Page 16 of Wild Valentine
I tilt my head, thinking about his words. They make sense. They make so much sense. But telling my heart that, or my mother, just doesn’t work. Thinking of Mom makes my chest hurt, so I change the subject.
“How about you? Why do you hate Valentine’s Day?”
He raises his eyebrows in surprise. “How do you know I hate Valentine’s Day?”
“Got ya!”
He throws the cushion back at me, and I dodge it laughing. “It was a guess. Your nose does this little wrinkle every time I mention it.”
He looks half impressed and half indignant. “Does not.”
“Valentine’s Day.” He has a momentary look of disgust on his face. “See!”
His eyes go wide, bewildered. “Son of a… am I that transparent?”
“No. I’m ultra-observant. Part of what makes me good at my job.”
I’m proud of my ability to read people. I have a high degree of empathy, and that makes me both excellent at telling a human interest story and terrible at actually getting the story, it turns out.
He shakes his head, looking at me with new respect, which makes me feel all kinds of warm inside. I want to impress this man; I want to so badly.
“You could read palms with that skill.”
He’s avoided the question. He hasn’t told me why he hates Valentine’s Day, but I’m not going to push. It’s one more mystery in the line of mysteries about Marcus Wild.
It’s cozy here on the couch. We’ve talked all night, avoiding the topics of his military life, his artwork, and my mother expertly. It’s like a dance we’re doing around each other.
But it’s a dance I like. I wish this moment could be frozen forever and kept in a snow globe in my memory. Just two people sitting on a couch, talking and laughing.
But I have a job to do, and I need to keep pushing.
“You promised you’d show me your artwork.”
He nods. “I did. Come on.”
We shrug on our coats, and I follow him into the darkness to the workshop behind his cabin.
The workshop smells like wood resin and beeswax with a hint of oil, like a condensed forest, earthy and comforting. Which is exactly how Marcus smells when you get as close to him as I did on the zip-lining platform.
He flicks on the lights and the space comes into sharp focus, making me catch my breath.
The walls are lined with large chunks of wood, stored and ready for carving. There’s a long work bench and carvings in various states sitting among piles of sawdust. His tools are left out on the bench, ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice.
On the left are finished pieces waiting to be varnished. There are a variety of lifelike animals, including a slinking fox with its ears back, the muscles of its legs so realistic I expect it to move at any moment. An owl in flight stares at me with wide eyes.
But it’s the people that capture my attention, the carved torsos, upper bodies, and faces of men in military uniforms. The one currently on the work bench has an arm swinging in motion, clasping a rifle as the head turns, the face an expression of grim resignation at whatever it sees approaching.
In another one, a man covers his face with his hands. The eye peering between his fingers is wide with horror.
They’re beautiful and devastating all at once. My spine tingles and for a moment I’m transported to the dessert, to whatever modern battlefield these depict. I can almost smell the fear, taste the blood, and hear the screams.
“Marcus...” My eyes turn to him, and there are tears in them. “Are these…?”
I don’t even need to ask. He nods. “Yup.” His voice is clipped, holding the pain inside. “All from memory.”
My hands go to my mouth as I begin to understand the horror he must have seen. We hear so little about modern warfare. It’s in far off countries, and we barely see the consequences. But these bring it all to life, the reality of being at war, of sending our soldiers to fight.
“How long were you in the military?”
