Despite feeling absolutely terrified, Kenzie hadn’t been more thrilled in her life.
Bryce parked the truck in front of his cabin, nudging the tires through the tracks they’d created a few hours before. The cabin looked warm and cozy hidden beneath a canopy of snow-covered trees. Kenzie turned her boots toward the door, wondering if this was the end of their night together. Would she sleep on the couch? Would he give her the bed?
They removed their coats, looking like smaller shadows of their former winter selves. Bryce poured them each another glass of wine and plopped a few more logs on the fire. His hair was mussed from his winter hat. Kenzie attempted to flatten it, pushing it against his forehead, but it spiked back up again, causing her to laugh.
“Don’t bother,” he said, collapsing on the couch by the fire. He tapped the seat beside him, gazing into her eyes. His own blue ones twinkled with the light from the crackling flames.
Feeling nervous, Kenzie sat beside him, tucking herself deep into the cushions and not allowing their legs to touch. She sipped her wine, coziness folding over her.
“There’s nothing quite like coming in from the snow and sitting by the fire,” she said, breaking the heavy silence.
Bryce turned toward her in silent agreement. His lips were mere inches from hers. She sensed he wanted to kiss her, but she jolted back slightly, suddenly conscious that if she did kiss him, if she allowed this to happen, she’d have to leave him eventually. She’d have to return to her life in Concord. She’d have to forget about yet another guy. The mere thought of it made her feel exhausted.#p#分页标题#e#
Bryce turned away from her. He sighed evenly. His voice was crackly, tired. “Do you want to hear a few more local legends from around here?” he asked, still trying to engage her.
“Of course,” she said.
“My favorite’s about this very cabin,” Bryce said. “They say a husband and wife built it in the ’30s.”
“They? Who comes up with these legends,” Kenzie said, laughing, grateful that the tension was lessening. She sipped her wine and gazed at his handsome face, eternally conscious of her attraction to him.
“Just the bored townspeople, I guess,” Bryce said. “After the husband and wife built it, strange things began to happen around here. Their dog disappeared first. Not an entirely strange thing to happen in the forest, but it set them on edge. So they got another dog, to protect them. But then that dog went missing as well.”
“Shoot. Bad luck,” Kenzie said.
“Right. The house kept breaking down as well. The porch cracked off from the rest of the house. A part of the living room burned up, because the husband didn’t pay good enough attention to the fire. The wife grew increasingly depressed and jittery, thinking something else was going to crop up and ruin them.”
“And I’m guessing, since this is a legend, something did?” Kenzie said, chortling good-naturedly.
“Of course,” Bryce said. “One day, she came home and her husband had disappeared. In his place was a tiny dwarf, who’d apparently been living in a nearby tree and watching everything that had happened to the house. He’d seen the fire. He’d watched their dogs get taken. And he told her, this woman, that he’d had enough, and she needed to stop.”
“What?” Kenzie asked, her eyes wide.
“Turns out the woman was a witch but didn’t know it. She’d run her dogs out of the house because of her inner demons. And she’d taken her husband from the house, tied him in ropes, and tossed him into the very lake we just skated on.”
“And she didn’t remember any of it?” Kenzie asked.
“That’s the legend. After the dwarf told her the truth, he assumed she would unite with him. They could rule the forest, he told her. But the woman was so horrified by what she’d done, she immediately went mad. She morphed from a beautiful, 20-something woman into an old hag. And she did, ultimately, rule the forest, as nobody would come near her, knowing what she’d done.”
Kenzie smirked. “Sounds eerily similar to every old legend out of Germany and France from hundreds of years ago.”
“You can doubt it if you want,” he said, shrugging. “But when I bought this cabin, it was only a few grand, and nobody would come show me where it was. I had to find it for myself.”
“I see. So you chose this place so you could be totally isolated.”
“I assumed everyone thought this old place was still ruled by the witch,” Bryce said, laughing. “You’d be surprised how superstitious everyone is around here. The town and these mountains reek of loneliness. The people are bored with their lives, and they go crazy.”