Page 13 of Wrecked By the Mountain Man
I find myself nodding, a rare, instinctive agreement. “It does.”
“So, what kind of peace is it, Edward?” she asks, leaning against the counter, folding her arms across her chest in a way that makes her breasts perk up even higher. “Is it the kind of peace that heals? Or the kind that just… numbs?”
The question cuts through the careful layers of avoidance I’ve built.
She’s too intuitive. Too observant.
“Numb,” I confess, the word tasting like ash in my mouth. “Mostly.”
She doesn’t look surprised. Just sad. A quiet, empathetic sadness that doesn’t demand a response.
I look away, stirring the soup with a vengeance. “Some of us aren’t built for living, Penny.”
“Everyone’s built for living, Edward,” she counters immediately, moving closer so I get that strong scent of strawberries again. “Sometimes… you just forget how.”
She leaves the thought hanging, unchallenged and soon, the aroma of the soup begins to fill the cabin.
“Okay, Master Chef,” Penny says, sniffing the air dramatically. “We've got something that actually smells pretty good. Are you sure you’re not secretly a five-star Michelin chef in disguise? Or just really good at heating canned goods?”
I crack a small smile. “Years of MREs taught me to appreciate anything that wasn’t processed cardboard.”
She laughs. “Right. So, you’re saying you can make anything edible. Good to know. Just in case we run out of lentil soup and have to start foraging for… moss.”
She shudders theatrically as I ladle the steaming soup into two bowls, handing one to her. Her fingers brush mine, and I feel a jolt, a current of warmth that travels up my arm.
“Careful,” I warn, my voice gruffer than before. “It’s hot.”
“Thanks,” she says, blowing on the soup. We sit opposite each other at the small wooden table I built, unsure at the time why I bothered with the second chair.
Maybe I knew all along?
The storm, for a moment, seems to fade into the background.
Penny takes a spoonful of soup, her eyes widening when she slurps the first mouthful.
“Oh, wow. Edward. This is actually… good. Like,reallygood. You did something to it, didn’t you? You added a secret mountain ingredient. Is it… resilience? Or a little bit of your grumpy soul?”
“It’s soup, Penny,” I deadpan, but again, the ghost of a smile appears.
“No, it’smorethan soup,” she insists. “It’s lentil soup, elevated. You’ve got a touch.” She points her spoon at me. “A surprisingly tender touch, if I do say so myself.”
I just grunt, but I can feel the corner of my mouth twitching upwards.
Her incessant optimism, her playful teasing, it’s… disarming. And unexpectedly pleasant. I've smiled three times in five minutes. That's more times than I have in the last fiveyears.
I haven’t ever truly laughed, not really. But with Penny, I feel a strange urge to. Like maybe it's okay to be happy?
“So, Edward,” she says, after a few more sips. “About this ‘peace’ you seek. The numb kind, you said. What did you… see? Out there?”
My spoonful of soup hovers halfway to my mouth.
This is the minefield. This is where I shut down.
But her gaze is gentle, filled with a quiet understanding that nudges, rather than pushes.
She’s not demanding answers. She’s offering a quiet space to share.
My gaze drifts to the workbench, to the worn leather cover of the top sketchbook she rifled through. The charcoal nightmares trapped inside, the twisted trees clawing at a blood-red sky, the soldier dissolving into ash.
