Total pages in book: 25
Estimated words: 22898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 114(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 76(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 22898 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 114(@200wpm)___ 92(@250wpm)___ 76(@300wpm)
“Please! I’m really sorry!”
“Calm down. I mean it. I won’t turn you in to the cops if you turn around and explain yourself.”
She trembles in my grip, but stops trying to flee. I let her waist go, and thankfully, she doesn’t just take the opportunity to run again.
The woman turns to face me, and I have to admit I’m a bit lovestruck when I lay eyes on her. She’s got these piercing brown eyes and her hair is this light brown, flirting with red. It’s a frizzy mess that doesn’t look like it’s had the best quality shampoo caring for it, but I have to say? I kind of like it. She looks like a bit of a wild woman, honestly.
“Come on, lady, let’s have a seat, and you can explain to me why the hell you’re in my family’s cabin.”
She nods, and I wave her into the kitchen, taking a seat at our table. I turn to the coffee maker and get it going.
“Can I get you something to drink?” I ask as I turn to her.
“I broke into and squatted in your house, and you’re offering me a drink?” she says, cocking an eyebrow my way.
“I don’t see that as any reason to not be a hospitable host, miss. What can I get you? Bit early for alcohol. Do you like coffee?”
She shakes her head. “I’m a soda pop girl.”
“That’s fine, but I don’t think I got any of that.”
“There’s some in the fridge.”
I crack it open, and yes, there’s a few cans. I take one out and hand it to her. “Guess you went shopping. How long have you been here?”
“A few weeks. A month, maybe.”
I sit down across from her. She looks weary. All that time she was here had to have been spent in constant anxiety of being found out. “And what drove you to be squatting in my family’s hunting cabin? Or maybe we should start with something simpler. What’s your name, miss?”
She sighs. “I’m Merit. Merit Monroe if that means anything to you.”
“Merit, huh? Cute name. I’m Mac Rough. Nice to meet you, guess I wish it could have been in more conventional circumstances.”
“Look, I’m really sorry. I didn’t want to cause trouble, but I didn’t have a lot of options. I was staying in makeshift tents and caves, but there was a really bad thunderstorm moving in. I needed a more permanent shelter.”
“So you broke into this cabin.”
“I passed it a few times. No one was ever here. I thought maybe it was abandoned. Some timeshare never really used or something. There were plenty of supplies here, and I felt bad about stealing them. But it seemed safe for me to keep staying, so I did. I’ve been living here since. I fed myself with your canned goods, some berries I picked, some fish I caught, and little traps I laid.”
“And soda pop.”
She sulks more. “I had to go into town for... uh... personal reasons. And I saw a twelve-pack of pop on sale. I remember loving it so much, but I haven’t had it since I was nine years old. So I broke down and bought some.”
As she sips her soda pop, she can’t help but smile a bit. I stare at the can. I’ve had it plenty of times. It’s pretty cheap, not exactly caviar-rare. “The hell’s been going on in your life that you haven't had soda in, like, a decade?”
She’s silent, looking real small and conflicted.
My teeth grind. She reminds me of Prairie, Rye’s wife, who had a tragedy in her life before she met him.
“Since I was ten,” Merit begins after taking a deep breath, “I’ve been living isolated with my family in a compound not far from here.”
“Compound? Doesn’t seem like the word you use for a friendly and nurturing environment.”
“My father and mother bought real hard into some narrative that the world was ending. That the country was just moments from a bloody civil war. That everything around us was going to turn into some sort of Mad Max-style hellscape and that the only way to protect me was to hide in a remote fortress in the mountains and ride it out until some big, important savior came and made everything right again. I don’t know the specifics, I never fully believed it. Even ten-year-old me thought it was absolutely nuts.”
Holy crap, that was a lot of stuff to hear from her. “And let me guess, they wouldn’t let you freely leave when you legally became an adult?”
She shakes her head. “No. They were actually trying to marry me off to one of the other families like we were some feudal clan trying to get favor with the lord or something. They never cared about what I wanted. I was always too young for my opinion to matter, or too hysterical. Or I didn’t believe what they believed, so I couldn’t be trusted.”