Don't Got The Guts Ch. 02

From what she'd heard along the grapevine and her time tying bundles the backroom of the Garden Store, Em and Gordon's marriage was a shotgun affair, less than a year after he'd moved to Silvercrick. That in itself wasn't too hard to believe, if you disregarded the quiet and tempered nature with which they'd shacked up and removed themselves from the hubbub of society. That had birthed speculations of nefarious intentions from the newcomer - indeed, Gordon appeared to be much older than her or Em, and Em had only been a grade ahead of Colleen in school - or perhaps the birth of something else.

The gulp of water she took crashed uncomfortably against her throat. Stifling a cough, she set her glass back down and mused that if there were any children running around here, she would've met them by now. Or heard them, at least.

"I can't believe I forgot about that," she murmured. She felt strangely like she'd betrayed her old classmate in some way, even though they'd never been fast friends. "Sorry, Em."

"That's okay." Em's drawl was all salt and sunshine; the grin she tacked on at the end of it an easy invitation to a glossy new leaf. "I just have a thing for faces. I always liked ya, Coll - can't have my husband thinking you're just the girl with the dead fiancé."

Colleen felt all the wind rush out of her at once. Her knife clattered against her plate and tumbled noisily on the way down, scraping the edge of the table and bouncing on the floorboards by her feet. She didn't hear any of it, though - not with the ringing that began to cocoon her ears. Several damned and unbidden images began to crawl out of that lockbox, warped ones, distorted by rage and grief and the curse of being the loneliest girl in Silvercrick.

A growl ripped her from her descent to hell. Penny was by her chair with her paws stamped into the floorboards, eyes fixed on Emery as her spine rose in a jagged curve.

The Hawthornes watched her, bemusedly, and the dog snapped her jaws to bare her teeth.

"Penny!" Colleen hissed. "Stop! What do you think you're doing??"

Penny answered in a series of barks that only confirmed the imminence of a hostile outbreak.

"STOP IT! Don't you fucking dare!"

She said it with more confidence than she felt, but it landed instantaneously. Penny's tail swiped across the floor, her baleful baby blues slicing right through the admonishment.

Colleen balked. "C'mon, girl - it's not like that. Please ..."

Penny was gone before she could finish her sentence, disappearing under the table and out the other end. Any sounds of scrabbling nails were swallowed up by the house, buried beneath the sounds of the rain.

"Oh for crying out -" she hid her despair beneath a loud layer of frustration. "Excuse me, I just need to -"

"No."

She paused, half out of her chair and ass awkwardly suspended, again. She gripped the back of it for support and glanced across the table. "I'm sorry?"

Gordon, thumb braced against the back of his knife, gestured with measured control towards her place at the table. "Sit down. You're not excused."

Dumbfounded, she blinked. If it hadn't been for the past few hours she'd spent with the Hawthornes, she would have suspected he was joking. The silence around the dinner table spoke for itself.

Two sets of eyes observed her as she planted herself back down and drew her chair inwards, and she refused to meet their gaze.

~

Colleen spoke with her mother again after dinner. Well, Gordon spoke with her first - then beckoned her from the kitchen with two sharp fingers to take the phone and finish the conversation.

It was hard to tell if the darkness outside the windows indicated a worsening of the bad weather, or if they were part and parcel of living in the thick of unending wilderness. She could no longer see the rain that assaulted the windowpanes, though she could certainly hear it interspersed between the thunderclaps. Her mother was emphatic about showing extra graciousness and gratitude to the farmer and his family for being willing to post her up for the night.

Amidst all the scolding and the second-hand embarrassment, Colleen was tempted to scoff. As much as Gordon had proved himself to be frosty, high-handed, and an autocratic prick, she couldn't see the man's eighteenth-century morals or sense of propriety allowing him to turn out a mousy little wench like her into the gaping maw of a storm. But she took her mother's point. He hadn't hesitated in opening his home or facilities to them, and it was for that reason alone she didn't give the sick sadistic fuck the grief she so badly wanted to.

Penny had flattened herself beneath a cot on the first floor, tucked inside a room the size of a generous airing closet. There were no attempts to communicate, and barely any eye contact as the dog got herself comfortable atop of Colleen's jean-clad thigh and slobbered greedily into the bowl of bones and gamey bits she'd rescued from the stew. Stroking absentmindedly through the thinning fur by her rump, Colleen turned her head up to the ceiling and tried not to think about the consequences of this very stupid day.

"God, let this storm be over soon," she muttered to herself.

The door to the closet swung open with a high-pitched squeak. Penny paused her slurping momentarily to examine the intruder, wasting only a few seconds before turning back to her food.

Nathaniel, armed with a stack of bedroll and some mismatched PJs dangling from a fist, simply raised an eyebrow. He cleared his throat and disregarded the bowl, now rolling loudly beneath the aggressiveness of Penny's tongue.

"I'm sleeping here tonight," he said. There was a lilt to his words that suggested a touch more patience for his sudden houseguests, and indeed, as he lifted his gaze to Colleen there was a levity present that hadn't existed before. For once thing, she no longer felt like he was trying to skewer her into the wall.

Colleen only furrowed her brows. "Right." She pursed her lips into a line. "So where -"

"You're in the bedroom," he stated. "Down the hall. It's attached to the bathroom, but ..." he exhaled tiredly, tousling the heavy raven locks on his head. "No one's gonna be using it tonight. So. You're safe."

She parted her lips to say something - anything - in response to that, but she found her mouth dry and at a loss for words. His hair looked incredibly soft. There wasn't a sound as he tufted it between his fingers.

"This is Em's crafting studio," he continued, by means of an explanation.

Ah. That accounted for the candlestuffs in the corner, and upturned tarp on the parquet floor.

"How come you're sleeping here then?" she asked.

The floor rolled beneath his feet, whispering and murmuring through creaks and groans as he crossed the room. Flipping his bedroll over the cot, and dumping his nightclothes unceremoniously on top, he fixed her with a blank stare.

"Gordon said so." Nathaniel shrugged impassively.

There was a moment where she blinked, looking back at those blue-greens and their varying shades of stoicism. If she'd tried harder, she might have been able to find him in his apathy - sit with him behind barred eyelids that kept the world at bay.

Instead she bit back a groan, shook her head, and laughed without mirth as she got up from the floor. Disentangling herself from Penny's limbs and softly wagging tail, she could just make out the footsteps of the accused thudding up the stairs to the second floor.

"Are you okay with that?"

The question seemed genuine enough - but the gentle cock of Nathaniel's head said otherwise. Unhurried amusement shone in his gaze, and a soft, deliberate smirk rested against his lips.

"Of course." She lifted her chin, narrowing her eyes at him. "Who's gonna turn down a bed on a night like this?"

He stepped back to let her through the doorway, acknowledging her reply with an empty hum of acquiescence. It graced the shell of her ear as she stalked past, ghosting over the tiny hairs and causing her to shudder. By some miracle she avoided tripping over the dog.

Staggering into the empty bedroom and away from prying eyes, she braced herself against the door and let out a sigh that sounded too close to a groan, reckoning with the thumping in her chest as it hammered all the way up to her skull.

"God, please let this storm be over soon," she whispered.