Chapter 9

~Bella~

He found me in the garden.

At least, it used to be a garden, back when my mother cared about things. Through the overgrown weeds and the prairie grass, you could still see the faint echoes of what had once been, the only ghost she left behind. Her neat rows of corn were now sprouting an unkempt forest from years of the cobs lying forgotten in the dirt. The blackberry bushes had grown into a mad, tangled monster. The prairie onions were bombarding the western front, and the strawberries were holding fast to the eastern borders. Flora gone rabid. Vegetation run amok.

I was sitting in the spearmint with one of Mom's old silk scarves tied around my head, knotted over my left eye.

I had been thinking about eyes a lot. About how a little ball of squishy moss with a blue-petaled cornflower blossom tucked into the center of it looked just like an eyeball. How the bubbled bumps of the blackberries looked like a brain and how the soft fronds off the ends of the thistles looked just like feathery tips of nerves. How lungs might really be full of acorns instead of bronchioles. Maybe spines were just like the delicate vines that sprawled out from underneath the strawberries, pairs of leaves sprouting like stacked vertebrae, smaller and smaller and smaller. Maybe we were really just gardens in the end, underneath our skin where no one could see.

No blood. No bones.

Just dirt and worms and sunshine.

I didn't even hear him. Half-daydreaming, half-blind, half-wondering if my blood was really just dirt, if my heart was an apple. I was an easy target.

He was right there, standing at the gate with his forehead wrinkled, clearing his throat with a rough sound that startled me. I darted to my feet, breath caught in my mouth, ripping the scarf off my face. My face flamed, embarrassed beyond belief that he'd caught me playing pretend with his reality in such a careless way. He was shirtless again, covered in a faint splatter of paint, and I was still in the nightdress. With the sun baking the back of my neck, I smashed my thighs together and crossed my arms over my chest as his one good eye traveled all the way down to my feet and all the way back up to my hair. I'd sat in the trees again for most of the day, watching him as he prettied up his house, rolling around in the strawberries, and making chain-link crowns out of violets. Snuggling with the fawn and studying his every move.

I was so curious about him—my nameless neighbor.

Half-naked and mostly angry.

He reached for me quickly, a darting movement I barely registered before he had my hand in his, and he was tying my white ribbon too tightly around my wrist.

"Don't," he exhaled, his words caught harsh and raw in his chest. "You just don't know. You have no right." His eye lifted to mine, face rigid with anger, and he pointed his finger at me. "That's my flagpole. My pond. Mine."

I barely heard any of it. I just nodded along, unable to speak, stuck in the exciting minutia of being so close to someone like him. His shadow. His smell. Sweat and wood and sunshine as he glared at me. The soft skin on his neck where his beard was starting to shadow his jaw and the way he swallowed before he moved toward me. The faint beginning of crow's feet at the corner of his eye and the bright, clover-colored iris behind his dark lashes. The million different colors in his hair, rust and copper and something dark like the dirt if you dug just a couple inches under the surface. The little puckered nub of scar tissue on his shoulder, next to a dot of yellow paint. The tattoo on his arm, the image warped by skin that was damaged not so long ago and barely visible beneath a fresh scar.

I fidgeted, grabbing fistfuls of my nightdress, watching as he turned away and strode three angry steps back to the gate. He paused just outside the garden, crossing his arms over his chest and squinting up at my crooked house with a frown on his face. The house didn't look much better than I did. Overgrown ivy creeping in through the windows. Balding roof, shingles scattered across the lawn. Peeling paint and sagging porch. The fawn emerged from the corn, appearing between my legs again, and we watched him in silence until he spoke again.

Turning toward me to ask me who was taking care of the house.

"No one." I looked away and shrugged. "Me."

"Who's taking care of you?"

I fingered the ribbon around my wrist, so tight it made my hand throb in time to my heartbeat. I shrugged again, wondering what he thought of me. How I must look in my nightgown, my wild hair, my flushed cheeks. I was only just reaching out for my twenties, and he was older than Jacob, that was for sure. Ten years between us, twelve, maybe more, but right now he looked downright ancient. A hundred years old. Weathered and beaten. It wasn't only the wrinkles or the steel-toed set of his eyebrows that made him seem so broken. It wasn't the eyepatch or the puckered scars, not the two, four, seven, twelve knots that splattered across his chest like a grease burn. It wasn't the way he looked down at me with something like disdain, but more like regret, in his eyes.

It was the way that he left.

Sliding over the ground as though he couldn't let his feet completely leave the earth.

I slept restlessly, tossing covers and turning recollections like a carousel in my head.

He spun around me all night long.

I couldn't help my curiosity. It had always been there, just as much a part of me as my hair or my eyes or my fragile, fluttery heart. Just as solid and steady as the soles of my feet, as natural as the freckles that marred my face and my arms. He was too interesting to leave alone, too different not to wonder about.

In the middle of my recent disaster, he was the safest, easiest, most intriguing thing to wrap my thoughts around.

I made up stories in my dreams: the places he had been, the people he had loved, the terrible, wonderful things that had brought him to the smallest town in the plainest state, as far away from anything as you could ever get. The unspeakable circumstances that had sunk that unnamed anger so deep beneath his skin. The awful thing that had happened to his eye. I fell asleep to the sound of the wind, the feel of my mother's old rose-patterned sheets, the breath of the fawn on my neck, and the blurry, faint feeling of what his fingers could feel like against my skin.

I woke up to hammering.

A steady thud thud thud as though the house was coming to life, finding its pulse. The window panes rattled, and the floorboards vibrated, thrumming up against the soles of my feet as I set them on the floor. I rubbed the sleep from my eyes, wondering if the foundation was finally giving way. Maybe the whole house was sliding sideways toward the ground, about to crumple into a pile of wood and glass and remorse. My heart soared up into my throat as I leapt out of the bed, searching for the fawn. It was nowhere to be found, just a tangle of sheets and the blanket pushed off onto the floor. The thumping got louder, harder, and I skidded out onto the landing, ready to fling myself down the steps and out the door. I wanted a first row seat to the final destruction, a spot in the yard to watch every single moment of the demise of my life thus far.

My excitement deflated as I hit the top step, the sight below me ruining every pulse of hope coursing through me that the house was finally coming down.

He was kneeling in the doorframe, Neighbor, his back to me and a hammer pounding the screen door back into place. Shirtless, shoeless, the early morning sunshine filtering through his hair and creeping over his shoulders. The fawn was standing on the porch, watching him intently, its ears wagging when it saw me hovering on the stairs.

What in the hell did he think he was doing? This house was destined for a tornado, not nails. It should have been flattened, not resurrected. It wasn't worth his time. He had better things to be doing. His half-painted house was just as lopsided as his vision and his smile and his anger issues. His yard was even more overgrown than my own.

I stomped down the steps, stopping close enough that I could smell him, grass, and sweat. "What are you doing?" I asked, my throat tight and tears in my eyes.

He startled, looking back over his shoulder at me with nails between his lips and the hammer in his fist. With a shrug, he turned back to the doorframe, mumbling around the metal.

"Fixing this."

"Don't."

It came out sounding like a sob. It felt like a sob. Ripped up through me like a heatwave, and my skin went up in flames. I fisted the nightdress to keep my hands from shaking and smashed my knees together to keep from trembling head to foot. He stood, taking the nails from his mouth, the hammer hanging against his thigh as he stared down at me. I felt it all over me, his gaze lingering on my neck and my mouth and my eyes. My heart lurched, guts surging with the faint taste of what I had been dreaming about all night long. His forehead compacted, and his mouth tightened down hard and thin as his hand rose in the air between us the same moment a tear slipped out of my eye, tumbling down my cheek.

He faltered, hesitating, his fingers just inches from my face.

I jerked away, not ready for this, not now, angrily brushing the evidence of my too-big emotions off my face. I couldn't breathe. My head had gone light, and my brain had gone dark. I gulped down something sharp and bitter as I ran by him, flinging myself through the open door in search of fresh air, not entirely sure if I was running from him or myself or the still-standing house. I could feel his fingers graze my elbow, could hear my head hammering empty and loud and my feet pounding across the wood because running was always, always the safest option.

My heart was so heavy, it pulled me right through the porch.

Mad love to LayAtHomeMom, Hadley Hemingway, and CarrieZM for making us pretty.

Enjoy, and leave us your thoughts!

HB&PB