnae say nothin' bout a pretty bird keepin' him company, lookin' at him with moons in 'er eyes."

It seemed 'observant' was a shared trait - a requirement of the job, perhaps. 

You picked at the dead skin around your nails. "Everyone can see it but John."

"He can, lass. Just cannae get past th'wonderin' of it."

You must have looked confused because Johnny continued very seriously, dropping his voice to a low rumble. "People rationalize th'life they live. Cap spent his years ... well, th'weren't pretty. Ye dinnae remember th'ones ye save , ah'll say that. Can be hard t'accept good things after everythin'."

You peeked around the doorway of the kitchen, sneaking a glance at the others and John in the living room. He was relaxed on the couch, long, strong legs stretched out in front of him. A smile hiding in the corners of his mouth like a comma and shaking his head at something Kyle was saying. Hard glass of amber in one hand, beaten cards in the other. A place saved by his side.

He spoke, and it was an engine kicking up. Rumbling, obtrusive, loud. John always sounded a little like if a slumbering bonfire found speech, words, simmering embers, crackling up to the inky sky - but he was harsher with the men. A steel-edge shaping his syllables instead of the curling smoke you were used to. 

Maybe that was how he always spoke. Maybe he softened, diluted it just for you.

"That breaks my heart," you said - but Johnny wasn't listening.

He had retreated somewhere you couldn't follow, his own memories swirling behind the glass of his eyes. 

He returned after a few moments, twisting his neck side to side like he could crack the thoughts away. Continued the conversation as if he had never left. "Things like a bonnie young lass who only wants t'see 'im fed."

"Well -" You raised one eyebrow at the Scott. "Not only."

Johnny laughed, a startling, barking thing that had John craning his neck to see what was going on. 

John walked you home when he caught you stifling a yawn. Simon nodded his goodbye. Kyle shook your hand and told you how great it was to meet you. Johnny pulled you into an engulfing hug that had John clearing his throat. It was a serene trip back through the forest, the full moon shining high above, your arm looped through his.

(You had tripped twice over hidden thickets - silly you. So clumsy.)

He dropped you on your front porch and lingered for no real reason at all. Tilted his strong chin to the sky and pointed out the constellations for you. Orion with his belt and bow - his unending hunt of the Pleiades. Told you how the star cluster was younger than the dinosaurs; how one of them was named Merope. The lost Pleiad. How it was named after the daughter of a titan who had married the mortal Sisyphus. Told you how she was shamed for it. 

You loitered like two nervous teens after an ice cream date. Leaning against the log beams of the awning, looking away when you caught each other's gazes. Your pulse fluttered in your throat like a hummingbird, little wings beating in rhythm with the rise and fall of his chest.

John looked beautiful in the moonlight - always did. All settled grace, stars in his eyes. 

If your heart could claw its way from your ribcage, burst forth, latch on to his and dig its nails in deep, it would've then. You ached with it. A gnawing tenderness with nowhere to go because you knew if you reached out he would retreat. Let you down with firm hands because he - mortal - could never be deserving. I am here, you wanted to say. I would not hide my face.  

Deaf ears, though. John couldn't hear. 

Patience is bitter, you thought instead. But its fruit of the spirit is sweet.  

He left you with the ghost of his thumb on your chin. Told you to get inside, go to sleep, he would see you in the morning. Not to be surprised if 'the boys' showed up at dawn sniffing for food and cups of coffee. 

You watched him go, picking his way over the path he built. Must have walked it a hundred times by then, stealing in with the rising sun, hands in his pockets, eyes trained on the horizon.

Pushing his great stone up the hill. Again. And again. 

Maybe one day he would reach heaven, you thought. 

You would be there when he did. 

April and May came and went. 

Spring showers cooled the winds enough to keep the afternoons bearable, the evenings enjoyable. Bottling pine-soda in Tammy's backyard. Bonfires on Fridays. Chilled beers lakeside; frogs chirping as the sun sunk; a terrible rendition of The Gambler from Rob and Angie, Malcolm plucking the strings of a guitar longer in the tooth than him.

John in a T-shirt leaning back in the sand, bringing his face down close to yours to whisper jokes just for you. Old Mil on his breath, hair curling over his ears. 

And then it was June.

Then it was summer and you were hot and angry and sweat stuck your hair to the back of your neck. Air like cloying molasses, humid and heavy as a blanket soaked in caught rain. Bloodbugs picking at you in the sweltering heat. Warmth breathed new life over the landscape, hot breath from the back of a throat, and some days you thought you might suffocate in it. Sun like a hammer beating down on you as you tried, tried, to work - toiling in the front garden until your shirt clung to your skin with the damp of it all. Letting John chop firewood for you because you were too dizzy, restlessness fermenting, pyrexia haunting your every waking hour made worse by the sight of his muscles bunching as the axe swung through the air. 

It was inescapable. Unbearable.

Made you short and biting, feeling like an old lion swatting flies in a desert somewhere, tail flicking as the heat mottled the horizon. 

Poor John took the brunt of it. Let it roll over his shoulders like a bull. 

No, you didn't want his help with the planting anymore. No, your kitchen was hot enough without him crowding it up. You would snap, teeth gnashing, and John would hide a grin and shake his head. Pissing you off all the more in the face of his steadfast stoicism. 

The weather wasn't his fault - but everything else was. You would lie awake at night over your sheets, too heat-sick to delve under the covers, and spend an awful lot of time thinking about his hands. The weight of them, the breadth. How they would feel on you - in you. Diaphanous images behind your eyelids like those cartoon bears on carousels, too flimsy for comprehension. You had nothing concrete to fill the dreams out - they were just there. Sitting just under your skin at all times, an energy bordering on a fever, until you felt like the definition of insanity. The same thing again and again and expecting a different outcome.

Trying to lure John in like a Venus flytrap on the days your frustration didn't drown you in vinegar - bathing suits by the water, tie this for me, will you? Arsenic-white sunblock, get my shoulders, will you? Sundresses when you dropped lunch off to him at the lumber yard. His favorites every night, peach cobblers on Sundays. Yes, you were hungry. You were starved. You could eat. Couldn't he?

Look how sweet I am - don't you want a taste?

All it ever got you was a clench of his jaw; a thank you, sweetheart and a brush of whiskers against your temple.

And then you were set spitting once more, promising yourself never again. Desserts dropped in the trash only to be made anew come the next day's first light when John would let himself through your front door and stir sugar into your coffee. Smelling like sleep, like something you could sink your teeth into. 

You had no trickery left in your heart, not now that it beat for him. 

Insecurity crept in. Slow-like. Doubt that he even wanted you. Wondering if this was all just a waste of time and if you were wandering a plateau, chasing mirages. Forty days, forty nights. Felt like you toiled and toiled and one day you would come down from Mount Sinai to find John knelt before a golden calf.

To the townsfolk, it was always you and him. You and John coming fishing tomorrow? You and John coming for dinner? The old ladies giggling behind their hats when you passed them in town. Rob fretting at the absence on your finger - make it proper, kid. Tammy egging you on as if you were the one dragging your feet. They don't make men like him every day, you know? 

You were a pair, that was fact. But you wanted more. More, more, more. Please. 

No hunting in the dog days. You didn't have the tolerance for stalking blinds when you couldn't even take the buck if you saw him. Not in that wicked heat, not when the flash of a white tail was only a tease. The old man used to have to drag you out for summer trailing. He'll be velveting, now. Don't you want to see 'im, kid? Can't drop 'im yet, but might as well be best friends by the time rut come. 

You felt like you were shouting outside the walls of Jericho, blowing horns, waiting for the seventh turn of the seventh day. Felt like Shadrach in the fiery furnace, bound and unsure if you would emerge unburnt - cremated like Sam McGee. 

It all came to a head one evening; reduced down and caramelized in the forge of the July sun. You were a pressure cooker, itching and twitching, and John got caught in the boil-over, splashes of hot grease. 

"Take me home," you demanded. Just gagging with it suddenly. 

John was knee-deep in the lake shallows, fishing pretty rocks out from the bed to show to you as you tanned in the sand. His shirt had been dipped in the mountain spring water and draped over his nape to draw the warmth out of his tan skin - and he looked, he looked -

- like you couldn't do it anymore.

Felt like if you spent one more moment in his presence without your palms on the soft pelt of his chest you were going to break apart. Like it was going to leak from your ears and eyes like liver-blood.

Your arms shook from holding out your heart to him, muscles weathered and strained. 

"What?" he asked. Furrowed his thick eyebrows, tilted his head like a dog. 

"Take me home, John."

You gathered all your things as he splashed toward you, fumbling your sunglasses so many times you ended up kicking them away in frustration. Too lost in your sudden temper for rationality. You just needed to be away from him, hunkered down in the old man's quiet, lonely cabin so you could hear your own thoughts instead of the blood rushing in your ears. 

"Hold on -"

"No!"

Didn't even take the time to put your shorts and top back on. John could drive you home in your bathing suit for all you cared in that moment. 

You beat him to his truck by a hairs-breadth - his strides were much longer than yours - and he was on your heels when you threw open the door to the backseat. Threw your towel and belongings back there with a thud. Turned around and there he was, looming into your space with confusion in his pretty eyes. 

"Wait a minute -"

"I have been, John!" you yelled. A tantrum, anger, licking white-hot up your throat. "Months I have been!"

Trembling with it - righteous fury at the mistreatment of it all. Old Testament wrath. 

You were cornered, trapped between the rusted steel frame and the width of his body. When you tried to push past him, John locked his hands around your waist and hefted. Sat you down on the bench seat and bullied his way between your spread legs. The power of him - maneuvering you like a ragdoll. 

"What are you doing?" you spit, acidic and sour. 

Rage warred in your chest as he held you still, thick fingers digging into the sweep of your ribcage. John didn't answer. He seemed preoccupied with the sight of his thumbs spread over your torso, pushing into the give of the soft flesh there - almost meeting in the middle. He crowded in closer until the heat of him was all-encompassing. Until all you could see was the line of his collarbones, the thatch of dark hair along his chest and stomach, and you were panting.  

"You don't want to go home," he said. 

As if that was news. As if you didn't shout it from the rooftops with every breath as he stuck his fingers in his ears. Stupid, silly girl doesn't want to go home to her empty house. You thumped a brittle fist against his sternum, defeatist knuckles against unyielding brass. 

"I do," you said. Lied. "I do - I want to go, okay? I'm done."

"Don't say that. You don't mean that -"

"Don't you patronize me, John Price!" You felt ridiculous, wailing in his hold, tears bubbling over your lashes. "I'm not some - some - I won't sit around for you forever!"

(Another lie. You would wait until you blew away with the breeze.)

"You're unfair to me," you continued, sounding wounded and weak even to your own ears. Sniffling. Hiccupping. Sure you looked a right mess. "This used to be fun, now it just hurts. I can't do it anymore, I swear it."

"Okay," John said. Closed his eyes and swallowed, pain in the lines of his forehead. 

"Okay? How dare - you - you son of a - hey!"

It was like a dam broke in him, the small thread of control that kept John Price in check snapping all at once. He was lifting you again, pushing you back until you were lying flat in his back seat. Clambered over top of you with the setting sun glowing in a halo over his broad shoulders. "Son of a what?" he murmured. Snuck his body up yours like a whip of flame. "'S'not very nice."

"Oh, now you want me sweet? Ah - John!"

Halfway through your arguing, he descended. Pushed his pelvis into the awaiting cradle of your open hips and used his deft fingers to pull down the fabric of your swim-top until you were exposed to him - all soft flesh and pebbling despite the mugginess in the cab and the slide of his sweat-slicked skin over yours. John propped his weight up with one elbow beside your head, skin smarting on the cracked leather, and then his mouth was slanting over yours. Demanding, wet, straining your neck until it gave - pressed down into the seat below and he was still searching for more. 

John kissed like he was owed it - swiped his tongue over your lower lip until you opened for him. Licked every ridge between your teeth, kissed you until you were dizzy. Stupid on his taste, his saliva like a drug. The first burn of tequila - smoke and sweetness and leather that had you melting under him. 

"This what you want?" he asked between kisses. "This what you need, sweetheart?"

You were a struck match that had sat in the back of a drawer for years, confused at the flames, thrown at how you had gotten here so suddenly after so long. The thatch of hair that covered his chest grazed against your nipples and left you gasping. Keening when his mouth followed. 

"John - shit!"

He chuckled, the laugh rumbling out of him and into you. "Never heard you swear before."

His hands - his hands - were everywhere - rolling your sensitive nipples between his thumb and forefinger when his tongue wasn't there, teasing up your side, undoing the ties of your bathing suit bottoms. Stoking you like coals into a steam engine, your breath chugging out of you like a train. "Don't go home," he murmured. 

He was a riptide, ocean of fire, river Phlegethon, and you just had to close your eyes and cling to the rocks. Hook your ankles around his hips and grind up into the hard length of him, dig your nails into the meat of his shoulders so you didn't drift away. 

"All worked up, aren't you?" he hummed. "That what got into you these past weeks? Poor girl."

"Please -"

John shushed you as you whined, kissing away the line between your brows. "S'alright. I'll give you what you need - promise."

The hand that wasn't holding his weight crammed between your bodies until the heel of his scarred palm was pressed against your clit, middle finger dipping between the folds. He groaned at the slickness he found already there, composure slipping just the slightest. "Think you just need to be fucked, love," he ground out from behind clenched teeth. "Will that make you feel better?"

Just the thought of it sent you spinning.

The finger exploring you circled the soft rim of your entrance, wringing a whimper from deep in your stomach, and John was content to do just that until you were arching. Writhing. Tearing at him. Only sank in to the second joint when you begged him for it. You'd never had a man's hand there - only the fumbling ministrations of an awkward boy - and the intrusion was startling. The sting and stretch pyrophoric, an unstable combustion that roared through your veins. 

"Christ, you're tight," John cursed, chasing your chin as your head tossed. Then he smirked to himself. "Been a while?"

He pushed in to the last knuckle, wiggling the digit inside of you, and you gasped. 

"Never."

You couldn't lie to him, even as a hidden tongue of shame licked up your spine, even as panic soured the sauna of your mind. It's not as if you never had the opportunity - teenaged cars parked on shaded back roads, coworkers dogging you for a drink after work - you just could never get past the whisper in your ear mouthing wait, wait.  

That gave him pause; stopped him dead in his tracks as comprehension dawned on his face. You could feel him slipping through your fingers like smoke through a windscreen. 

"No -" You threaded your hands into the hair at the nape of his neck and tugged as hard as you dared to bring his forehead to yours. "Don't stop - please don't stop. Take care of me. Please, John - I can't - I don't know how I'll - I'll -"

John kissed you until the hysteria cooled off - slow, languid rolls of his tongue that left you dazed and hazy. "Okay, sweetheart. Okay," he said and started moving the finger still inside you. 

"Thank you. Thank you."

He took his time with you, fogging up the windows of his truck as the sky turned from pink to orange. Made sure you were stretched and slick and comfortable before even thinking of adding a second finger. The pace he set was lazy, maddening, exploratory - learning what made you jump and gasp, what made you whimper. You mouthed your grievances into the crook of his collarbone, tasting the salty skin there until he would press you away with a gentle kiss. You could feel every ridge, every scar on the pads of his fingers as they pushed in and out of you, pressing against a spot inside that sent you spinning. 

And he spoke the whole time - spoke more words than you had ever heard out of him at once. Telling you how well you were doing, how pretty you looked, thanking you for letting him touch you. Sweet girl, good girl, being so good for me. And Take your time, love. And There she is when you clenched down, pleasure twisting through your every limb as you hurtled toward your release. 

When his thumb came down over your clit, pushing and circling the sensitive nub, you were done for. You shook when you came, a bright spark of fizzling heat that cracked over your crown like an egg, and John held you close. Kissed you through every tremor and told you how proud he was. 

You came back into your own skin eventually, wrung out but still burning, and John gently pushed you away when you reached for him. You could see him straining through his swim trunks, thick and large and mouthwatering, cheeks flushed scarlet as the sunset, but he only held your hands and kissed you until you had calmed. 

"We're not -?"

He shook his head and tied your bathing suit back on for you, taking care with the knots and helping you sit upright. Fetched a water bottle from the cooler and smoothed your hair as you drank.

Dropped you off on your porch with a kiss, holding you away, gently but firmly, when you tried to deepen it. 

Plates had shifted, though. A tectonic reorganizing. 

And you would be damned if you let John arrange them back into neat piles. 

Not much changed after that.

You still shared dinner at night and coffee at dawn. Still brought him lunch because you missed him by noon. The lake after Mass on Sundays. Scrabble on Thursdays. Hemmed and hawed over paint swatches and which ottoman would look best with his sofas. 

But you weren't kept in a constant state of frustration anymore - John made sure of that. 

Your evenings were often bookended with you in John's lap, whining into his shoulders with his fingers inside you. Sometimes your own, shaking and working yourself to his whispered coachings. Mornings, too. Sometimes you would wake up in your bed, still groggy with sleep but aware of a warm mass on top of you, and it would be John - kissing his way up your chest, telling you to shh, just let him take care of you. 

The first time he went down on you, you blushed something awful. It took him weeks to convince you. When you finally agreed, you hid behind your hands and stuttered as he lapped at the core of you. Squeaked like a mouse and saw white when his tongue followed his fingers inside. After that, there was hardly a day that went by without his head between your legs, insatiable man - the chafing on your thighs from his scratchy beard a price you were more than willing to pay. 

Kisses as he put his steel-toes on - chaste, domestic things that sent you fluttering. Brushes of lips against your crown. Reverent drags of his tongue against your pulse points. If John could've pinned you down and groomed every inch of your skin like a cat, you thought he would've. 

It was always you receiving, though. John was hesitant to let you give him anything - only allowing you to touch him when you wore him down with sweet kisses and whispered platitudes. Even then it was only ever your hand, held by his own larger one as he guided you, never letting you move even a muscle for him. Chest heaving, muscles in his stomach bunching, his spend would paint your fist and the span of your wrist, and you would pout down at the terrible waste. Tell him coyly that you weren't sure if he was aware, but this wasn't how babies were made, and his eyes would get dark and you would end up on your back.

Because it slipped out, sometimes, what hid in the recesses of John's mind

- what he wanted and what you were desperate to give him.  

Hidden words when he thought you couldn't hear; half asleep or lost in the throes of a second, third orgasm at his hands. He kept it at a distance, afraid to let that beast out of its cage, but you were Pavlovian. Drooling at the sound of a bell when he walked into a room - when he whispered to your addled mind about making you his. 

More, more, more. Please. 

You wouldn't be satisfied until you had all of John Price

- every last drop. 

Fall crept in, little deaths rearing as fields laid fallow. 

As the days grew shorter and the temperature dropped, new hues whipped across the forests like wildfire, like splatters of paint tossed over the trees by some errant artist: burning scarlet, brassy bronze, honeyed amber. Perpetual green leeched away along with the sun. The air smelled of frost, and rotting roots, and change. 

With late-September came two things: pre-rut and Tammy's birthday. 

It was always an affair. Tammy had property on the outskirts of town, and on it sat a squat old barn that didn't see the light until the doors were thrown open and the great cleaning began. Cobwebs, nests, little squashes of fur that used to be mice; everything had to go. You and the other ladies would put your mud boots on and rake and sweep and polish, sweating and cursing and laughing as Angie grew more and more squeamish. 

How it gets this bad every year, I'll never know she would mumble, pink, flowery rubber gloves pulled up to her elbows. But she would grit her teeth and help, grumbling through the three-day marathon, because Angie knew what came next:

Decorating. 

Magical string lights hung through the rickety rafters, red and white table cloths draped over the tables Rob and Malcolm hauled in, vases of the last spring bouquets set just so on every surface available. Old, flowery plates and glasses brought out in woven baskets lined with crocheted blankets. A table for food, a table for pies, and two tables for alcohol. Space cleared in the middle of the barn for the dance floor, space cleared at the back for the string band hired out from inland. 

You spent hours on her cake. Just hours. 

Felt like every year you had to outdo the last. That year's was a lemon olive oil concoction with citrus buttercream and raspberry compote. Three-tiered. Embellished with slices of lemon and dainty sprigs of thyme that you placed with tweezers, for goodness' sake. Ordered in tall, golden candles special for her. 

It took you all morning and afternoon - scraping the rinds with a steak knife because your zester had grown legs and walked away - and poor John got an earful when he tried to offer advice. Held his hands up and retreated after pushing a glass of water and a granola bar into your periphery. He returned later in his one flannel shirt without a tear in it, hair combed and the dirt picked out from under his fingernails.

Looking just handsome enough for forgiveness. 

He slung an arm over your shoulders and pulled you in close as you stared down at the finished cake. Told you you did good and then nudged you up the stairs to shower before the party started. 

You washed the flour and icing away and threw on a dress, something short and pretty that was certainly out of season but that John would like. 

High hemlines usually earned you sneaking pinches and his warm hand sliding up your thigh, but all you got was a clench of his jaw and a nod when you joined him on the porch. There was a tension in him you couldn't find the root of, but you chalked it up to the too-clean jeans snagging around his hips. 

You clutched the cake in its plastic case on the ride down the hill, wincing at every bump, every jostle, like there was a newborn in the backseat. Made it unscathed to Tammy's property, where her birthday was already in full swing. Music and light bled out from between the cracks in the pine barn, leaking life into the rainy night outside. Vehicles, rusted metal beasts, crowded the lawn like a flock of seagulls, sidled in next to one another like pushy sisters.

John held his jacket over your hair because you wouldn't let him carry the cake inside - your magnum opus, only trusted in your own hands. 

You followed the chorus of noise and warmth through the thrown-open barn doors, right underneath a hand-painted sign that read 'Happy Birthday You Old Goat!', and then it was crowds and hugs and drinks being shoved into your hands. The band was in full swing, tearing at their strings and brass like the devil was on their heels, goading them into a contest. The whole town was there, dancing, stumbling into wooden stools, serving themselves from the potluck tables strewn throughout the space. Stews, roasts, whole chickens stuffed with herbs and rice; corn salad, potato salad, macaroni salad. Mags' heinous Jell-O. 

And the pies - oh, the pies . 

Blueberry, blackberry, apple, cherry, apricot, pecan, walnut, lemon meringue and key lime. Cobblers with the good vanilla bean ice cream. Soft, chocolate cookies for the little ones come west for the occasion. 

Rob's son had flown in with the grandkids, chubby, bouncing things that were handed from arms to arms like they were an expensive bottle of scotch. John got pulled away from you almost immediately, James and Dale wanting a conversation and a glass of whiskey, but he found you later - conveniently with a baby on your hip. 

"Who is that?" you asked the baby, wagging his pudgy little fist for him. "Is that John? Say 'Hi, John!'"

John rolled his shoulders but said ‘hi’ back.  

All too soon, the baby was stolen away from you and it was time for the cake. Your heart pounded as you lit the candles out of sight and brought it out for the birthday girl.

Nervous for no reason because Tammy, who always got a little weepy on her birthday, was choking back tears as you neared with the cake. Everyone sang as she blinked and blinked, not quite able to form words as her eyes shone. But she held your hand hard and mouthed a thank you, looking out at the happy faces smiling back at her. Blew out her candles. Laughed at the one 'boyfriend' left lit.

Later, as you were stood against the wall of the barn, Tammy found you and crushed you into a bone-cracking hug. Swung you side to side and then looked out at the crowded dancefloor with you. Dozens of people laughing, chins to the ceiling, stepping on each other's toes, jeering their moves. Some waved when you caught their eye, raising a glass or a wayward plate of food.

"This is the whole point, my girl," Tammy said. 

And it was. You were so full of it suddenly. 

Your village, who invited you fishing and showed up on your doorstep just to say hello. These people who would ask you not to go, who would feel your absence. Overbearing, nosy, busybodies who were so, so cherished. 

The most cherished of all saw the tears on your waterline from across the room and picked his way through the crowd, frown building between his heavy brows. On his way to comfort, to pummel your worry into submission with careful, steady hands. John Price could pretend all he wanted, but he cared more than anyone in any room he walked into. 

It's why he found it all so painful. 

You told him you were fine when he hovered, the ghost of his palm on your waist. The band rolled into something slow and sappy, and couples started pairing off. Malcolm, who had snuck against the wall with you, plucked the glass out of John's hand. Said Ask her to dance, big John, or I will with a secret wink to you. 

That got him moving - leading you to the middle of the floor with a hand on your back, tugging you into his strong embrace. Your hand cupped in the palm of his larger one, his other resting on the dip above your hip. A proper gentleman. You could feel the heat of his skin bleeding through the thin fabric of your dress, smell the familiar scent of him: hickory, beaten leather, cured tobacco leaves. But there was something new there too, something spicy and citrusy - black pepper and bergamot. 

You leaned into the enticing crook of his neck. "Are you wearing cologne?"

Couldn't help the giggle bubbling up when he didn't reply, which meant yes . 

"Something funny?" he asked. 

"Not at all." You smiled. Rested your cheek on the plush of his chest as he swayed you lazily. The floor was packed, so there wasn't much room to do anything but rock on the balls of your feet, searching for his heartbeat below the cooing instruments. Let the rhythm of his breaths calm your pulse, close your eyes and feel so thankful you thought it would burst out of you. 

And then it did. John coaxed your gaze up when he felt you sniffling. 

"You said you were fine," he admonished. 

"I am," you said. You had never felt fuller than right then, staring up at him. Music and warmth and friends all around you, John looking down with a softness in his blue-grey eyes that he kept only for you. Your hand on his strong shoulder, on the verge of floating away if he wasn't holding you to the earth. Always keeping you rooted. 

"I'm so glad you're here," you told him.

And he knew you didn't mean Tammy's party - knew you meant in that town, on your hill, at your front steps. On your couch or in your kitchen or the passenger seat of your old Ford. Filling the empty spaces of the old man's cabin. Stirring himself into your tea. 

John just nodded and dropped a kiss to your temple that had the old ladies tittering, tension in every line of him. 

Eventually, the drunk started stooping and the kids started yawning and it was time to call it a night. Hugs and handshakes all around, kisses for the babies, and John and you were back in his rusted, red truck and on your way up the hill. Every rotation of the tires had John ratcheting tighter, hands flexing over the steering wheel, barely replying when you spoke. When he missed the turn off that would take you to your land, you asked him where you were going.

"Want to show you the cabin," he said. "Finally finished."

"Can you show me in the morning? I'm exhausted." You were bone-tired from standing in the kitchen all day, crashing in the aftermath of the excitement and build-up these past days. 

He shook his head and kept his eyes on the road, squinting into the headlights where they caught on the tree trunks. 

You hadn't been to his home since Simon, Johnny, and Kyle had been to visit, so you were surprised when you turned the bend onto his driveway. There was a new fire-pit in the front, with log benches to sit around the flames. The rest of the lawn was taken up by fresh, wooden planter boxes, stuffed full with dark, moist soil. There was even a new hunting shed next to the cabin, with a driftwood doorway and an amber lamp beside the door. 

Where he found the time to build all of it, you had no idea. 

John pointed everything out as he walked you up the path, sounding like an awkward realtor trying to sell you on the property's charm and character. 

Inside, he gestured to all the new additions in turn. Iron wood-burner in the living room, gas stove and oil lamps for when the power went, mug tree on the kitchen counter. "Got the master upstairs finished. Nursery's up there too - not quite done yet. Couldn't decide on the colors. Probably best if you choose."

You weren't quite listening, though.

If you had been, your mind might have snagged on his words.

Instead, you were frozen and still, like someone had glued your shoes to the floorboards and dumped ice down your back. Your gaze had caught on something on the dinner table - dark oak, hand whittled, seating for six - and you hadn't heard a word. A dainty, golden band with a shining diamond in the middle rested in the center of the table. Looking small and unassuming against the wood, but stopping your breath in your throat. 

"The other rooms will have to go in the addition around back, but we've got time. Plenty of lumber in the yard I can use -"

"That for me, John?" you whispered. 

He followed your eyes to the table when you cut him off. Nodded and gestured to the ring, to the cabin around him, wincing and scratching the back of his neck. Rocked on his heels like he couldn't meet your gaze.

"Have a rubber one, too. For when you're doing chores, or out shooting -"

It was lucky that John was sure-footed. A less balanced man would have been bowled over with the force you crashed into him with. 

Practically jumped into his arms, smacking your mouth into his and clacking your teeth together, but John was there. Gathering you up against the hard line of his body, holding you close. "Say you mean it," you begged between hasty kisses. "Say you promise."

John set you down gently and brought his hands up to cup your jaw, thumbs resting on your cheekbones. "Promise."

Everything got a little hazy after that.

You certainly weren't tired anymore, that was for sure. 

John slipped the ring on your finger, chuckling, as you mouthed at his jawline, trying your very best to undo the buttons on his shirt one-handed. You gave up when he brought you in for a searing, lazy kiss, beard chafing your chin and making your head clouded and cottony. He tugged you through the cabin - the cabin he built with his hands just for you - and up the stairs to the master bedroom.

Your bedroom. Extra blankets on the bed because you got cold at night. Flowers on the side table. Window facing east so you could wake with the sun. 

It all felt a tad dreamlike as he laid you down on the bed, hiking the skirt of your dress up to press open-mouthed kisses from your calf to your hip. You could smell him on the pillows beneath you, scent puffing up in an intoxicating cloud around your head. 

His mouth was all heat, bellows into the coal-fueled furnace blooming in your belly. Your mind was trying very hard to slip through the redwood smoke, puffing up questions like an ancient, coughing fireplace. Then you heard the old man: the horse is free, kid. Stop looking at its teeth!  

The how and the why and the when could wait. 

"Shakin', sweetheart," John murmured between your legs. You could feel his lips shaping around the syllables against the thin cotton of your underwear. 

It was true, you were. Adrenalin blazing through you like a sugar rush and leaving you trembling.

John just hooked his arms under your legs to hold them steady. Looked up at you from below his lashes, fingers digging into the soft give of your upper thighs. "We'll take it slow, love," he promised. 

But you didn't want to take it slow. You had a year of slow - you wanted now. 

John had all the time in the world, though. He was holding back in the before, you realized. Unleashed, he was a root-fire, languid, smouldering, burning underground for months - a year - before revealing itself. Razing your seedbed, heartstock, until only the flames remained. 

He parted from you only to peel your underwear down your legs, glide your dress from your body. Nestled back into his throne between your legs to press your slick folds apart and stare. Claiming, branding - looking and looking until you were blushing right down to your nailbeds. 

You had to cover your face with your hands - couldn’t take the pink-skinned, sunburnt feeling John was tending under his gaze. When you whined out his name, embarrassment bleeding into the broken word, John just smiled and ran his lips over the junction of your thigh. 

“You’re alright,” he hushed. Soothed the nerves away with gentle presses of his tongue until you were writhing for another reason. 

It was a little sick, you thought; this predeliction of John’s when he had you under him. Breaking you down to be the one to build you up again. Source and salve. Liniment to the ache, fever, of his creation. 

You loved it. Felt everytime like you were born anew, saved, in the cradle of his rough palms. If you survived the trials, something eternal waited at the end. Something bright and warm. Welcoming. 

If, indeed - because John was a purge. Honeyed, ruining sin like a pillar of fire, unthreading you at your seams. Words of ichor, ambrosia, as he ran a bent knuckle along the seam of you, mouth following at its heels. “Taste so good, love. S’all I fucking think about. This pretty cunt.” A humid confession between kitten licks that sent you mewling. His tongue circled your sensitive clit, lips sealing around it and sucking, and you cried out. Clawed at his scalp as your back arched - already lost, wandering, and you hard hardly begun. 

You never quite got used to his fingers. It was always work to get them fit inside, even if shepharded by his tongue pushing into your drenched hole. Even if you whined for them, burned for the stretch and sting they brought. John, saint of patience, never hurried - just worked each digit until you were making lewd noises around the push of his knuckles before adding another. 

Three was new, though. 

He hushed you when you keened. “I know, baby. I know. Have to get you ready for me, alright?” Voice like the low rumble of a big cat playing with his food - sultry, cooing.

There was a heavy coil winding itself up against the bottom of your spine, a burgeoning tension that had your whole body curling. Long, thick fingers eased in, out - a steady, maddening drag as he watched the digits disappear inside you. Hunger in his eyes, all consuming like you had never seen before. All the sensations were almost too much: the calloused pads of his fingers crooking inside you, pressing against the spot that made you see stars bursting; the steady roll of his tongue over your throbbing bundle of nerves, licking and sucking and the blunt graze of teeth; the noises emanating from his chest, pleased, satisfied purrs that danced along your ribcage. 

The way he looked at you, decision, iron-clad, in the darkening blue-grey. At last. Welcome shackles as if judgement day had finally come and you were deemed sheep. 

“That’s it,” John cooed, and you could feel his smirk against the core of you. 

The coil snapped, a tension break that lashed into every limb as you rode out your release on his chin. Hands threaded in his hair to hold him against you. His name a prayer spilling from your lips- devotional hymn, thanking him. 

John, John, John. 

You weren’t sure when you eyes fell closed, but the world spun and when you opened them once again, you were seated in his lap. The backs of your legs sticking to the hair on his thighs, hands propped on the soft muscle of his chest. 

And there he was beneath you. All power under plush flesh and coarse, dark hair. Masculine, red-blooded. A man. 

You could drool with it, sometimes. 

His skin tasted like salt and myrrh. Sap-resin. Anointed. You chased the tendons in his neck up to his jaw, greedy for the delicate dips where skin met bone, greedy for the way his hands kneaded the meat around your hips and the low groans crawling up his throat. 

This - cocooned in the safety of John’s arms - was familiar. 

The hot press of his, his - cock, you can say it, sweetheart - against you was not. 

John never let you get this close. Didn’t trust you or himself. The feeling of the soft skin, the hard length of him, right there, so close to where you needed was intoxicating, dizzying. 

You twitched, an exploratory roll of your hips, and John hissed - the fat head of his cock nudging against your clit sending you both spitting. It slid through your wet folds, sending electric shocks of pleasure up your spine as you whined in the hollow of his throat, and you thought you could cum again just like that. Riding along him as he looked up at you with something close to reverence. 

The first push of him inside was like a cool bucket of water down your back. 

If you thought his fingers neared too much - 

John held himself at the base to help you line up, his other hand steadying your hip. The stretch was so foreign, so obtrusive, that you gasped. 

“Too big - I can’t -” you whimpered, eyes screwed shut. 

John’s hand came up to rest on your cheekbone, thumb hooking upward to smooth out the line growing between your brows - swept over your forehead and you chased his palm with your chin. 

“You can do it,” he said. “I promise. Take it as slow as you need. I’m here.”

You nodded, a jerky twitch of your jaw. 

It seemed unfathomable that you would find space within yourself for him, but you trusted him so intrinsically that you told him you would try - 

inch by grueling inch. 

Shallow dips of your hips over him, cold sweat rolling down your temples and running between your breasts. Every push was a battle, hard-won land you took with claws and teeth. Bolstered by John’s hands running balming lines over your arms, your ribcage, your thighs. Doing so good, and I’ve got you, and you’re alright. 

You were trembling, panting, by the time you were finally fully seated, exertion drenching every heavy breath.

“So proud.” John smoothed the hair away from your sweaty forehead and you opened your eyes. “Told you you could do it. Made for it, eh? Made to take my cock.”

The heat that had leeched away from the pain and effort bled back, a slow bloom in the flush of your chest at the smug pride lighting his face. It was almost funny, being praised simply for taking him. But John was right - that was hard, but you had done it. 

He held you to his chest for a while after that. Cradled against him as he ran his thumbs up and down your spine. Letting you adjust, tailor your anatomy to the shape of him. This man, this good man, always looking out for you. Putting you first and leaving himself as an afterthought. 

“How’s it feel, love?” he asked when the trembling had stopped. 

“It feels -”

Full. A fullness you had never experienced before. An antidote to the aching emptiness that had been growing in the pit of your stomach - but alien. Discomfort on the border of pleasure. Sting on the border of sweet.

“It feels -”

John pulled out just an inch before sliding back in, grinding his hips experimentally against yours. You could feel every ridge, every vein dragging against your sensitive inside walls - feel the push of his head against the plug of your womb. A white-hot tongue of flame licked along your skin, leaving gooseflesh in its wake, leaving your head fuzzy and thoughts diluted. 

“Fuck -”

John chuckled, the rumble of a self-satisfied male. “I know, sweetheart.”

He started slow, letting you set the pace as you found what rhythm felt the best, what angles had you seeing stars. His hands roved all over you, kneading your breasts and tugging at your nipples in a way that left you keening in his lap. Soon, he was snapping his hips off the bed to meet yours, jostling your body with every deep thrust inside of you. 

“You like that?” he asked, a bruising grip on your hips as he grinded you down onto himself. He didn’t let you answer. “Know you do, love - look at you.”

You doubted you could string two words together, couldn’t weave a sentence in the sauna of your mind. Not with his cock inside you, pushing against every corner, every blinding spot that had lights blooming behind your eyelids. 

John had enough when your legs started shaking with strain. 

One moment you were in his lap, the next you were underneath him, torso curled over yours, all his great mass bearing down around you. He ran his hands around the curve of your ass, lifting and moving until thumbs hooked around the backs of your knees and they were pushed to your ears. 

Completely presented to him - no room for shame. It was ground to dust by the veneration, the desire flooding the lines of his face. 

John lined your hips up but then just ran his length through your slickness again, eyes locked on the the way his head disappeared between your folds. It was three steps back - a direction you certainly had no desire to head in. 

“Please, please,” you whined, sounding forlorn even to yourself. Couldn’t quite find the space to care just then, though. 

John hummed pityingly, a smirk hiding in the corner of his mouth. 

He was teasing you . 

You snatched at the dark pelt of his chest, but John just leaned down and grabbed your hand to his mouth - ran his lips over the cold ring on your finger with a grin. 

Another whimper crawled out from behind your teeth, a low, keening whine. You felt debauched, so distressed as emptiness flooded the core of you. 

“Please, John,” you begged. “Please fuck me. I need it -”

John cut you off with a kiss, pennies and earthy tobacco blooming on your tongue. “My girl,” he groaned into your mouth. “Gonna be the death of me, love.”

And then he fed himself into you again and you choked. The new angle, the incessant pressure pushing against your stomach - it was dizzying. You still felt a little bruised, a little raw, but it was nothing against the hot, delicious stretch as he bottomed out. You wiggled underneath him, chasing the friction, the burn of sensation, and John bowed his back to mouth wet kisses against your jawline. 

“Stop squirming, sweetheart, or I’ll cum right now.”

It set your nerve endings alight, the beast within your own chest twitching its ears to attention. Salivating, muscles tensing for action. 

Buzzing filled your ears as he started to fuck you like that, pulling out until just the tip remained before plunging back in. Again, again - obscene squelching noises filling the moonlit, humid air. John all around you, over you. Beaten rawhide, wintergreen yellow birch, blended, earthy nicotine. You were drowned in it, in him - pistoning in and out of you at a feverish pace, then. Sensation was all that was left; that and the desperate plea of a lust drenched mind. Cum in me, cum in me, “Cum in me -”

The need was so acute, so inmate, primal. Saturated want like bread soaked in pulpit-wine. The body and blood. Unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood,

you have no life in you.  

Not yet.

John couldn’t keep his mouth off your skin, tongue throbbing in time with your scattered pulse. Even as his thrusts grew choppy, uneven. “Careful love, might take,” he whispered, whisps of smoke into the shell of your ear. Wet ash after a rainfall. 

“But that’s what you want, isn’t it?” 

You clenched down around him, so tight he had to bully himself inside with desperate, sloppy jerks of his hips. He could hardly move with how you clung to him, hands locked to his shoulders, heels sliding over the sweat on his back. Gone, lost in the dream you could feel weaving through your fingers. Swallowed. Panting, moaning mess with the finish line taught within your brittle grasp. 

“Gonna give you what you want,” John promised. “Gonna fuck you full, love. My girl. Perfect, needy thing. How’d I get so lucky?”

You wanted to tell him that no, no, you were the lucky one - but John was lost too. 

Your release was a diaphanous glow on the horizon, a flickering light at the edge of your vision, but you needed John to go with you. It was tied to his, to the thought of him filling you up, remains in me, and I in them. Whoever feeds will live forever. His pace faltered and he reached down, ran two fingers along the sides of your clit. You held on, needing, needing -

The pulse of him inside you, throbbing, bucking, grinding his head into the plug of your womb and it was rapture. Molten sweetness flooding your veins like tempered chocolate, sweet relief like the first cold sip of dandelion wine on a dog day. 

Honeyed, saccharine victory. The seventh trumpet at the culmination of it all. 

This is where you belonged - consecrated in John’s arms, substance at last. 

When you returned, corporeal once more, John was murmuring into the hollow of your cheek, candied, lazy kisses against your temple. My girl, all mine, my wife. Laughter bubbled from your heart, radiant joy in the afterglow. You told him you weren’t his wife yet.

“Accidents,” he whispered and kissed you until you couldn’t think.

He fucked you again after that, until you were plaint and malleable under his hands. Melted, puddled. Could hardly keep your eyes open by the end of it. But that was fine, John just moved you how he wanted you. Seated you on top of him again so you could warm his cock, cradled against his chest.

You dozed like that, plugged full of him like John couldn’t bare to let a drop spill out. 

And through the heavy curtain of sleep, words slipped through. Cotton embers that floated in front of you before burning up in the warm darkness:

“Glad I’m here, too, love.”

John married you in the little white church on the first day of spring. 

The old man was too frail to make the trek back west - sending a new pair of boots in his stead - so Rob walked you down the aisle. Was just a mess the whole time and trying to hide it - stiff upper lip as he handed you over to John. 

The reception was held in Tammy’s barn. Twinkling lights and music and food. John holding you in his arms as you swayed. Him grumbling when the guests tinked forks against shimmering champagne flutes, but hiding a smile against your lips as he kissed you anyhow. 

‘The boys’ flew in to be groomsmen, and Johnny never left. 

You handed him the keys to the old man’s cabin, told him to stain and reseal the logs next summer, and left it behind. 

It was never truly yours, anyway. 

You moved in with John up the hill. He had left room for you in the home, little holes that you could crawl into and set, resinous like sap. But of all the creations John had built for you, you had to admit you had a favorite: the space just above the hearth, a blank canvas of opportunity that you found just the thing to fill

- the fresh rack Tammy had mounted for you as your wedding present. 

You had taken your buck one dreary dawn at the mouth of October. You weren’t even looking for him, and there he was - emerging from a thicket like he had slipped into your dream. Tall and proud, muscles rippling under the wet down of his pelt. Brown and bronzed. Sixteen tines. A King. 

Looked right at you as you held your breath, lined up your shot. 

Like he was lost in thought. 

Like he was waiting. 

The buck had huffed, steam puffing from his nostrils into the cold air - a dragon on that quiet, rainy morning between the evergreens. Brought his chest up and his hoof down, pawing at the dirt like a challenge. 

The old man’s voice had come to you. Whispered, then - not the barking growl of the before. A conversation you remembered, pressed shoulder to shoulder in a damp blind. 

Why, you had asked, do we sit out here for hours? You couldn’t understand why you waited, and waited, hung fire and twiddled your thumbs when you could be out there, pursuing, tracking, putting heat on his heels so you could find him, bag him. Couldn’t wrap your head around the sitting of it all. 

The old man had just laughed, shaken his head at all the things you hadn’t had time to know. 

The impatience of youth. The now, the no time, the want what you want and everything else is just the breeze. 

He’ll show when he’s ready, kid, he had said. 

And not a moment before.