Beacon (Kindled Book 8) by Claire Kent

Author:Claire Kent [Kent, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-10-11T00:00:00+00:00

9

Deep relief washes over me as we finally park next to the cabin.

This isn’t home. Obviously. But it feels more like home than anything has to me for a long time.

It’s a strange realization to come to on a November evening, but it only gets stronger as we unload our provisions, head inside, and put up the food we got at the market. Since it’s already dinnertime and we haven’t eaten much in the past two days, I start preparing a stew with some rabbit meat Mack pulled out of the freezer yesterday morning and a bunch of random vegetable remnants from the refrigerator.

“Gettin’ cold out there,” Mack says as he comes back inside with an armful of chopped wood.

“I know. I hope it doesn’t get down below freezing anytime soon.”

We’ve had a couple of terrible winters since Impact with far more ice and subzero temperatures than were normal in the southern US in the old world. But the climate has been stabilizing in the past couple of years, so I’m hoping we’ll start having more region-appropriate winters.

I’ve finished browning the rabbit when Mack gets a fire started in the woodstove and returns to the kitchen. He checks out the big pot and the food I’ve collected on a chopping board. Then he grabs the best knife and cuts up the carrots and the half a potato I scrounged.

We work together easily, softening the vegetables in the pan, adding flour and then some beef broth and what remains of a jar of stewed tomatoes before adding the cooked rabbit back in and seasoning it with salt and pepper.

Mack is quiet. Slightly subdued. But he’s not bristling or grumpy. And I enjoy the peaceful domesticity of cooking our meal together and then cleaning up the kitchen as the stew simmers.

I have a sudden vision of what life might look like if I was able to share it with this man. Day after day of partnership, companionship, intimacy, pleasure, mutual support and mutual need.

And I want it. There’s no longer any doubt or questions or agonizing fears and uncertainties inside me.

I want it. So badly it feels like my heart is literally reaching out in a desperate attempt to pull Mack back to me.

But it’s too late. We’re both different people now, and I’m no longer the woman who can allow Mack to be the man he wants to be.

He as good as said so last night.

It hurts too much to process, and not for anything would I upset Mack further by bringing up the subject now. He’s got too much to deal with as it is. He doesn’t need the burden of my aching heart dumped on him as well.

I had my chance with him, and I wasn’t ready for it back then. Maybe I made a mistake and should have trusted that I would grow with him to the point I am now. Or maybe I made the right decision for who I was at that stage of my life, and the universe is simply against us.

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