I find him where I always find him lately, down by the woodshed, chopping wood. More wood, although we have fifteen piles already.
“Why do you keep doing this?” I ask him hesitantly. I approach him slowly so I don’t startle him because he’s holding an ax, after all.
He looks up at me, the light shining in his pale blue eyes.
“The exercise burns stress.”
“Ok,” I answer. “Finn, you’d tell me if you were feeling really bad, right? Like, you wouldn’t do anything stupid?”
His forehead wrinkles and he leans against the ax handle. “Stupid like what, Cal? What are you talking about?”
I sigh because he knows what I’m saying, he’s just trying to make me say the words.
“You wouldn’t try to hurt yourself, would you?”
The words taste hateful and awful, but I ask them anyway.
Finn stares at me seriously.
“Calla, if I wanted to hurt myself, I wouldn’t try. I’d just do.” But when I start to cry out, he hurriedly continues. “But no. I don’t want to hurt myself.”
I stare at him, desperately wanting to believe him, but so sure he’s lying.
“I think you should go to Group today,” I tell him slowly, gauging his reaction.
He shrugs. “Ok. I was planning on it anyway.”
“Yeah?” I raise an eyebrow.
“Yeah,” he answers firmly. “Let me finish here and then take a shower.”
He splits another piece of wood and tosses it into a new pile. I shake my head as I walk to the house. Dad will have enough wood to last five winters.
I hesitate at the porch, playing with the idea of going to talk to Dare, but as I stand there trying to decide, I see him pacing back and forth behind the cottage, talking animatedly on his cell phone. He paces up, waves his hands, his face set in stone, then he paces back, doing the same thing.
He glances up and sees me, and his dark eyes hold mine for just a moment, black, black, black as night, then he turns his back and paces away.
Who is he talking to so intently?
Questions swirl around me as return to my room to fold up Dare’s sheet so that I can take it back to him later. Who is he talking to? For that matter, as long as I’m ask
ing questions, who is Dare here to visit? He’d said he was visiting someone in the hospital. He never said who, and he never said why he wanted to rent an apartment here when he lives in England. I’ve been so wrapped up in my own stuff and in my own fascination with Dare himself, that I’ve never asked.
That’s going to end today.
I wait patiently for thirty minutes because that’s got to be enough time to wrap up a conversation.
I take the sheet and knock on Dare’s door.
He opens it immediately and looks devastatingly handsome in a snug dark shirt that complements his dark eyes.
“Hey,” he greets me. “You look like you feel better.”
“Thank you for taking care of me last night,” I tell him, flushing a bit. It’s embarrassing that he saw me puke my guts up. “I’m a bit humiliated.”
“Don’t be,” he says politely, oddly formal considering I slept all night in his arms. He doesn’t make any kind of move to invite me in, but instead stands planted in the middle of the doorway.
“Well, I am,” I answer back in confusion. “Is something wrong? I can’t help but notice that we’re still standing on the porch.”