Camp Lost and Found, page 15
“You can ask,” Frankie added. “In your first appointment, just ask her. How much of this session are you going to tell my mom? And then you’ll know, and you can make an informed decision.”
Reiko was nodding slowly, squinting just a bit like she was thinking it over. “Okay,” she said finally. “I’ll give it a shot.”
“Good.” Then Cassidy wrapped one arm around the kid’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. Frankie was pretty sure Reiko blushed.
“Could I…” Reiko shifted in her seat as if unsure of her words. “Maybe, could I tell you about it after I go?”
“Absolutely.” Cassidy gave her another hug, and Frankie grinned at her across the stainless-steel surface of the island counter.
“Cool.” And with an expectant glance at Frankie, she asked, “Is that it for the pancakes?”
Frankie jumped up. “God, no. I was just resting, Your Highness.” And when her eyes met Cassidy’s and held, she understood what it meant to say somebody’s eyes were sparkling.
Chapter Fourteen
That was the thing about guilt. About anger. About frustration. It was never gone for long.
Breakfast finished up, Reiko headed home, and Cassidy headed upstairs to deal with some work stuff. Frankie’s phone buzzed with her daily text from her mother—Just checking in—but Frankie knew there was likely an element of Just making sure you haven’t done something like offed yourself up there. Because of course there was. Why wouldn’t there be? Why wouldn’t her mother be scared out of her mind? Frankie told her she’d be fine up here alone. That she needed the space. The solitude. That it was what she wanted and that she didn’t have a time estimate. She’d terrified her parents. She knew that.
So, yeah, there was extra guilt on top of the main guilt she carried regularly.
The texts and calls from her parents were cautious, as if they were afraid of scaring her off and having her never contact them again. Which would never happen, of course, but Frankie knew the fear was there. Conversely, the texts from her siblings were angry, mostly because of what she was putting their parents through. Her younger brother, Sam, was a bit gentler in his scolding. Her older sister, Ashley, had no qualms about telling her she was being a selfish bitch.
Was she?
Sometimes, she thought maybe Ashley was right. Maybe she was being utterly selfish in her inability to get past things, to move forward with life. But then she’d have the nightmare and she’d see the eyes—the cold, unseeing eyes—and she just couldn’t bring herself to be around anybody.
It was super cold today, in the teens. She wasn’t quite used to the winter getting so cold and snowy this early. It was the beginning of December, definitely the beginnings of winter, but she was from the southern part of New York State, just north of New York City. Things didn’t often start to get really cold and snowy until Christmas. Sometimes, not even then.
She pulled her gloves off and blew on her hands. She had heavier gloves but couldn’t hold the ax properly with them on. The last thing she wanted was to have it slip and chop off her own leg, so she wore lightweight ones with rubber grippy stuff. She pulled them on, set a log up on the stump, hefted the ax over her head, and neatly split the log in two.
“God, you look satisfied when you do that.”
Cassidy was standing in the doorway when she looked up. She wore her coat and hat and came down the stairs. Her brows were knit together above her nose, and she ordered, “Show me,” once she was next to Frankie.
“Need to blow off some steam?”
“You have no idea.” Cassidy folded her arms and took a step back to observe. “I was gonna eat some frosting, but I’m too full from the pancakes. And this looks much more satisfying. Show me.”
“Okay.” Frankie went through the motions the way Luthor had taught her when she’d first gotten here, and he’d come up to check on her. “I didn’t know a whole lot about chopping wood when I got here. Luthor came up to deliver some paint Ethan had ordered for me, and he saw me struggling.” She planted her feet shoulder-width apart. “Brace your stance like this. Now, the key is to let the ax do the work. The head is heavy. Here. Feel.” She handed the ax to Cassidy, who hefted it and nodded, then gave it back. “You’re not going to chop with your arms. You’re gonna chop with your whole body. You bring it up, hold it toward the end of the handle, like this, and then let it slice down. Use your legs, your back, and the ax’s momentum.” She split the log, and the pieces fell on opposite sides of the stump. “See? Here. Give it a try.”
Cassidy took the ax, and Frankie placed another log, then pointed to a spot in the center of it.
“Aim for right here.”
Cassidy took her time, never said a word, just did her best to mimic Frankie’s movements. She didn’t get enough of a swing, tried to use her arms too much, and the ax stuck in the log. She glared at it.
Yeah, something had pissed her off. Frankie could tell by the look on her face. She loosened the ax free and said simply, “Try again.”
They worked on it together for around twenty minutes, using the same log, Cassidy hitting it in several spots, but never hard enough to split it. It was only when her frustration got the better of her that she did exactly what she needed to do. With a growl, she used perfect form. The ax hit the log in just the right spot, and it split neatly down the middle.
Cassidy’s eyes went wide, and she looked at Frankie. Blinked. “I did it.”
“You sure did.”
“I did it!”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Oh my God, that felt good. I see why you do this so much. Gimme another one.”
For the next hour, they chopped wood, hardly saying a word, except for Cassidy’s small, satisfied laughs when she did it right. Soon, there was a sizable pile of split logs scattered around the stump.
“I think that’s probably good,” Frankie said, dropping the ax-head to the ground and leaning against the handle, slightly breathless.
“My arms feel like spaghetti, so probably a good call.” She looked at Frankie. “Why were you chopping?”
“My guilt reared its ugly head in the form of a worried text from my mom and a bitchy one from my sister. What about you?”
“My guilt came out to play, too, in the form of my business partner calling me selfish and my daily realization that Mason is dead, and I wasn’t there for him.”
They stood there in the cold air, looking at each other. Frankie had worked up a sweat, and she figured Cassidy likely had, too, if her flushed face and ragged breathing were any indication. Their gazes held for a moment before Cassidy looked away, off into the trees.
“We’re pretty much both trying to run from our guilt, aren’t we?” She didn’t look at Frankie when she asked.
Frankie shrugged. “Yeah, I guess we are.”
When Cassidy turned back to her, her eyes had welled up, and her voice went soft, cracked as she asked her next question. “Is that even possible?”
Frankie inhaled deeply and let it out very slowly, shaking her head as she did so. “I don’t know, Cassidy. I really don’t know. I wish I did.”
“Yeah. Well.” That seemed to end the conversation for her, and she started to load up her arms with logs. “I’ll help you stack these, and then I think I’m gonna walk.”
Frankie nodded. She wanted Cassidy to stay with her. They didn’t have to talk. They could just curl up with books or something. But Cassidy was far away now—she could tell by the expression on her face. By the sadness in her eyes. Whatever had been said in her conversation with her business partner, it had bothered her, sent her to a place of solitude, a place Frankie wasn’t asked to accompany her to. And she got that. If there was one thing she understood, it was the desire to be left alone. She couldn’t blame Cassidy for that. She knew it all too well.
They carried their split logs to the stack of wood in silence. Once they were stacked, Cassidy turned to her.
“Thanks for letting me crash your wood-splitting party. It helped. I see why you do it so often.”
“Anytime,” Frankie said, and she meant it. She knew how cathartic it could be. And the way Cassidy looked doing it? All sexy and powerful? Yeah, she was definitely going to revisit that in the very near future.
“Okay. Gonna walk.”
“Be careful, okay?” Frankie looked up at the iron sky. “It’s gonna snow soon. Don’t go too far.”
“Yes, Mom,” Cassidy said with a wave over her shoulder as she walked toward the cabins, and Frankie couldn’t help but chuckle. She watched until Cassidy had disappeared behind a cabin, then shook her head at herself.
“She’s not staying,” she whispered to herself. “Get your head out of your ass.” But then she remembered kissing Cassidy the night before, how warm and sensual and fucking perfect it was, and all she could do was shake her head some more.
* * *
“Look, I’m all for taking some time to get your head straight, but you’ve been gone two weeks. Meanwhile, I’m running around like a chicken without a head, picking up your slack, and I have no time to take care of my own stuff. Christmas is only a couple weeks away…”
Jenna had been pissed. And Cassidy couldn’t really blame her. Nothing she said was wrong. And the worst part was that Cassidy didn’t care. Well, no, that wasn’t entirely true. She did care. It was her company, after all, and she didn’t want it to fall into any kind of real trouble. But she just couldn’t. Just…didn’t. She didn’t have it in her, and she couldn’t quite grasp why. It was like she’d lost all sense of motivation around her job, which was crazy because her job had been everything for the majority of the past ten years. She’d foregone vacations and holidays and relationships for it. And almost overnight, she felt like she’d simply let it go.
It all came back to Mason. She did know that. She just wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do about it. How she was supposed to deal with it. Why this was happening. What was the point? Was she going to spend the rest of her days walking through these woods trying to find the right place to scatter his ashes, but never quite settling on it? Was she a fable now?
With a loud sigh, she pushed a branch out of her way and felt the tightness through her shoulders.
“Oh, those are gonna hurt tomorrow,” she said to nobody. But then her brain tossed her an image of Frankie chopping wood, and why the fuck was that so sexy? Cassidy didn’t really go for masculine of center, but Mother Mary and a chocolate chip cookie, Frankie was sexy when she was swinging an ax.
Yeah. Frankie. Because they’d both seemingly brushed under the rug that they’d spent the evening on the couch together, making out and then falling asleep in each other’s arms. And more making out this morning until kissus interruptus by a twelve-year-old. Which meant half the town would have heard about it by now. Maybe the whole town, ’cause Shelton wasn’t that big. God, she was confused. What the hell was the point of it all?
“What the hell is the point?” Mason asked, tearing open a bag of M&M’s and pouring a few into Cassidy’s hand. “I mean, we’ll age out, and then we’ll be on our own, and how? Why? What’s the fucking point anyway?”
Cassidy studied him in the light of the moon as they sat with their backs against the solid trunk of an enormous maple tree. “Dude, don’t talk like that.”
“Why not? It’s true. We’re on our own. We always have been.”
“So? Does that mean we can’t make something of ourselves? ’Cause I’m gonna.” She was getting mad at his gloom and doom attitude. It was recent, only since their failed kiss. He’d been different. Angrier. Not at her, but in general. Frustrated with life.
“You’re smarter than me, Cass. You can have a future.”
“What the fuck, Mason? What are you talking about? You’ve got the garage thing. The mechanic apprenticeship.”
His turn to study her, and he did. She could feel his eyes on her in the moonlight. “Yeah, you’re right,” he said finally. “I’m just being dramatic.”
Relief flooded through her, even though she only partly believed him. Mason had always been prone to extremes. Hyperbole. Things were the best ever or the worst ever, rarely anything in between, and her rejection of him had only exacerbated that personality trait. “Listen, if you’d rather, I can help you find ways to go to college, you know. There are grants and scholarships for people like us. You just have to find them. You have to search. I think the mechanic thing is perfect for you, but you sound less excited than you did at first.”
He shrugged and pushed against her with his shoulder, then smiled at her. She knew it was forced, but she let him think she bought it. He made a pfft sound. “Ignore me. Like I said, I’m just being dramatic.” He popped a handful of M&M’s into his mouth. “So, what kind of classes you gonna take?”
The snow was coming down heavily now, and Cassidy was kind of amazed at how easily and deeply she could get lost in the memories of Mason. She could still hear his voice in her head, even after all these years, as if she’d spoken to him on the phone just yesterday. The way it cracked here and there as it changed while they were here at Camp Lost and Found, and then the deep timbre of what she called his man voice. The thought made her smile, and she pushed off the tree she’d been standing next to and glanced at her watch, shocked to see she’d been walking for over an hour. Frankie was going to worry.
Um, what?
She literally stopped in her tracks—and there were tracks, thanks to the quickly falling snow—and replayed what her mind had just said. For the second time, she’d been out walking and absently noted that Frankie would worry if she didn’t return soon. And as soon as the slight panic eased up, she smiled. Because it was true, and she knew it.
Frankie would worry.
She glanced around, finding it interesting that she had very little concern about getting lost in those woods again, even though in reality it was probably something she should think about, since it had already happened once. But she could still make out her footprints, even though they were quickly filling with snow, and she made her way back to parts she recognized pretty easily. The wind had picked up significantly, and she pulled her hat down more tightly on her head and bent slightly forward against it. There was the cabin called Coyote—she rolled her eyes at the overt sexism that the boys’ cabins got badass names like Coyote and Wolf and the girls’ were frilly things like Bluebird and Butterfly—and made her way between them and toward the main house. She could smell the woodsmoke in the air, which told her Frankie had the fire going, and something about that simple fact did things to her, body and mind. Things she wasn’t used to. Things she hadn’t felt in a very long time.
She hurried past the wood-chopping stump and glanced up at the house, and there was Frankie in the kitchen window. Their eyes met, and Frankie left the window, and the back door flew open.
“There you are. I was getting worried. Get in here and warm up.” She held out an arm and Cassidy didn’t even hesitate. She walked right up the back stairs and into Frankie’s personal space and kissed her. Solidly. With certainty. She pulled back and looked into those brown eyes, which were colored with both surprise and something deeper. Something warmer. Something that made them darker. Arousal.
“I made brownies,” Frankie croaked.
“Perfect.”
* * *
“Have you found the right place yet?” Frankie was slicing up some Manchego to add to the sharp cheddar and the crackers on the makeshift charcuterie board she was putting together. There was a hunk of brie melting in the oven, and she’d made a cranberry compote out of cranberries Eden had sent home with them, leftover from Thanksgiving. She was warming that in a small pot on the stove to pour over the brie. She and Cassidy were having a charcuterie and wine dinner, they’d decided.
“The right place for what?” Cassidy was opening a Beaujolais, pressing down on the arms of the corkscrew.
“For your friend’s ashes.” Cassidy had been gone for a long time, and Frankie had spent most of it trying hard not to notice how long Cassidy was gone. And also trying not to get lost in the sense memory of making out with her the night before, of falling asleep with Cassidy in her arms, of how her first act of the morning had been to kiss her. Failing miserably on all counts, of course. And the heavier the snow got, the higher her worry ratcheted up.
“Oh.” Cassidy sighed and poured the crimson wine into two glasses. “Not yet.”
“Are you actually finding familiar places out there? I’m surprised.”
“Me, too,” Cassidy said and laughed that soft, musical laugh of hers that Frankie had decided she didn’t hear nearly enough, and oh my God, what was happening to her? “I just walk and then a memory hits.” She shrugged as she carried the wineglasses to Frankie and handed her one. “My summers here were some of the most special of my life, so I think that’s why my memories are so strong.”
“Makes sense.” Frankie lifted her glass and touched it to Cassidy’s. “Wanna take this stuff out to the fire? Brie’s almost done.”
“Definitely. It’s cold in here.”
Frankie had noticed that, too. “I think it’s supposed to snow pretty steadily for the next twenty-four hours. I might have to get the snowblower out.”
Cassidy blinked at her in surprise. “You’re not planning to try to snow-blow the entire driveway, are you?”
Frankie barked a laugh as they set the charcuterie and their wineglasses on the coffee table. “God, no. I’d be snow-blowing for a week. No, Luthor will plow the driveway, but I’d like to clear around the house a bit, make a path to the pole barn and the woodpile and some space around the feeders.”
“You’re so cute with the feeders, you know that?”
Frankie lifted one shoulder and felt herself blush at the words. “Animals gotta eat, too.”
