Page 27 of Mountain Man

We’d been trekking for a few hours, stopping regularly so Birdie could rest. Beau took the lead and I took the rear, making sure one of us could catch her if she tripped or fell.

We’d left first thing this morning, after a shit night sleep. I’d slept on the chair and Beau on the floor. I wanted to lie beside Birdie one more night, but I didn’t trust myself not to touch her.

She seemed fine. Had been chatting the whole time. Glad to be going home. I didn’t want Birdie to be unhappy, but seeing just how happy she was, it stung.

I’d kept quiet as Beau asked her all the questions I hadn’t asked her, questions I’d desperately wanted to ask.

“So you’re an only child?” Beau asked. “How old were you when your father left?”

“Yep, it was just me. He left when I was a baby. Mom raised me all on her own, but she died when I was eighteen.”

“I’m sorry,” Beau said. “Do you have any other family?”

She shook her head.

We’d both lost our parents, only Beau and I had been lucky enough to have our grandfather. She’d had no one.

“Who watched out for you?” I asked, speaking for the first time in more than an hour. But I had to know. The idea of Birdie being all on her own, with no one to make sure she was safe and had what she needed, was more than I could stand.

She glanced at me over her shoulder.

“Eyes ahead,” I said.

“Right, sorry,” she muttered.

She wasn’t used to this type of terrain, and as much as I wanted her eyes on me, I wanted her to not sprain her ankle again more.

“And no one,” she added, eyes trained forward. “There wasn’t anyone to watch out for me, but then I was used to looking after myself. My mom had to work; she had all my life. I was used to being alone.”

I hated that so much it burned like a ball of fire in my belly.

“I guess you’ll have a big welcome home party to look forward to when you get back,” Beau said. “Your friends will want to celebrate that you’re okay.”

She was silent a beat. “I don’t really have many…um, well, I kind of just—” She cleared her throat. “I move around a lot, and I work, but other than that I don’t really socialize much.”

She didn’t have many friends? I assumed she picked up new friends wherever she went.

“I don’t really like crowds. Lots of people make me nervous. I like quiet, solitude. I guess it’s my own fault. I don’t go out much or try to meet people. Well, going on a hike in the mountains with a group of strangers had been my first attempt in a long time, and look how that turned out.”

Beau glanced back at me and I could see exactly what he was thinking.

What the hell were you talking about last night? She’d be perfect for this life, asshole.

Beau hadn’t spent a week with her, though. He didn’t know about her travelling soul. And there was solitude and there was living on a mountain away from all civilization with a man who avoided people like a contagious disease. From what Birdie had said while we were at my cabin, she understood the difference, and the way I lived my life wasn’t for her.

An hour later we were coming over the ridge to the homestead.

“See just over there,” Beau was saying. “You can see the roof.”

“Oh, yes, I see it.”

My gut tightened. For some ridiculous reason, I wanted her to see my place. I wanted her to like it…no, love it.

Idiot.

It wasn’t like she’d see the home my grandfather built my grandmother, the place where my father then Beau and I had been raised, and fall in love with it.

Fall in love with me.