There was an open door to the bedroom with its queen-sized bed with an antique bronze frame and layers and layers of brightly-colored quilts.
That was, if I recalled correctly, how her grandmother had made her income. Selling quilts in town. Everyone was always looking for a custom baby blanket or a wedding gift or just to have something pretty and fancy on their own beds.
“Aren’t they gorgeous?” Maribelle asked, noticing me looking at them. “My grandmother had such a gift with them. I was learning when I was a girl. I actually made that one she hung on the wall,” she said, waving over toward the space between the bedroom and bathroom where a bright pink and yellow doll-sized blanket was displayed like a prize possession.
“I want to learn again. I forgot how to use the machine, but I found the book and I’m working on it. Maybe I can make you a big blanket one day to thank you for being such a good neighbor.”
“I’d fucking love that,” I told her, watching as she went a little pink again.
This woman had clearly been starved for attention and affection and just common courtesy for far too fucking long.
I planned to change that.
“What are your favorite colors?” she asked as she grabbed two mugs from the cupboard.
“Green is my favorite. Go with your gut for the other colors,” I said.
“How do you take it?” she asked, holding up cream and sugar.
“Yes cream. No sugar.”
“Don’t judge me for taking your portion of sugar then,” she said, making up the cups, then holding mine out to me.
Did I go ahead and make sure that my fingers brushed hers as I took it? Damn right I did.
And that sizzle at the contact was only reinforcing what I already knew down to my core.
It was her.
She was the one.
I just had no idea if she was going to feel the same for me.
CHAPTER FIVE
Maribelle
I could get used to having Way around.
Ever since the day with the woods, when I’d woken up from a nap that I was worried was speaking of a upcoming depression spell, to a frigid home.
I mean, yes, admittedly, I always ran a little cold. My hands and feet were icicles no matter how hot the external temperature. I spent much of the summer bundled up in oversized hoodies and thick socks, no matter how warm I kept my apartment.
When I’d finally figured out the fireplace, and found no wood to fuel it with, I’d felt a surge of helplessness that made me want to throw up my hands and say “screw it” and head back to the city. Where I never had to do any sort of labor to make my heat or air work.
But that was the whole point of coming to the cabin, wasn’t it? To force myself to live a different way, to help change my perspective, to shake things up.
I couldn’t run away at the first sign of struggle.
Admittedly, though, I damn near did when I couldn’t even split a log properly, a task my eighty-something-year-old grandmother had been doing for herself.
Then there he was.
With a welcome basket full of wine and treats. And an offering to help.
I almost cried.
Like… I actually did. A tear or two before I pulled myself together.
I’d never truly understood the appeal of a sort of traditional “alpha” type of man.
I liked men who were forward-thinking and in touch with their feelings. In other words… guys who weren’t misogynists. I’d never met a self-proclaimed “alpha man” who didn’t think that women were just holes to be stuffed and hands to make them dinner.
Then again, I guess Way had never called himself that. He just exuded it.
In a classic sort of way.
The way that said he was happy to do the manual labor, to help women, maybe even protect them if they needed that.
We’d had a nice hour or so chat over coffee, talking about my life in the city, the fact that he’d never really been far from this area of Virginia, about his favorite outdoor pastimes, and my love of books.
Then he’d said his goodbyes, and I stood there watching him from the window as he disappeared into the woods.
I’d never felt such a strong sense of loss as I watched him go.
And I convinced myself for the rest of that day that it was just because I was so alone. Which was completely absurd. Because while, yes, people were all around in the city, I was every bit as alone there as I was in this cabin.
I woke up the next morning to the rhythmic sound of wood chopping, and got up to look out my window to find him there at the side of the house with a pile of logs there that hadn’t been there the day before.
Had he… cut down trees for me? Then dragged them to the cabin and started chopping them?