He didn’t move and he didn’t speak.
I did.
“It was a good Christmas, John.”
I didn’t see him tense but I sure as heck felt it.
That didn’t stop me.
“It was going to be a crappy one, but you showed and made it good. I’ll remember it forever, the year the stranger who wasn’t a stranger saved me from a lonely holiday.”
Before I lost my nerve, I bent to him, my lips at his ear. So close, I could smell his scent. And it was his. Not cologne. Not aftershave.
All Priest.
Heavenly.
“It meant a lot,” I whispered. “So I thank you for that, John Priest.”
I moved my head, my lips now at his temple while he remained stone-still.
“Merry Christmas,” I finished softly, brushed my lips against the dark hair beyond his temple, and quickly, before he could rebuff me and take away all the goodness he’d given me, I scurried to the door and through it.
I made sure the house was locked up (all but the side door off the kitchen so Priest could get in, of course), but kept a few lights on to lead Priest’s way to bed.
I got in my own and laid there for a long time, listening.
He didn’t come up for ages. I checked my alarm clock and it was over an hour.
Only when I heard the door close in the hall did my eyes finally drift shut so I could go to sleep.
And I slept not knowing that the man in my guestroom sat outside for over an hour, quietly, unmoving, all the while waging war.
He won.
But he lost.
And so did I.
Because the next day, before I got up, he was gone, but he left behind three hundred-dollar-bills on my registration book, taking away the kindness I’d given him, seeing as he paid for it.
And two months later, when he came back, Christmas had not changed him. He rented cabin eleven. He paid in cash. He spoke few words. After he checked in, I barely saw him. And when he checked out, he shoved the key through the mail slot on my door.
Three months after that, more of the same.
Six months after that, the same.
This lasted for four years.
Four.
I told myself I wasn’t doing it, but I kept cabin eleven open as best I could, just in case. It was always the last cabin I rented when I was full up.
And I did it so every time he came—not constant, but consistent—the only thing I had to give him was open for me to give.
* * * * *
That was the way it was.
And that was the way it remained.
Until that night.
That night that would be the best night by far in my entire life.
A night that would also be the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Chapter Four
Honey
My eyes opened the instant I heard the loud music start.
I knew.
I knew by the looks of the family there was going to be trouble.
Three boys, all the same age, obviously not brothers and they couldn’t be a day older than eighteen.
Two parents in a fancy Escalade, the boys in a not quite as fancy Navigator. Two parents that checked them in to a cabin and I hadn’t seen them since. Checked them in because they knew no way in hell the proprietress of kickass cabins in the Colorado Mountains would let three underage boys itching for spring break fun stay alone in one of her cabins. Checked them in and took off, probably to check in to their own fancy condo closer to the slopes.
Checked them in and left them to their spring break to do what those boys clearly, by their car and clothes and snowboards and attitudes, felt entitled to do.
That being whatever the heck they wanted.
It had been so far, so good. Three days and they were mostly not there. No noise. SUV gone. More than likely hitting the slopes and carousing elsewhere.
I’d gone to bed and done it after checking the lot.
When I did, they were gone.
Now I knew they were back.
I threw off the covers and quickly dressed. Jeans. Bra. Thermal. Socks. Boots.
I grabbed the baseball bat I’d kept by my bed since that woman was assaulted in one of my cabins and Priest got angry about it. On my way out, I also nabbed my flashlight.
I left lights on in the foyer, the motion sensor lights outside coming on as I went out. I locked up after me, turned on the flashlight, and headed swiftly down the lane toward the cabins where the loud music was emanating.
It was late March, still high season, and now spring break season. The last few years, the country had hit a recession, but somehow I’d survived it. Rentals dipped occasionally but I always had customers in more than three cabins, which worked for me. Things were looking up for the economy and my rentals were up. Right then, I had nine cabins rented.
As I walked down the lane, my head turned right, toward eleven, which was also rented.
Priest was there.
He had been for two days. I’d checked him in and after, as usual, hadn’t seen him.
However, at that precise moment, his cabin was dark and there was no black Suburban parked outside it.
He was somewhere else.
Interesting. He’d been there when I’d checked the lot at ten o’clock. I had no clue he took off and stayed out late, mostly because I made a habit of not paying attention.
It was interesting but none of my business.
I kept walking, thinking that in the last four years he’d updated his Suburban. It was still caked on the side with mud most of the times he came to stay, but it was newer. It just didn’t seem to matter to him it was newer. He took the same care of it as he did the old one.
He wasn’t alone in getting a new vehicle. Three years ago, I’d bought a dark green Range Rover. My baby. I freaking loved it. Much better than my car. Especially when I had to hit Costco and load up on laundry soap in bulk.
Also in the last four years, a bunch more had happened.
I’d had all the cabins re-insulated, for one. And I’d had swamp coolers installed. I’d upgraded the furnaces. I’d attached flower boxes to all the windows of the cabins that faced the lot, and in a few weeks, I’d be filling them with bright flowers and lush greenery. I’d had permanent fairy lights wound around a number of aspen by the parking lot and dotted through the woods to add more light to the night and do it in a way that was attractive, quirky, and welcoming. They were on timers. Turning on late dusk, turning off at eleven-thirty to let the five dim overheads do the work of lighting the space.
This meant now, they were off.
Further, as the snow melted away, the wildflowers would be coming. Randomly and regularly I tossed seeds and planted bulbs wherever it struck my fancy. Amongst the trees, around the cabins, around my house, but concentrating up and down the river banks. Some of them didn’t take so I did it repeatedly (and would be doing it again soon with the seeds, the bulbs I’d plant in autumn) and every year I got more blooms coming up, color bursting through the summer months, making the entirety of my property even more beautiful.
I’d also had the master bath at my house renovated, something, thankfully, I did not do myself. I’d gotten rid of all the flowery wallpaper and painted or papered the walls like I liked them. I’d refinished all the floors (something I did do, backbreaking but worth it).
I’d further managed to get rid of some of the chintzy or velvety or flowery furniture and replace it with pieces that suited me. Quirky pieces. Comfortable pieces. Things I liked to see when I walked into my house that was becoming, month by month, inch by inch, all about me.
I’d also hired Milagros to help with the cabins. She cleaned them and changed the sheets when a customer left. On occasion, she also hung at my house with her husband Manuel in order to be available to patrons whenever I needed a change of scenery.
Having her helped amazingly.
It meant I could go boarding, which I did. It meant I could take jaunts
around the county and the ones adjoining on more than rare occasions. And not just to drop brochures and staple pamphlets on bulletin boards, but to discover, go shopping, go hiking, have the kind of mini-adventures that made life interesting.
Having Milagros also meant I could go to the local festivals. It meant I could go into town, have a drink, make some friends who were definitely now friends and not friendly acquaintances. I could go off and listen to live music at the bar in town or in Gnaw Bone, which wasn’t too far away.
I could have a life.
I could really live the dream.
And a life I had.
I just wasn’t living the dream.
I knew it.
Something was missing.
I just didn’t know what it was.
I’d even dated (and gotten laid). Alas, none of these men worked out and it wasn’t like I always had a guy. But at least I had some companionship that was more than shooting the breeze with Milagros, going to her house for dinner when she asked me, or hanging out with my girls in town.
As far as I knew, and I knew not very far because I knew him not at all, nothing had changed for John Priest, except he had an updated SUV.
I wondered, vaguely—which was the only way I allowed myself to wonder before I shut it down—where he was after one in the morning.
Then I focused on the cabins, the one with the boys being lit up like a beacon, but worse, the cabins on either side of it and three more besides had lights on. Lights I knew that had been turned on because they were probably right now phoning my cell to tell me to do something about this crap.
I felt my blood pressure rise as I tightened my grip on the bat and stomped up the steps to cabin six. Horizon cabin. The cabin painted in the muted blues and grays and purples of a Rocky Mountain horizon with prints of horizon vistas on the walls.
The Navigator was out front, as was another SUV.
I walked right to the door and knocked. Loudly.
The music went off quickly. A lot more quickly than the door opened.
In fact, the door didn’t open at all.
I hammered on it, shouting, “Open up!”
“Who is it?” a boy-man’s voice shouted back.
I didn’t share who I was because he knew who I was.
Instead, I threatened, “Open up immediately or I’m calling the police!”
Several moments passed before the door opened. But not far. I still caught a glimpse of the space beyond filled with food wrappers, beer cans (in fact, on the coffee table there was a beer can pyramid and it wasn’t a small one—how was it that the youth of America never got out of doing stupid crap like that?) and the couch was covered in bodies. Two to be precise.
A boy on top.
A girl on the bottom.
And another girl who was not on the couch but on her feet. She disappeared out of sight within moments of the door being opened.
At what I took in, more precisely, at the way the girl was laying there, a feeling of dread shifted through me as the tall, rather muscular, very fit boy who I guessed was the parents’ actual son filled the narrow space he’d opened the door.
“What do you need?” he asked.
“Open the door and let me in,” I demanded.
He didn’t open the door.
He said, “Sorry about the music. We won’t turn it on again.”
I held his eyes and informed him, “I need to speak to your parents.”
He shifted out of the space, not totally but so I couldn’t see his face. Then he shifted back and said, “They’re asleep.”
Did he seriously think I was that stupid?
“I need to speak to them right now.”
“Maybe you can talk to them in the morning,” he suggested.
Ugh.
What a punk.
I put my hand with the flashlight on the door and pushed.
The kid pushed back.
“Are your parents here?” I asked.
“I told you.” He was losing patience and showing it. Definitely a punk. “They’re sleeping.”
“Son, let’s not play this game,” I said. “Your parents aren’t in there.”
“They are,” he stated obstinately.
I shook my head, done with him.
“Open this door,” I said low and quiet. “Immediately.”
His eyes shifted to the side then back to me and he lifted his chin.
“Not sure you can come in here unless you’re invited.”
“I’m not a vampire, kid. I don’t have to be invited. But even if I were the undead, I own this property. Now, open the freaking door. Now.”
He pushed harder against me pushing harder on the door and ordered, “Come back tomorrow.”
“Open or I’ll—”
I didn’t finish my statement. The kid’s eyes darted up, widened instantly with fear, and then the door opened so fast, the kid stumbled back and I fell through.
I lost hold on my bat and flashlight seeing as I was about to go down on my knees and I needed to throw my hands out to cushion my fall.
But I didn’t go down. This was because an arm hooked around my middle and hauled me up to steady on my feet.
The arm stayed there, ironclad, locked around my belly, forcing my back to fit tight to a hard frame and my heart skipped a beat when I heard Priest growl, “Fuck me.”
It took me a second to recover from the surprise of him suddenly being there.
Then everything I was seeing, and smelling, crashed in to me.
The three boys were there, two others besides, all big and bulky. There were beer cans everywhere, also Jack Daniels and Absolut, several bottles of both, some tipped to their sides leaking onto my pretty braided rugs and across my fabulous floors, not to mention cans of beer the same way.
The air smelled of vomit, beer, booze, cigarettes, and pot. In fact, there was a cloud of smoke hanging in the room and there were makeshift ashtrays, these being torn apart beer cans. They didn’t work very well. I knew this because there were burns in my coffee table.
There was also a girl in jeans, a sweater, and boots on her ass in the corner, one of the boys ineffectually attempting to hide her with his body. She was on her ass in the corner, knees up, curled into herself, face shoved into her legs, sobbing.
And there was another girl that another boy scrambled off of when Priest and I forced our way in (well, Priest did, I tumbled in).
She was the one on the couch, clearly unconscious, her clothing askew, the sweater that was pushed up was pushed high and I could see her bra.
Pressure built in my head and was about to blow but it didn’t because I would find in that instant I had a much bigger problem on my hands.
That problem being Priest.
“You hurt her?”
His voice came low, deep, quiet, and deadly.
“My parents bought us the booze,” the kid replied, not answering his question, his chin up, his body held alert, his eyes scared.
“Did you…hurt her?” Priest repeated and I twisted my neck to look up at him.
Oh yes.
I had a much bigger problem on my hands.
“They know we’re here. They’re cool with all this,” the boy answered.
Suddenly, I was not held against Priest.
Suddenly, I was standing on my own two feet, Priest was across the room, the kid pinned to the wall by Priest holding himself two inches away, his chin dipped, his face nose to nose, the kid not moving, I guessed, due to the sheer force of Priest’s terrifying presence.
He slashed an arm behind him indicating the girl still on her ass and sobbing.
“Did you…fucking…hurt her?” he growled.
“The pot was laced with something,” the kid answered quickly, eyes enormous, body wired, fear wafting off him in waves. “We didn’t know. She smoked it and went weird so none of us had any. No one touched her. She’s been crying for, like, an hour or something.”
“The girl on the couch,” Priest bit out.
“She…she…” the boy started and trailed off, likely so he could concentrate on not messing himself, which was what his face was sharing he was doing, or close to it.
At this, I decided to let Priest do his thing, however scary that might be, but I had to prioritize. So I rushed to the girl on the couch, pulled her sweater down, and grabbed the throw I left for customers to cuddle up with in front of their TVs or out on their porches and threw it over her.
She moaned and shifted and then went slack.
She was fully clothed, even had her shoes on, which I took as a good sign.
“You leave this cabin, I break your legs before I break your neck.”
That came from Priest and my eyes shot to him to see he was still nose to nose with the kid so he wasn’t talking to him. Therefore I looked to the door to see the kid who’d been on top of the girl on the couch was trying to make his escape.
At Priest’s words, the kid stopped and stood completely still, his Adam’s apple bobbing, his gaze glued to Priest’s back.
And this was indication badasses had eyes in the back of their heads and high school punks weren’t completely stupid because I couldn’t be sure, but I had an inkling Priest’s threat wasn’t entirely empty.
“Do you want cops?”
This also came from Priest and no one answered, primarily because the boys obviously didn’t want cops and I didn’t know why he was giving them the choice.
His head turned and he pinned me with a scowl.
“Cassidy,” he prompted on an infuriated rumble.
I opened my mouth but didn’t get a word out before a girl’s broken voice cried, “We’ll get in trouble! We’ll get in trouble! You can’t phone the cops! I’ll lose my scholarship and Peyton’s parents will totally freak!”
I was looking at her so when she stopped, I called gently, “Did they hurt you, honey?”
She shook her head vehemently. “No. No. We were just partying.”
“Did they hurt Peyton?” I asked, waving my hand to indicate the girl on the couch.
She shook her head. “No. I was…was…before you got here, I was getting him off her. He didn’t get very far.”
“You sure?” I asked.