Would I be nothing but bones when they found me?
Somehow, I found that more comforting than still being, you know, fleshy.
Why, might you be wondering, would I spend the day following a potential brain injury cleaning the cabin? Well, that would be because of my mother.
My neat freak mother.
It was always her voice in my head that peeled me off the couch on a Saturday after a hard week of work that left me feeling depleted and miserable, going to grab the cleaning supplies, and doing a deep clean of my entire apartment.
She certainly would have something to say about dying amongst all the filth in my grandmother’s cabin.
So I cleaned it.
Then I showered.
Fed myself.
Wondered why I didn’t feel like I was dying if I was.
Then I slipped into my prettiest nightgown that I’d bought after a long Jane Austen movie binge, finding those white nightgowns they wore so elegant and womanly and sexy in a subdued way.
And, yeah, I sat and, you know, waited for death.
That didn’t seem too keen to come.
So I got up and paced restlessly, made and drank a cup of tea, then paced some more.
It was sometime after the sun set that I felt a strange pulling sensation, something that tugged so tightly that I felt helpless but to slip on my flip-flops and make my way out to the backyard, looking out over the darkness that almost made my eyes hurt it was so complete before I adjusted to it.
I thought, at first, that some part of me was just craving a little fresh air. But as I stood there, that strange pulling sensation was forcing me down the back path, going toward the mountains once again.
At night.
Like an idiot.
Even knowing that, though, couldn’t seem to stop me or slow me down.
The strangest part was that something inside me knew where to go. I didn’t feel like I was just randomly walking, not even when I stepped off the path and started walking in the woods kind of alongside the cabin.
In my mind, I flashed back to earlier that day, when I’d been having a little breakdown about my impending death before I even really got a chance to live much, and I’d felt an odd sort of vibration—for lack of a better term—coming to me from this part in the woods.
It had been both calming and soothing, exactly what I needed in that moment.
I’d shaken it off at the time, figuring it was just the whole “nature brings you peace and clarity” mindset that my grandmother always had.
But as I followed the strange tug inside of me, I was starting to wonder if there was something more to it.
Then there he was.
Kind of looking like Mr. Darcy coming out of the lake in that one Jane Austen adaptation, his hair dripping, his body glistening.
The same man from my so-called hallucination. The cause of my believing I had a brain bleed that would surely kill me soon.
The man who was a man, but also… not.
I wasn’t even aware of my mouth deciding to say anything until the words were out of it.
“Who are you?”
I mean, it wasn’t even what I really wanted to ask.
What are you was more like it.
But then those unique brown eyes with yellow flecks were pinning me, and I was finding it hard to form thoughts, let alone more words.
“Waylon,” he said, and that voice was just as rough, just as gravelly and sexy as it had been when it growled out Mine over and over. “Way,” he clarified.
“Way,” I repeated, and I couldn’t be sure, but it almost sounded like he kind of… rumbled at me when I said it. I mean, that was insane. I probably imagined it. “What are you doing on my property Way?” I asked.
Was it possible I’d crossed his paths in the woods in a normal way and then hit my head? So my brain sort of pieced things back together wrong? Hence him being a real, flesh-and-blood man, but also why I imagined we’d hooked up. We were just going to forget all about the whole wolf thing. Since, you know, that was insane.
“Your property?” he asked, brows drawing together. “I was under the impression that this land belonged to Greta Wilson.”
“It did. Until she passed. And then it was given to me.”
“Her granddaughter,” he concluded.
“Yes. Maribelle. Mari,” I said out of habit. My friends back home teased me about my full name, and always called me Mari instead. I actually liked my full name, but had accepted long ago that no one was going to use it. “Did you know my grandmother?” I asked, suddenly aching for some connection to her that didn’t involve letters sent back and forth.
I’d been a shitty granddaughter for a long time. I mean, I always wrote. At least once a month, extra around the holidays or big life events. But I hadn’t seen her face-to-face in years.