Chapter 8 - Aiden
My mind is a hurricane. I hear the door slam behind me and I stomp towards the exit. I don’t know where I’m going or what I’m doing, I just know I need to get out of here.
I need to get away from the McCoys. I need to get away from that woman. I need to get away from Bill and everyone who was relying on me to oppose the construction of this hotel.
I can’t do it. If my truck was here, I’d be straight in it and on my way back up to the safety of my cabin. Instead, I open the doors and let the cool air wash over me. I close my eyes and take a deep breath, letting the fresh mountain air fill my lungs and calm down my burning anger.
A truck pulls up in front of the town hall and my brother Dominic gets out. I nod to him and he dips his chin down in response.
“How’d it go?” he asks, looking towards the building behind me.
“About as well as expected,” I respond. I see a hint of a grin on Dominic’s face.
“Saw your truck on the road. You need a ride?”
“Yeah, thanks,” I reply. It’s times like these that I’m glad Dominic doesn’t say much. I get into the passenger’s seat and we drive all the way back to the cabin in silence. When we pass my truck, Dominic says he’ll bring me back down to it tomorrow and help me fix it up. Apart from that, I have the entire drive back to mull over the evening.
My thoughts flick between Karen McCoy’s weasel-like face and the beautiful blonde engineer. I don’t know what to make of her. She seemed so sincere, like she really believed what she was saying about the conservation and sustainability of the hotel.
Maybe she’s just naive, and she thinks those things are true. Maybe she hasn’t seen the destruction that goes with big construction projects, or the degradation of nature that happens when tourists are left to run amock. Either way, I want to believe her, but I just can’t.
Dominic pulls the truck up in front of the cabin and turns towards me.
“You think this hotel is going to go ahead?” he asks. I turn towards him and we stare at each other for a few moments. I take a deep breath and shrug.
“What can we do? With Dad gone, the McCoys basically hold all the sway in town. A lot of people agreed with me, but that doesn’t really mean much compared to the money and control they have.”
Dominic grunts in response and shifts his gaze forward. He nods to the big house.
“You been in there lately?”
I follow his gaze and look at the corner of our childhood home. I shake my head and try to speak, but it comes out as a croak. My throat tightens as I look at the old building.
“Nah,” I say. “Not in a long time.”
Dominic nods, and I take that as a goodbye. I slip out the car and wave as he drives back down the mountain. My cabin is cold and dark when I go inside, and I spend the next few minutes ignoring my thoughts and starting a fire in the wood-burning oven.
Once it’s lit, I sit down and watch the flames as they dance in front of me. I close my eyes and lean back, letting the warmth seep into my bones. It doesn’t take long for the whole cabin to heat up, and the familiar smell of burning wood fills the room.
The woman’s face paints itself on my eyelids. I don’t even know her name. All I know is that she’s an environmental engineer. When I got closer, I could see that her eyes were a pale brown, and her lips were a deep, pink color. It’s hard to remember what I said, or what she said, or what anyone said. All I could focus on was the heaviness of my cock between my legs and the way her eyes flicked up towards me every few minutes.
I didn’t want to yell at her. I didn’t want to tell her to stop the construction of the hotel. I didn’t want to be applauded by opposing everything she stood for.
All I wanted was for her to see me.
I open my eyes again and watch the flames in the fireplace, trying to figure out these feelings. For years, all I’ve wanted was to be alone up here. Being in my cabin by myself, living off the land and spending as much time in the mountains as possible. That’s what has made me happy.
At least, I think this is happiness.
The alternative is to get to know someone else – only to have my heart shattered into a billion pieces again, just like Mara McCoy did to it all those years ago. I don’t want to feel like that. I don’t want to be the laughingstock of the town. I definitely don’t want to get involved with some woman from the city who’s intent on ruining the mountains with a big fancy hotel.
The restlessness inside me bubbles up and I grab a flashlight from the shelf. I rip the cabin door open and head up towards the big house. The weak beam of light saves me from tripping on overgrown tree roots and bushes as I make my way up to my childhood home. The rickety old steps are rotting, and I step on them carefully. They groan under my weight as I make my way towards the door.
The front door isn’t even locked. I push it open and peer through the opening. It looks like a time capsule, left exactly how it was when my brothers and I moved out. I’ve lived a few feet away from this house and for years I haven’t bothered to come up here.
The flashlight beam illuminates the house I grew up in. I walk through the rooms one by one until I get to my old bedroom. It it, I find a picture of my seventh birthday, when my parents had taken the three of us boys up to the top of the mountain. It was the first time I’d summited a mountain that big, and in the picture my whole face is beaming with pride. My father’s hand is on my shoulder, and my mother is holding a cupcake that she carried all the way up just for me.
It was the perfect birthday. We were together, we were happy, and we were on top of the world. It was before Mom died of cancer the next year, and before the ordeal with Dad and the McCoys a few years later. It was before my whole world got turned upside down. I slip the photo into my pocket and turn around, trying to ignore the prickling in my eyes and the tightness in my chest. I hurry out of the house, making sure to lock the front door as I leave.
When I walk back to the cabin, I don’t look back. I sit down in my chair by the fire and take the photo out of my pocket, propping it up on the side table beside me. I glance at it once more before turning back to the fire, feeling the ice in my heart melt ever so slightly as I sit in the warmth of my tiny mountain cabin.