Coming Home to the Mountain: Complete Edition

4. Merit

CHAPTER 4

Merit

T he jig is up. This place was an oasis in the desert after sleeping in dirt and waking up with a sore neck and sore back. I knew it had to belong to someone. There was too much stuff here for me to think otherwise. I just hoped that maybe I had until the winter ended before they showed up again, and by then I’d have figured out what I want to do with my life.

Which, I guess, was optimistic. All I know is that I sure as hell don’t want to go back to the compound. Beyond that? I’m flying by the seat of my pants.

I guess I didn’t expect the person who owned this place to be so cute. Mac has sandy brown hair, a strong jaw, and fierce brown eyes. It isn’t the time to be fawning over a guy, I know, but, but you can’t help what you feel when you look at someone.

“So... uh... what now? Are you just going to let me go?” I say, fully prepared to be out in the wilderness again with no clear direction. “I’ll just leave now, and you’ll never see me again.”

He shakes his head. “You’re welcome to stay here. My mother would kick my ass if I left some poor woman stranded with no place to go, even if she seems to be able to handle herself in the woods.”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I don’t know what to say.”

“You already said what needs to be said. We need to figure out what’s next for you, though.”

I sink into my chair. “I really have no idea. Up until a month ago I was set to be thrust into an arranged marriage and probably made to be a mother against my will. It’s not like I had high hopes for college or a career when I couldn’t even go to an actual high school.”

He rubs his chin. “You remember being a kid, right? You had to have hopes and dreams then. What did you want to be when you grew up?”

“I don’t think being an astronaut is on the table for me.”

“There goes that idea.”

“I do know that I don’t want to be in a cage all my life. I want to control my destiny. I don’t want to go back home, and I never want to see my family again.”

“Harsh, but understandable,” he says. “But being cooped up in this cabin can’t be a whole lot better than being cooped up in that compound. Gotta find a way to move forward, Merit.”

I rub my temples. “I know. But here? At least I’m free. If I insisted on going back to living in the caves like I’m some sort of wolf-woman, no one would stop me.”

“I’d advise you that it’s a terrible idea, but yes, if you absolutely insisted on doing that, I’m not going to pull a gun on you and make you stay here.” He shrugs. “Don’t really view freedom to do stupid stuff as the best kind of freedom, but you do you, girl.”

“It counts for something. Believe me.”

“I’ve never been in a cultist compound, so I’m going to take your word for it.”

“Also here? I can listen to the radio. I can hear new music, not just the 70s and 80s country bands my dad listened to. And I can read new books. I can’t believe how much I missed reading since they started burning all the books we had five years ago.”

His smile grows. “You can thank my mother and grandmother for the library here. They’re both huge readers, and insisted on stocking this hunting cabin well with plenty to read in case we ever got snowed in or otherwise pinned down here.”

“I’ve been shut off from the world all this time. I feel like I crawled out of a bomb shelter. I don’t even know what other twenty-three-year-olds do nowadays.”

“Bout the same stuff as they ever did, I reckon. Be horny and try to figure out what they’re trying to do with their lives. More things change, the more they stay the same and all of that.”

He pushes himself up out of the chair and stretches out.

“What’ve you been eating all this time? Besides the beans and soda pop.”

“I told you. Some fish. I tried to catch a rabbit but I didn’t really know how to skin it anyway. I picked a bunch of apples and berries.”

“So how long has it been since you had a meal worth a damn?”

“A meal worth a damn?”

“Did they at least feed you in your cultist compound?”

He kept referring to it as a cultist compound. Was that really what it was? “Lots of venison and beef. They didn’t bring in a lot from the outside world other than some pasta and bread sometimes, and most of the fruit and vegetables we ate were what we grew ourselves. All of it very plain too. My mother thought garlic was how the government was sterilizing all of us, and had various theories about other spices.”

Mac looks at me, sheer horror in his face. “You poor, neglected thing. You for damn sure need a good meal, and I think I can help with that.”

I remember what’s in the cabinets, and it’s not much. “Are you going to heat me up a really good can of beans?”

He laughs. “Hardly. We have other options.”

Mac heads out the front door and toward his truck. He pulls a big red chest cooler out and carries it into the kitchen. He sets some chicken breasts out on the counter and shoves the rest into the freezer. “We don’t really keep stuff in the refrigerator here, just in case a storm rolls by and knocks the power out. So when we come up, we bring some stuff with us. It’s meant to be a hunting cabin and all, but it’s not like we go hunting as soon as we get here. And not to mention we gotta be prepared if our trip turns up a little lean.”

“You’re a hunter?” I comment, looking over his shoulder.

“Not a professional. Just an amateur, it’s more about spending time with my dad and brothers.” He brings up some cauliflower and broccoli, along with a bunch of spice bottles. “Also need these. I can’t exactly stalk the forest and hunt down a head of wild broccoli.”

“What do you do then?” I say, legitimately curious about this weird man who stormed into my life. “For work, I mean.”

“I do construction. Family business, been going for decades. Me, some of my brothers, and my dad bust our asses to pay for all of this.”

I glance around the cabin, realizing that Mac’s family has to be pretty well-off to have a second home. “Do you come up here alone often?”

He finishes stocking the freezer before turning to the chicken breasts and vegetables. “Nah, first time I’ve been up here alone. Usually all the Rough boys come up here for a big family hunting trip. They all got family things of their own pulling them away now, so I figured fuck it, I’ll challenge myself by hunting alone. I need a break. But I’m glad to have company, Merit.” He smiles my way, and it makes me feel weird inside.

“So you’re close with your family?”

He gets the stove burning, and starts chopping everything up, and boils water for a box of noodles. “Absolutely. We’re a bit fanatical about weekly family dinners.”

“Fanatical?” I arch a brow at him.

“Yeah, alright, bad term. Not fanatical like that. But all the kids try to keep in close contact with our parents and one another. Even as life tries to pull us apart with our own concerns, we try to remember how we got here, and try to use one another for sources of support. It keeps us grounded.”

I sink back down into a kitchen table chair. “Must be nice to have a family that loves you and doesn’t just look at you like a bargaining chip.”

He doesn’t turn to face me, focusing on cooking up a storm. Whatever he’s making smells damn good. “Your parents still love you. In some sick, twisted, fucked up way, I’m sure.”

“If their love involves locking me in my room and refusing to let me be a human being, I don’t want it.”

“Yeah, I didn’t say how they love you is right. But if they’re mixed up in a doomsday cult, they probably thought they were protecting you.”

“Ugh. Point is, I’m not going back.”

“And I won’t let them take you back,” he says, looking at me from the stove. There’s an allure to him, and the way he looks at me. I’m fascinated. I’m feeling things for him that I don’t think in a million years I’d feel for Gregory.

We keep talking as he serves me dinner. A teriyaki stir fry dish. It’s fantastic, way more flavorful than anything my mother could have ever dreamed of making. And he cooked so readily too. Most of the men at the compound view cooking as women’s work, and think men doing so is part of what’s leading society to civil war. It was absurd to me when I lived there, and it’s especially absurd to me now.

“…and then Lemon actually shows us all up. Her first shot with the compound bow and she takes out a full-grown buck. When she realized what she did, she burst into tears, and didn’t get why the rest of us were so impressed.”

Mac’s been telling me all about his huge family over dinner, and I love how close they all seem. How loving they are.

“I’m guessing that’s why she’s not here with you on your hunting trip?”

“One of the reasons. A shame, she’s got a dead-eye aim, but it’s her call. We wouldn’t force her to do anything she doesn’t want to, even if she could be some sort of goddess of the hunt. The second coming of Artemis or some shit.”

“That’s a very educated reference for a mountain man such as yourself, Mac.”

“Nothing about being a mountain man means you gotta be stupid. Mom put that Greek myths and fables book on the shelf here for a reason.”

I laugh, feeling nervous because he’s so sweet. I broke into his house and he just turned around and started treating me like a princess. It’s the last thing I ever expected to happen to me and I’m still in utter disbelief that it did.

“Your family seems very close and tight-knit, Mac.”

“You think?”

“I know, I’m stating the obvious. I’m just thinking about how my family technically is too. Was. I don’t know. I saw them every day. We ate dinner at the kitchen table every night. But it didn’t feel right.”

“Every Rough wants to be at the family table. From the sounds of your family? It was the last place you wanted to be. Makes a hell of a difference.”

He stands up and collects the dishes, setting them to soak in the sink. He stares out the window, a beautiful sunset in the distance. I’m soon right next to him, enjoying the sight of it. His arm drifts, coming to my shoulder and pulling me close. Those butterflies inside me kick into overdrive.

He’s done so much for me in such a short time, not to mention that he’s incredibly hot.

I want to be my own woman. I want to be in control. I want everything that my family tried to deny me.

My passions get the best of me. His face turns toward mine, and I lean in and kiss him right on the lips.

It’s absolute magic.

And absolute dread.

What the hell did I just do?