JAX

Buck shows up at my cabin, telling me I need to come down to the bar, and for some reason I agree.

It’s been four weeks since Harper left. I never learned her last name, her home address. And of course I didn’t. She was a one-night stand.

But she hasn’t left my mind.

The snow has melted, the promise of spring finally poking its way through the forest floor.

As I follow Buck down the mountain in my own truck, I see a beautiful doe on the side of the road, her white spots pointing to her purity, her eyes alert, taking in the world as it passes.

Once again, all I see is Harper.

A tow truck came up the road a few days after last month’s snowstorm passed. They carried Harper’s little hatchback down the mountain and I knew that was that.

I could have been a creeper, gone all stalker-mode in her car, rooted through her glove box, looking for an address, a phone number. But I resisted. She didn’t offer those things, and I could guess she’d gone back home to a family ready to lay it on her.

I didn’t need to show up on her doorstep and get punched by an angry father.

I stayed put.

I’m no love-sick fool. We shared a night I’ll remember, but that’s all.

At the bar, Buck hands me a can of Bud Light and we play a few game of pool with the regulars. Some women ask if I want to go somewhere to talk, and while Buck thinks it’s goddamned amazing having me as his wingman, I pass on the offers.

I’m not ready to get into something with some girl who lives out in the sticks. There aren’t enough houses in these parts to keep my one night stands in order.

When I did that back in the city, it got me in trouble with the Sherriff. It’s the reason I’m out here in the first place.

Better I keep my wood in my pants.

Best I not start in at all.

I help Buck with the women, though. That poor bastard has no game, and the least I can do is put in a good word for him.

Clapping him on the back, I explain his merits to some local girls. “Buck here has had my back for as long as I’ve lived here,” I say.

“And how long has that been?” asks a brunette in a jean skirt and cowboy boots.

“About three months.”

“You the guy living in the woods all alone, chopping trees all day?” her friend asks.

“That’s me,” I say, taking a long pull from the beer. “But Buck here isn’t as sketchy as me. He lives in town, owns the gas station—and last time I checked he had some property out on the lake. Prime for camping. We should all go sometime.”

“That sounds hot,” the cowboy-boot girl says. “Like, so hot I’d have to take my clothes off.” She taunts me by unbuttoning the top button of her shirt.

I don’t take the bait. Instead, I think of how hot Harper got in my cabin, how she stripped to cool off.

How I’d strip her again if I got the chance.

How I’d never let her go again if I did.

Should have never motherfucking let her out of my sight. I should have fought for her.

Only thing is, she didn’t want any saving. She wanted gone.

HARPER

I throw up every day for two weeks. I’m losing weight.

Losing sleep.

I must be dying.

I must be dead.

At least, this must be what death feels like.

I know people really are dying, and I understand it is callous and cruel to speak this way—but, truly, if there was any way I could get out of this life, I would.

I can’t see it happening. I have no money, no experience. And in the meantime, I am getting myself ill. Sick over the prayer-fasting my father requires and the bible studies and the sex-addicts meetings in the church basement.

Yes, my parents thought I needed a twelve-step program for having sex one solitary time. Okay, two times, but they didn’t know the details. Oh, they asked all right. But I refused to tell.

Apparently, they thought sex with Jaxon one night was a gateway drug.

They weren’t that far off.

Because, oh my heart, I can’t count the number of times I’ve parted my legs in the dark, under the covers, and imagined him. His hard chest and harder cock and his fingers pulsing in my opening.

I just need a few minutes imagining him covering me with his body, and my fingers slip between my thighs, into my folds. I keep trying to take the edge off the way he could.

But nothing I do to myself feels anything like he felt to me.

I want to be in his cabin. I would ask him how he fingered so well … beg for the magic secret. But there are a thousand reasons I’ll never go back and ask Jaxon, and one of them being I have nothing to offer him.

Luke never called after the day he dropped me off. And good. I don’t need to see him ever again. Last I heard, my father mentioned him going to Bible College in Denver.

Maybe he’ll find a pious woman. A woman I can never be again.

“Harper, you need to clean up after breakfast,” Mother says, knocking on the bathroom door. In the bathroom, I retch up my oatmeal, with the fan on, the faucet in the sink running.

Letting on that I’m sick would just be another way to drag out the consequences they’ve thrown on me.

I’m already on restrictions. My one freedom is when I go to the Food Bank to stock shelves. Besides that, I’m at home 24/7 and pretty much useless.

I’m tired of being a little girl, of not knowing how to do things. So I am trying to be responsible. Prove my worth. The last thing I want is another guy like Luke not wanting to be with me because I wasn’t enough.

Since I came home a month ago, when I’m not cleaning, doing laundry, helping with the dishes and cooking, I make myself scarce and try to rest. I’m always so tired.

But I can’t be tired. I need to get up and start the day and show my family that my foray into the woods was a one-time thing.

It’s not working this morning, because once again I’m sick. No matter how plain my food, I still get sick like clockwork

I go to the kitchen, begin rinsing oatmeal bowls and then eventually stacking the dishes in the cupboard.

Before I have to run out of the room.

And get sick again.