True Belonging 2 by Ella Cooper
Chapter One
Flint
I wasn’t sleeping terribly well. A few times, I’d gotten up to go to the bathroom, mostly just because I needed something to do. Somewhere after midnight, I went down to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Out of the corner of my eye, I could have sworn that I’d seen something dash into the shadows as I walked through the hallway. I shook my head at myself. It was probably nothing, just my imagination trying to mess with me. After all, I was exhausted.
I wondered if Eliza was sleeping better than I was. It was going to be tough in the morning if neither of us were awake enough to do any work. If that was the case, I would have to give us both the day off. Maybe I could take her into town for a drink or a coffee. I wasn’t sure she’d agree to that, but I could make it clear that we were doing it as friends. Not that I knew whether I wanted her to remain a friend or not.
The glass of water was refreshing, but I had to drink a bit of warm milk, too. After I drank that, I went back to my room, thinking that I might actually manage to fall asleep this time. I rolled around in the bed a few times, frustrated that I couldn’t seem to be comfortable.
Finally, however, my eyelids were starting to get heavy. My body was headed toward the bliss of dreamless sleep. I allowed it to do so with some excitement.
Suddenly, there was a crash somewhere downstairs, which made me jump up from my bed immediately. The slight hope of sleep was completely dashed. I was more awake than I had been before that glass of warm milk.
My first thought was that someone was breaking in. They must have been desperate to hit a place this far out of town. Still, it was possible that they thought the police wouldn’t come quickly enough if the inhabitants called them. I couldn’t rely on Brett or Lawrence, either. They would shout that there was a gun somewhere in Granddad’s house, and that I’d regret waking them up for something this stupid.
I needed to take care of this myself. I scanned the room for a weapon, but the closest thing I could find was a belt. Nonetheless, I wrapped it around my hand and tip-toed out of the room. There was a voice coming from the hallway, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Were there two of them? That was going to make this slightly more difficult.
Either way, I was powerful enough to overwhelm two people if I had the element of surprise. Besides, I knew this house like the back of my hand. I had the home field advantage. All I needed to do was to stay calm and not make stupid mistakes.
Reaching the stairs in the dark without creaking the floors was a challenge in itself. Now I had to go down noiselessly. From sneaking out of the house when I was a teenager, I knew exactly where each stair would creak and groan beneath my weight. Measuring each step made the process take longer, but that didn’t matter. I couldn’t afford to make any noise.
“Stupid boxes,” I heard a quick whisper come up at me. The sound of boxes being moved filtered through, and I used it to rush down the stairs and burst into the hallway, brandishing my belt.
“Hey!” I yelled, making the dark figure in front of me swing around. A wave of relief washed over me when I realized that it was Eliza. She’d knocked over a box filled with fragile glassware and was trying to clean up after herself.
Something didn’t make sense about the picture, though. Eliza was carrying her backpack slung over her shoulder, and she was completely dressed. In my head, I already clicked what was going on.
“Uh, hi,” she said as she got up from where she’d bent to sweep up the glass. “Can you, maybe, help me out with this?”
I decided that I’d ask what she was up to after we cleaned everything up. I got the box and checked its contents, but it was all completely destroyed. Luckily, there was glassware in the house already, and I didn’t have any sentimental value attached to these.
“I’m really sorry,” Eliza continued, picking up some of the larger pieces to dump with the rest of them. “I didn’t see it on the dresser there. There’s a lot of stuff in this house.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I insisted, especially since I wasn’t even thinking about what she’d broken. My mind was still locked on to why Eliza was leaving. “None of this is important to me.”
I offered her a smile as I glanced up and took the broom that she’d brought along to sweep up the smaller shards back into the box.
“Ouch!” Eliza dropped one of the bits of glass she’d picked up, staring at her palm. “I managed to cut myself, I think.”
“Okay, well, I’ll get this done,” I answered, still continuing to sweep. “Go clean your hand in the kitchen, and I’ll be right there to help you out.”
I hoped that she wasn’t going to disappear out the back door while I was busy. There was this tension in the air, almost like she was a rabbit cornered by a predator. As if she was looking for any opportunity to get out of there.
“Sure,” she said calmly and left the hallway. Within a minute, I heard the backdoor’s knob turning, ever so slowly. She really was going to leave right there and then, while I was still distracted.
Without thinking, I dropped the broom and rushed through the hallway to the kitchen. Within seconds, I burst out of the door after her.
“Eliza!” I yelled, making her stop running immediately. “Where are you going?”
She turned, her eyes filled with tears. “I have to go.”
“Why?” I stepped forward, completely prepared to grab her arm if she ran again. I didn’t want to hurt her, but this didn’t make sense. It was almost as if she was scared of something. Whatever it was, I wanted to protect her from it with everything in my being.
“Eliza, please, can we talk about this?” I continued, lifting my hands. “You don’t need to run away in the middle of the night. If you really have to go, you can wait until morning, can’t you? Your hand is injured, too. At least let me take a look at it.”
“Okay,” Eliza breathed nervously, following me back into the house. I switched on the kitchen light and waited for her to take a seat, but she remained in the doorway. It was as if she wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t block her path if she ran again. I stayed quiet about that, rummaging instead in the cupboards to find the first aid kit.
“You need to give me your hand,” I instructed when I did, setting it down on the counter. Hesitantly, Eliza held out her palm, which was covered in blood. “Wow, this is a really bad cut. You were just going to run out there with this?”
“I was planning on getting a Band-Aid in town,” she whispered, but I could tell from her tone that she knew how ridiculous that sounded. “I’m not going to die from it, anyway.”
“Infections are no joke,” I grumbled in return as I prepared saltwater to clean the wound. “Are you going to tell me why you’re trying to leave in such a hurry?”
Eliza refused to look me in the face. It didn’t seem like she was going to answer my question, at least not directly. She cleared her throat.
“I just have to, okay?” she finally said. “I can’t stay here.”
“Why not?” I started feeling angry. If she hadn’t broken all of that glass, she’d have been gone by morning, and I’d never have had the chance to get an answer. I used a sponge to clear most of the blood from her hand, and she twitched a few times when the salt began to burn her wound.
“There are people who want to find me, and I don’t want them to,” Eliza said. “I told you that, didn’t I? I haven’t committed a crime or anything, but I definitely don’t want to be found.”
“Whoever it is,” I insisted, lifting my eyes to stare into hers seriously, “I won’t let them take you, all right? That is, if you promise to be more honest with me.”
She looked at me with distrust evident in her expression. “I don’t know.”
I sighed, getting Band-Aids and a bandage to cover her injury. It didn’t look like it was going to be easy to convince her. To be fair, I had no idea why I wanted her to stay. Eliza was essentially a stranger to me, a woman who had stolen from me and kept injuring herself. There was no real reason to protect her so fiercely.
At the same time, I didn’t want her to leave.
“Listen, how about some coffee?” I suggested, seeing the exhaustion in her face. “We can talk about this, I’m sure of it.”
Eliza paused while I wrapped up her wound, then hopped down from the table and nodded at me. Her uncertainty made me even more concerned. She’d told me before that she wasn’t a criminal, but the way she was acting now made me wonder. What was it that she was running from if it wasn’t the law? Why would she want to run so badly?
I switched on the kettle, turning away from her to grab mugs from the cupboard. I did it that way on purpose, wanting to see if she’d try to run again. She didn’t. Instead, she took a seat at the kitchen table. That was a good sign, at least to me.
The silence grew between us into a tension that permeated the whole kitchen. I didn’t know how I was going to get her to tell me the truth, and I wasn’t sure that I should try in the first place. This was her privacy, after all, and I didn’t have the right to invade it. At the same time, if I really was going to do my best to protect her, I at least had to know what I was protecting her from.
“Don’t know how you take it,” I eventually said, my voice slicing through the thick atmosphere with a lot of effort. “But here.”
I placed the mug in front of her and sat down on the other end of the table. The way to the back door was still open, and I wasn’t going to stop her if she tried to leave now. Even so, it didn’t look like she would.
“Thanks,” she mumbled, cradling the steaming mug. “I really am sorry about the glass stuff.”
“It’s fine,” I replied insistently. “Seriously, don’t keep apologizing for it. I don’t even remember what was in that box.”
The second half of my statement wasn’t entirely true, but I sensed that she was trying to steer the conversation in a different direction. I didn’t really want to pressure her, but I hated that I could see the hurt lying just behind her eyes, and I couldn’t do anything about it.
“I don’t really want to leave,” Eliza mumbled suddenly, catching my stare in hers and trapping me in those dark, mysterious pools.
“Then why are you trying to?” I asked, instinctively reaching for her hand. “It’s not necessary, you know.”
Eliza didn’t pull away from me. Instead, she allowed my rough, callused palm to envelop her smaller, smooth hand.
“I don’t want you to be a part of this,” she continued in a near-whisper. “You don’t deserve the trouble that is going to come for me. You deserve a quiet life on your ranch, happy and free, without the baggage that I carry.”
“A quiet life?” I let out a dry, cynical laugh. “Have you met my family?”
“I’m serious,” Eliza replied with a frown. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, and I don’t know why you’d want to be involved in it. It’d be a lot easier to let me leave.”
I got up from the table to stand in front of her. There was something in my very soul pulling me toward her, something that I couldn’t quite explain, no matter how hard I tried. Her beauty washed over me like waves of electric energy, but that wasn’t the only reason. There was something else, something just out of my reach that told me whatever it was, it would be worth it.
“I think I’m the only one who could decide what would be easier for me,” I said, pulling her to her feet so that she stood almost against my chest. “And even if you’re right, I still get to choose if I want to be involved or not.”
“Flint…” she muttered, her free hand on my chest. “This isn’t a good idea.”
“What are you talking about?” I had an eyebrow raised as soon as I finished the question. I did know what she meant, however. My heart was beating more quickly than usual, my breath shallower.
It seemed like I wasn’t alone in that. Eliza glanced up at me, biting at her lower lip. She made a decision and lifted her free hand to place it behind my head.
I let her pull my face down until our lips met in the space between us. It was tentative at first, almost hesitant. But the contact sent unexplainable, urgent sensations through my limbs, and I pressed my mouth against hers more firmly. This was perfection in its purest form, fate come to life in our presence.
Instantly, I wanted more. I wanted to pull her against me and feel her heart beating against my skin. Simultaneously, I knew that I couldn’t push too hard or move too fast. We pulled apart breathlessly, staring at one another for several moments.
“Will you stay a while longer?” I finally asked, hoping that she’d give me the answer that I wanted.
“Okay,” Eliza said in reply with a short, curt nod. She let go of me and sat down at the table again, clutching her coffee. “I will.”
“Good.” I wasn’t really sure what else to say. My head was spinning with the sensations that came with that kiss. I was trying not to give in to the urge to grab her and kiss her again. Grabbing my own mug, I stood against the wall on the opposite end of the kitchen.
“We should probably get to bed after this,” Eliza pointed out. “We have a lot to do in the morning.”
“Yeah, of course, sure,” I answered as I ran a hand through my hair. The atmosphere was quiet again, and we sipped at our coffee without looking at each other. I was relieved that Eliza wasn’t going to leave yet, but I was still worried. She could change her mind at any point.
Her insistence on running reminded me of memories that I had of years ago, when I felt much the same way. I could remember Brett and Lawrence standing over me after they’d shoved me to the ground. Shouting that I was a loser who wasn’t ever going to amount to anything. That they couldn’t believe Granddad was always standing up for me.
Once I was able to fight back, they backed off somewhat. By the time I was eighteen, I was bigger than them. One fight ended in a broken nose for Brett and a bloody face for Lawrence. After that, I struggled to face my grandfather, who’d always taught me that violence wouldn’t solve anything.
I went to college then. Most people wouldn’t call that running away, but for me, that’s exactly what it was. I could have stayed on the ranch and learned everything I needed to know from Granddad about how to run it. But I wanted to get away so badly that I left him behind. He quickly started getting ill after that, and I never came to see him. I still felt guilty about that, that he was stuck with my greedy cousins while I went off on my grand adventures to the city.
“I promise I won’t try to disappear in the middle of the night again,” Eliza said eventually, slicing through the silence. “If I change my mind and decide to leave, I’ll tell you.”
That was at least better than her earlier uncertainty. She got up from the table and placed her mug with the rest of the dishes before she turned around. Her eyes caught mine with an incredible sadness, something that I definitely did not expect to see.
“Thank you,” I answered with a frown. “Are you all right? Did I upset you?”
She shook her head firmly. “No, absolutely not. I just have a lot I need to think about.”
“Sure.” I put my mug down too, still halfway full of lukewarm liquid. “Maybe we should get you some work clothes in the morning. What do you think?”
I thought that changing the subject would at least help a bit. From the slip of a smile that Eliza gave me, it seemed like it was working.
“Sounds good,” she said before she left the kitchen. I listened to her footsteps ascending the stairs, and then the door closing behind her.
I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep just yet. My mind was spinning, my lips still tingling from her touch. Who was this woman that she could have such an effect on me?
“Get it together, Flint,” I mumbled at myself before I moved to do the dishes.