6
Harper stared at the blank document on her laptop as though the words she’d been planning to write for months might magically appear. Apparently, to write a book, she had to actually…write. She hadn’t done that since her teens, when she’d had enough time to lose herself in fan fiction of her favourite shows. When the characters had already been living, breathing things, ready and waiting for her to mould into new, oftentimes queer, scenarios.
All the ideas she’d been ruminating over since deciding it was time to follow her literary ambitions suddenly felt silly. Had she thought this would be easy? She grunted and closed her Notes app, cursing her past self for writing nonsensical ideas down at three a.m. instead of preparing herself properly. What did “sapphic Rapunzel retelling bit with icy skatwrs” even mean? Had she been drunk when she’d typed this, or just asleep?
“Maybe I’ll feel inspired once I’ve relaxed for a few days,” she considered, and then cringed when she realised she was talking to herself. Again.Even when alone, she felt like she was being assessed by a scrutinising audience, which probably had something to do with the fact that she’d been dubbed weird in high school by bullies who had torn her self-esteem to shreds.
But she tried not to think about that. It was eons ago, and she was a different person now. Still weird, but awfully good at hiding it. Apparently just not in private.
A chilly draught crept into the cabin, and she pulled her cardigan tighter around her torso as she sipped her weak tea. Fraser had lied. This was definitely not her beloved Yorkshire brand, but she couldn’t survive the morning without something to warm her empty stomach. She’d tried to summon the energy to head back to the café for breakfast, if only to prove that she was capable of managing the journey, but she’d eventually settled for her half-eaten packet of stale crisps.
“I give up.” Harper slammed her laptop shut. Instinct had caused her to pick up her phone again, checking for messages this time, but it seemed this cabin remained in a void that no signal could reach. She’d been unable to access any since yesterday, when she’d lost connection mid-sentence on the way back from the café. She would never know whether Mum had opted for custard creams or bourbon biscuits during her weekly shop.
“This must be what prison feels like,” she pondered, standing up and scanning the room for something to cure her boredom.
No, not boredom, she realised with a pang.
Loneliness.
This was the longest she’d been left with only herself for company – no contact with the outside world, no social media feeds to scroll through, no current events to keep updated on – since… well, probably ever.What was she supposed to do with all this silence?
As she stepped into the narrow hallway, a cabinet beside the bathroom caught her eye, and she found her answer. Snoop.
It was wrong, but Fraser remained a mystery, and at least some of her sleepless night had been spent wondering whether he was a decent bloke or somebody she’d better keep her distance from. Part of her wanted it to be the latter: sexual attraction was fine, but she didn’t want more than that. She was still pining after Kenzie, and she certainly didn’t need a repeat with a Scottish tree god who happened to be family-oriented.
Nope. She refused to like him.
But she would like to understand him.
She glanced around to make sure he hadn’t secretly arrived to monitor her, becausethatwould be an invasion of privacy, then opened the cabinet.
It was extremely disappointing. More tools lay on the shelves, as well as a tattered manual for woodworking. How much of the cabin’s furniture had he made himself, she asked herself? None of the tables or cubbies bore the glossy charm of IKEA, and she was already sinking through the drooping couch at a rapid rate, so the answer might very well have been everything.
Her fingers stumbled across something else. It looked like a box at first, until she realised it had been decorated. Taking it out of the shadows, she saw it was a birdhouse with beige, faded paint and a pointed orange roof.The house was slightly wonky, as though it had been made by inexperienced hands – a child, maybe?
It looked too old to have been made recently, but she supposed he’d crafted it with the niblings he’d mentioned last night. She placed it back carefully, afraid of scratching it any more than it already was.
Beside that, the yellowed pages of another old book faced her. She picked it up, hoping it might be something worth reading. Something to help her escape the loneliness. Something to inspire her love of words again.
Jurassic Park. Harper hadn’t even known the film was based on a book. She supposed dinosaurs were better than a murder mystery, and if Jeff Goldblum’s character was equally as bisexual-coded on page, that would be a win.
The front door squeaked open without warning, and she whipped around with the book pressed to her racing heart. Fraser halted on the threshold curiously as Bernard ran past him to greet her. “Enjoying rooting through my belongings?”
“Very much,” she replied honestly, then crouched down to receive sloppy licks from the bubbly Border Collie. “I thought you’d left me here forever, Wi-Fi-less and lost. I needed something to occupy my time.”
“I thought you were supposed to be writing,” he pointed out, stepping in and closing the door softly behind him.
“Turns out writing is a tricky business.” She tucked her hair behind her ear and stood up. Bernard scurried through her legs and disappeared into the bedroom. “Besides, it’s hard to concentrate in here. I think there are squirrels in the walls.”
A puzzled dent burrowed between his brows, but he only shook his head. “I don’t think they’re in the walls, but they do scuttle over the roof sometimes. Most people like the sounds of nature.”
“I’m not used to it! Don’t you feel all… weird and icky this far out on your own?”
He smoothed the sides of his russet hair, deliberating. “No. It’s peaceful. Or, at least, it was.” He gave a crooked, pointed smirk, but it quickly vanished when Bernard bounded back in, something clattering along the floor with him. “What’ve you got there, Bernard?”
It looked like a red ball, only it was too hard… and too familiar.
Probably because it had come straight out of her suitcase, which lay open in the bedroom.
