The second I slammed the truck door behind me, it went dark all around, leaving only the faint glow from the moon to help me find my way. Gravel crunched under my feet. An owl hooted from somewhere in the tall trees. This land had been in my family for generations. A hilly ten acres no one seemed to care about. Even my opportunity-grabbing father hadn’t seen fit to put a business on this plot of land seeing how it was set back from the main road and hilly enough to cause issues putting a building on it.
One day it would be mine. Well, if my father ever remembered I existed and transferred it to me out of the last speck of goodness in his heart. I probably had a fifty-fifty chance of this land being mine on paper. In my soul, this land had always been mine. The first time I ran here after my father yelled at me so loudly his face turned purple, I’d found solace in the whisper of the pine needles swaying above my head. Ever since, I’d been coming here to find peace. If this parcel of land couldn’t fix me tonight, nothing ever would.
I kept climbing, over rocks and under low-hanging tree branches and around fallen logs. I wanted to be deep into the acreage before I sat down and let my senses take over the racing thoughts in my brain. My nose needed to smell pine trees and dirt. My hands needed to toss a random rock back and forth. My skin needed the soothing brush of a wind that held no judgement.
The perfect spot appeared, bathed in a stream of light from the moon, and I sat, taking my first deep breath all day. I was weird. I knew this. Accepted it. But it still hurt to feel so disconnected from everyone else. I didn’t blame them, due to the aforementioned weirdness, but I also yearned to be accepted and needed and wanted. I’d just always felt different. When everyone got loud and talkative, I got quiet and observed. When everyone smiled and cheered, I frowned, not understanding why everyone was so damn happy. I was a dark shade of gray in a technicolor world.
“Jesus Christ. Get over yourself, asshole,” I said out loud.
I picked up a rough pebble and rolled it around in my hand before tossing it back down. The wind picked up and I sucked in a deep breath through my nose to get that hit of pine. Instead, all I got was a hit of that sickly sweet perfume of Hazel’s. That shit was probably sticking to my clothes just to torture me and remind me of her existence.
My eyelid started twitching again, so I flopped back onto the bed of pine needles and tried harder to focus on my surroundings. Thinking of Hazel would only make me angry. I closed my eyes and focused on my breath. Charlie was always telling me to use my diaphragm to breathe, which was weird as hell because I had no idea where my diaphragm was located, but it always seemed to work. I’d just gotten my eye to quit twitching when I heard a giggle.
A feminine giggle.
Who the hell’s on my land?
I shot straight up to my feet and moved toward the sound, ears tuned to every little thing around me. There it was again, off to my left, a little higher up the hill. I crouched low and crept as close as I could, catching sight of something on the other side of a fallen tree trunk.
“Hey!” I shouted, standing tall and what I hoped looked imposing.
The person screamed and then spun around before disappearing behind the log. I skirted to the left and carefully hopped over the log to find a girl in the middle of a really good version of playing dead in the dirt and pine needles. Then, in a flash of motion, her leg shot out, popping me in the back of the knees. I went down hard, catching myself with my hands before I could fall on my face.
This wasn’t going well.
The girl scrambled to her feet and assumed an impressive crouch with hands extended like she intended to karate chop me to death. My gaze moved up her arms to her face. And my heart stopped beating entirely.
“Hazel?”
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
I couldn’t escape her. Even on my own land in the middle of nowhere, here she was to annoy the crap out of me.
She frowned, but didn’t drop her small hands from their ready position. “Rip?”
I stood up and then immediately bent over with my hands on my knees. Holy shit, this was funny as hell. Laughter didn’t hit me often, but when it did, I couldn’t stop it from tumbling out. But true to form, even my laugh was quiet.
“Oh, no. Did I hurt you?” Hazel rushed over and patted my back awkwardly.
Her concern made me laugh harder, the only sound coming out a pressure-controlled wheeze. If I didn’t watch it, that pressure would come out in other ways. Sometimes Titus and I would laugh so hard I’d snort my drink out my nose. Always awkward when we were at a bar or restaurant. Sometimes I’d fart, which was equally awkward. One time I even popped a blood vessel in my eye from laughing too hard.
See? I was weird with a capital W.
“I’m…good,” I managed to say between wheezes.
“Here.” Hazel grabbed my arms with surprising force considering how small she was. “Put your hands on your head. I think you’re hyperventilating.”
I stood upright as she tried to wrangle my arms above my head when she couldn’t even reach above my shoulders if she jumped. She ended up poking me in the eye and getting my watch stuck in her hair.
“Wait!” She yanked at her hair, probably ripping the strands straight out of her scalp. “Are you laughing?”
Of course, the indignation on her face sent me into another fit of laughter, the grin splitting my face and the wheeze joining the breeze that came through the trees.
“Oh, you little asshelmet. I thought you were some psycho killer here to skin me alive, and then when I knew it was you, I thought you might still kill me because you’re, you know, you. And now instead of having a medical emergency, you’re just laughing at me?”
She jammed her hands on her hips, looking exactly how I pictured her in my head: angry and a little scary. I held my hands out, seeing a couple long hairs hanging from my watch like they were waving the white flag of surrender.
“Easy, killer. I’m not here to skin you because, ew, Hazel. That’s disgusting and makes me worried about what goes on in your brain. I won’t even ask about the asshelmet reference. I don’t want to know. But I do want to know what you’re doing here in the first place.”
She lifted her pert little nose in the air and sniffed. “I won’t hear one word of negativity from you, Rip Bennett. I’m here because I felt this pull.” She held her hands out in the space between us, her fingers gnarled up like an old witch pulling an unsuspecting child toward her.
“A pull?”
“Yes. A pull. Something in this area just called out to me and I had to come find out what it was.” Her hands dropped and her face cleared into her typical bright-as-sunshine smile.
I scratched the back of my head. Here I was thinking I was weird, but Hazel was probably weirder. Certifiable, even.
“Oookaayy. And did you find what it was?”
Her grin dropped. “No. I was just getting a feel for it when you scared the daylights out of me.”
“Uh-huh.”
She tossed her hair over her shoulder and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Whatever. I knew you wouldn’t get it. I’m outta here.”
She spun and stalked off. I wouldn’t have been a card-carrying male if I hadn’t noticed the way her ass looked in those light leggings as she walked away. She was annoying, but even I could admit—at least in my head—the girl was crazy pretty. Which was exactly what got me in trouble back in high school, but tonight was not the night to rehash those memories.