𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐠𝐛𝐥𝐨𝐨𝐝 , 𝐫. 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐦𝐞𝐬

seventy five -

we spent the summer doing those things—fishing, talking, eating—few weeks in between where i'd go back home and she just thought i was elsewhere along the river, but i'd always come back, and she'd always be here.

i always preferred the outdoors, no matter the season. i stayed out here, holed up in leah's cabin last winter. only carol frowned at the idea before i left, said i'd come back in the spring looking like a mountain man; scruffy and starved.

i wasn't starved. maybe a little scruffy, but i was well fed—fish, deer, and the bed was warm too.

i was honest right from the start. toward the end of that first summer we met, the night leah and i sat in the kitchen of her cabin by the window with a bottle of jack to share between our glasses, we told each other everything we wanted the other to know.

it wasn't much, just enough to gain each other's trust and know the first layer of each other. i told her about my home, about alexandria, how it's a couple miles northwest of where her cabin sits in the woods. i told her that's where i go off to when i'm not with her.

she guessed it, actually, that there's someone back home, someone that i love. maybe the whiskey made me show too much on my face when i told her about why i'm out here, how i'm looking for my brother and how all those people northwest are my family.

i shook my head, shrugged, "nah. nah, there was, but ... i gave up on that."

i did.

grey was no more than an old friend of mine, not anyone's property but she is rick's. she was never mine, was never going to be.

it seemed easy enough considering that's all i ever do, push shit down until it's buried too deep to be felt again. i thought maybe bob was right all those months ago when he said i was thinking with my dick and just needed to stop.

then the accident with rick happened.

i thought that'd solidify it more—no time to long for a woman who sees me as a friend, time to man up, time to take charge and find my brother because that's what he'd do for me; for any of us.

we're nearing three and half years since the accident. since i decided i was going to screw my head on straight and focus on what matters—our communities, our people, surviving, honoring the dead. focus on what matters and nothing else.

but fuck, grey matters. she matters to me more than a lot of things that i pretend take precedence. i face that fact every day since it floated back up from the depths of my brain, but still, i try to drown my head in leah, drown myself in her at night in her bed. i try to drown my feelings for grey, try to forget how strong and nagging they are.

leah knows it too. as much as i tell her i don't think about the woman back home anymore, she knows that's a lie.

women always know.

just like how she picked grey out the night i took her to alexandria for dinner earlier this year. winter subsided, it was early april or so, and i wanted her to see my home i always talk about, wanted her to be apart of it, honestly, wanted her to meet my friends.

i never mentioned grey's name, yet somehow leah knew it was her toward the middle of the dinner.

it was just the two of us, grey, spencer, and allison, and when grey stood up from the table, allison going with her to grab something, and spencer darting off to the bathroom, leah placed her napkin on the table and said to me, "so that's the girl you're in love with."

she didn't ask. she just said it, like she somehow already knew.

because women always know.

"will this fit in your pack?" leah steps out of the cabin, her cream, thick sweater buttoned up and her hair down over her shoulders.