Page 8 of Challenged By the Ex-Military Lumberjack
The drive back toward town is quiet except for the sound of gravel under the tires and Ridge's tail thumping against the seat every time Jade pets him. She's looking out the window, taking in the trees, the ridgeline, the way the morning light cuts through the branches.
"It's beautiful out here," she says after a minute.
"Yeah."
"Do you ever get lonely?"
The question catches me off guard. Most people don't ask things like that. Most people stick to safe topics—weather, town gossip, whether the hardware store has what they need.
"No," I say.
She glances at me. "Really?"
"Really."
"Huh." She goes back to looking out the window. "I think I would. Get lonely, I mean. I like people too much."
"I noticed."
"Is that why you live out here? Because you don't like people?"
"I live out here because it's quiet."
"Quiet's good," she says. "But so is noise sometimes. The right kind of noise, anyway."
I don't know what the right kind of noise is anymore. There was a time when I did: laughter in a barracks, radio chatter, the sound of men I trusted at my back. But that was before. Before the sand and the heat and the explosion that turned everything into screaming and smoke and the kind of silence that comes after, when you're counting bodies and realizing some of the numbers don't add up the way they're supposed to.
I push the thought down. Lock it away. It's easier out here, in the woods, where nothing asks me to remember.
"How long have you been in Blackwater Falls?" she asks.
"Six years."
"You like it?"
"It's fine."
"Just fine?"
"It's what I need," I say, and there's an edge to my voice that I don't mean to put there.
She hears it. Goes quiet for a second. Then she says, "I get that."
I glance at her. She's still petting Ridge, but there's something different in her expression now. Something that looks like understanding, and I don't know what to do with that.
"Frank said you're ex-military," she says.
Of course Frank said that. Frank's got a mouth like a town crier.
"Yeah."
"Thank you for your service," she says, but it doesn't sound like the usual script people read off when they find out. It sounds genuine. Quiet.
"Don't," I say.
"Don't what?"
"Don't thank me."
