His head suddenly lifted, and I looked away, my gaze flying to my lap. Scooting to the edge of the window seat, I stood and edged behind the wall, my feet carrying me to my closet. There wasn’t a large array of things inside, just rows of durable jeans, sweatshirts, and loose button-down shirts I’d stolen from my uncle. It was one of those shirts—a light blue one—that I tugged on now with a pair of jeans and black work boots, my body tingling with anticipation. I didn’t understand why Heathcliff was here, why he’d taken it upon himself to enter my safe world, a plantation where only my uncle and I ruled.
My well-worn boots found the hallway beyond the room, moving carefully down the carpeted stairs, my feet both giddy and wary. It was as if my shoes knew that once I opened that door, they’d be stepping into something new, a different reality from the one we’d always known.
The door creaked, my fingers gripping the knob so hard my knuckles whitened. My uncle’s head swung toward me at the sound, his brows arching as I slunk into the yard. My gaze slid to Heathcliff’s boots and the growing pile of split wood beside him. There were three fireplaces in the house, and we used them often in winter to keep the residence warm in place of central heat.
Uncle Gregor cleared his throat. “I’ve got a new experiment I want to try,” he mumbled, his warm gaze meeting mine as he passed me.
Even in Gregor’s sudden absence, I didn’t speak. I simply walked to the newly chopped wood and filled my arms, carrying first one load into the house before returning for another. I’d made a third trip and was stacking what was left in a pile against the shed when he spoke.
“Who walked away from you?” he asked.
I froze, my back to him, my eyes on the shed. A small brown spider was climbing up the side of the paint stripped building, scurrying so quickly I was sure the arachnid was as afraid to hear me speak as I was to answer.
“In class,” Heathcliff began. He paused before inhaling, the exhaled words that followed coming rushed and low. “In class, you said mirrors couldn’t walk away.”
I straightened, my back stiff when I murmured, “My parents.”
There was a moment of silence. My parents weren’t a secret. The whole town knew my parents’ story, but it was nice of him to ask, nice of him to want to know more.
My hands returned to the work. Stacking wood wasn’t a science, but I was suddenly obsessed with the need to make it perfect, to make sure the split logs lined up a certain way.
There was a single whack behind me as the ax was returned to the chopping block and left there.
“You don’t talk much,” he said.
Six months of silence, of resting shoes and swift glances, and now …
“Why are you here?” I asked.
Boots moved behind me, stomping over dew-covered grass before resting next to mine. “Maybe I like quiet people,” he replied. I felt his eyes fall to my untamed hair. “You sort of intrigue me.”
My stomach clenched, my insides filling with crawling insects, and I was suddenly at a loss for words. Or maybe, I didn’t say anything because there wasn’t anything that could be said. There was nothing worth saying.
“And that’s why,” Heathcliff murmured, “your silence now. It’s as if you don’t feel the need to fill space with noise. But the one time you did speak, it meant something.” He leaned close. “What’s going on inside your head?”
My breathing grew harsh, my pulse quickening. “Are you one of those I find wounded animals to heal kind of people. I can promise you, I’m not wounded.”
My words surprised me, and for a moment, I think it did him, too.
“Maybe not,” he said finally, “but you do need a friend.”
My gaze shot to his chest, my eyes wide. “I don’t!”
He leaned against the shed, the muscles in his arms pushing against his rolled up sleeves. “Why won’t you look at me?”
I swallowed. “I know what you look like.”
“And yet you won’t look at me. Why?”
My lips curled, the smile as much a surprise as my words. “Because I don’t commit to faces.”
Heathcliff chuckled. “You only commit to shoes?”
My smile slipped. “Faces leave,” I mumbled. “Shoes walk away. You learn a lot about people by what they wear on their feet. I’d rather see what’s going to leave than what I’d miss if it left.”
There was a long silence, and my gaze found his shoes. I was waiting for him to leave, for his boots to stride past me and my odd words. But they didn’t.
“And if the shoes don’t walk away?” he asked.
My heart jumped. “Then the face matters … once it’s earned.”
His boots remained. There was rustling as his torso shifted, another long pause, and then, “I think there’s some paint at my father’s store that would look good on this house. For now, I can start with the yard. It needs a lot of work before spring comes.”
His words registered, but they didn’t matter as much as his frozen boots.
Chapter 3
There was something wrong with Heathcliff. Maybe it was his persistence, his dogged determination to fix whatever little problem he could find on our property, but he found a reason to stay all of Saturday and most of Sunday. An ax, a hammer, garden gloves, and rotted pieces of wood all lay haphazardly around the lawn, and when he wasn’t working, he was talking. Somehow his boots found me. The first time was in the house, in a corner of my uncle’s bizarre library. He was fixing a leak in the ceiling, and I was attempting, unsuccessfully, to write Mrs. Callahan’s paper.
“You made any progress with it?” he asked.