I hold Scarlett’s hand as we hike. What I like is that she holds my hand back. Cool, silky-soft skin laced with my hot, calloused fingers. Her grip is relaxed, as if touching me is as easy as breathing. For me, her touch settles portions of my constant internal chaos.
As we walk, sometimes her bicep slips against mine, and she’s close enough that I can smell her sweet perfume. The scent reminds me of the honeysuckle we used to eat down by the creek. It also makes me want to gather her in my arms, and never let go.
We’re quiet on the walk and the silence gives me needed time to process and recapture my own demons that had slipped through the cracks due to her admission. A growling in my head, and I hold her hand tighter.
So many questions and things I want to ask, but she doesn’t need me demanding answers. I know what it’s like to be hurt like she has. As if you’re a shadow on the wall attached to the horror. Your pain is the ghost of the smack you witnessed, but it’s still pain. Just a different type of pain. Your body may not be cut or bruised, but your soul is ripped apart all the same.
Part of me expects her to slow up when we start for the towering sugar maple in the middle of the field, but she doesn’t. She keeps pace as if she’s also called to this old tree like I have been since the day I learned to walk. This tree marks the center of the property, it’s the heart, and when I hurt, this is where I come to relearn how to breathe.
The grass barely reaches our calves and bends easily under our feet. With each step we take toward the maple, the heartbeat of this land trembles within my veins. It’s a familiar sensation. One I can’t imagine living without.
Walking under the maple’s protective leaves, Scarlett stops and her gaze roams to the same branch that has haunted my dreams since the summer before our freshman year. The moon casts a soft glow, giving everything a hazy grayish coloring.
“Do you remember the last time we were here?” she asks in a hushed tone. She releases my hand as she hugs herself. The memory probably scaring her like it still haunts me.
“Yeah.” I remember every second as if it were yesterday. I remember racing through the field, how she outran me, how she scaled this tree with such ease that I was jealous, how she climbed higher and higher, and how I egged her to continue to the very top.
Then I remember the crack of the branch, the horrible tightness in my chest, her terrified expression as her head jerked down to look at me for help. Her wide eyes desperate for confirmation that the worst wasn’t about to happen. Then she fell.
Fell.
My mouth still goes dry with fear.
She fell hard, she fell fast, crashing through limbs and leaves. She screamed, I yelled and I remember that the first few seconds of my jumping from my branch to capture her felt like flying.
Flying.
After I jumped, I wrapped my arms around her and wished that we were flying, that I could save her, save us. That flying sensation ended when I hit the ground.
I took the brunt of the fall. Me on my back, her in my arms, blood gushing from my chin. To this day, I don’t know what I hit to cause that gash.
“How did we survive that fall?” she says in a whisper. “I was too high. Higher than I had ever been. I should have stopped climbing, but I loved the rush and didn’t want it to end, and then I heard the crack.”
She chokes up and my windpipe thickens.
“I would have died if you hadn’t caught me. You risked your life to save mine.”
I will always risk everything to save her. She didn’t know it then. She doesn’t know it now. Scarlett once said she was empty. I’ve never been empty. I’ve been loved, and I’ve loved in return, but I don’t do it with many. She was one of the few. Still is. Always will be.
I reach out and touch the bark of the tree. “My mom once told me that as long as I love this land, the land will take care of me.”
She raises a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you saying the land saved us that day?”
Yes. I don’t believe in a lot, but I do believe that, and I don’t think Scarlett will so I avoid her question. “Whenever life gets to be too much, I come here. My land makes me better, and I think it can help you, too.”
She frowns. “Of course it helps you. This is your land.”
“It’s your land, too,” I say, and this causes her to laugh.
“No, it’s not.”
“You were born on it.” That doesn’t make her cursed because she’s not a Lachlin, and it doesn’t make it safe for her to be with me, but being born on this land created a connection between her and it. She’s always had a way of seeing this farm in ways others can’t. This property has embraced her, and I’m convinced it saved her that day all those years ago.
She narrows her eyes, probably ruing the day she told me how her mom waited at home for her father to take her to the hospital. She thought the labor with her first child would be long, but it was short. So short Scarlett was born in their front yard. “I was born at home.”
“Yeah, but the land your house sits on used to belong to the Lachlin’s.”
“So?”
“This land . . .” I stop and try to find the right words to make her understand. Hell, I can’t make myself understand. The best way would be to show her.
I hold out my hands to her, and she gives me a skeptical tilt of her head. “Jesse, this land is just land. It’s land you love, but I don’t see how it’ll make me better.”
“Trust me on this,” I say.
“Fine.” She places her hands in mine, and standing there in defiance is the force of nature who used to rule my land by my side. Strong, confident and full of trust.
I move us a safe distance away from the tree. “Spin with me.”
“Spin?” Fire lights up her expression. “Like we’re five?”
“Yeah, like we’re five.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Might be, but that doesn’t change a thing.”
Her smile grows. My God, she’s gorgeous. With a flutter of her eyelashes, like she’s the one about to pull massive mischief, she tugs on my hands, and we spin.