He entered the room and she jumped in fright. "Why is she so scared of me?" he asked himself.
"I said stay away from me" she said in a sharp voice but he could see that she was scared of him.
"I just need to take a clean sheet so I can spend the night on the loft as you said." He picked up what he needed for the night and left.
He ate his dinner alone, leaving a little for Alisha in case she changed her mind and came out to eat something, she was obviously hungry, but he did not know why she was proving stubborn.
Leonardo spent the night laying down quietly on the loft listening to the rainfall and thinking about the accusation Alisha had laid before him. He knew he had never hurt her, so what was she speaking of?
He kept tossing on the loft, until he was finally consumed by sleep. The next morning, the smell of coffee and burning food woke him up. He jumped up to see what was burning.
Getting to the mini kitchen, he found Alisha hissing and trashing the burnt eggs.
"Who would have thought you wanted to burn me up with the cabin." She said to her and she rolled her eyes at him, and took out another fresh eggs.
"Careful, if you keep burning things, you will eventually finish up the supplies I got with my money," he was out to annoy her this morning, serves her right for making him wake up in a panic.
"I also stocked this cabin for my arrival, I am not stupid enough to come down here without making arrangement for food, so don't think it's only you who have money to feed."
"Are you making breakfast for me as well?"
"When did I become your cook?" she turned her back to him and continued cooking.
"Well, legally you are still my wife, and it's a wifely duty to make breakfast."
"Are we going legally now or we are going by the contract, because the contract said otherwise about wifely duties."
"Either ways, you are still my wife"
"Then I would love to go the legal way and sue you for infidelity." She gave an evil smile when she saw a frown on his face.
"Let's stick to the contract then"
"However, I made breakfast for you, so you will have the strength to pick up your bag and leave my cabin and I alone this morning."
"I am going nowhere, I paid for this space for two weeks, you should leave, you are invading my space."
"Oh you don't want your legal wife around no more?" she mocked him placing emphasis on the word "legal"
"Alisha, when did you become so cold?" she asked shocked at the way she spoke to him.
"The moment you hurt me, that was when Leonardo Legend."
"What are you talking about, I never even took off a single hair from you skin."
"Don't go all pretense with me this morning, if it was in court I would understand why you are denying it, but not when it's just the two of us."
"I don't know what you are talking about." He defended.
She ignored him and set breakfast on the table, they both sat and ate in silence, he looked at her occasionally, but her eyes were on her plate.
Alisha had lost her appetite, but she had to force herself to eat since she did not have dinner the previous night. As soon as she was done eating, she picked up her plate and went to the kitchen.
She was washing her plate when Leonardo came into the kitchen with his own plate.
"Thanks for breakfast" he said and touched her shoulder. Aisha jumped in fright and dropped the plate she was holding to the ground.
The plate fell off and shattered. She bent down and started picking up the broken pieces.
"Don't use your hands to pick that, I will get a broom," he said but she ignored him and kept picking it up, until a piece gave her a cut and blood flowed.
"Let me see that" he came close to her, and before he could touch her, she pushed him aside and went to the room.
She picked up the first aid kit, and started cleaning the cut. Leonardo swept the broken plate and went to the room to see the cut.
"Let me clean that for you" he offered maintaining a distance between them.
"Stay the fuck away from me." She shouted at him.
"Alisha, start talking, what have I done, why are you acting scared as if I am some sort of stranger, why did you leave he way you did?" he decided he would as well ask her the pressing question that had been bothering him since the morning he realized she was gone.
Alisha ignored him and wore a boot over, she was now wearing a sweater, jeans, boots, and then she picked up her shawl, and headed towards the door.
"I am going to check the road, and see if I can leave, I am done here." She had her hand on the door when he held her back.
"Let me go" she punched his chest repeatedly but he held her firmly.
"Not until you start speaking." He had no plans of letting her go until she gave him an explanation he was satisfied with.
"What do you want to know?"
"Everything, why you left, why you said I hurt you."
"Stop acting innocent Leonardo, let me go."
"No"
"So you are going to rape me again?"
"What did you say?"
"Do you want to rape me a second time?"
"What are you talking about?" now he was confused, and he could see tears forming in her eyes, but he still held unto her firmly.
"Don't act as if you don't remember raping me on the night of the wedding anniversary." She fired at him and this time the tears she was holding came running down her face.
Leonardo felt as if ice had been poured on him, he let her go and threw himself on the chair.
Alisha went out of the cabin and started working into the woods, she could not hold back her tears, the pain felt fresh. She cried deeply for the first time since the incident.
It had been a year, but now it felt like the wound just started hurting for real.
"Did he really not remember? Is it possible that he forgot because he was drunk?" she asked herself as she found a wood to sit on and cry out the pain.
Leonardo sat on the chair as his brain tried to process what Alisha had said.
"Don't act as if you don't remember raping me on the night of the wedding anniversary." Her words replayed in his head and haunted him.
"I raped her?" he asked himself in disbelieve
"I raped her" he agreed when he remembered the blood stain on the bed, and the torn silk night gown he had seen when he woke up the next morning.
He sat on the floor, his eyes were puffy, his temperature had dropped and his head was pounding.
"What kind of a man am i?" he asked himself.
"I am an animal, no one in his right senses would do that to anyone, being drunk is not even an excuse."
"I hurt her more than I can imagine, this is the worst thing I could ever do to her, I am an idiot."
"Why didn't she report me and get me arrested, why didn't she break my head while I slept after doing that to her?"
His head was aching, but he could not just sit still, he had to look for her. He needed to apologize to her, he had a lot to say and ask her.
No wonder she was so scared of him. "Would she ever forgive me?" "Can she eventually get over the trauma?"
He put on some clothes and when he stepped out he realized it was raining again. He looked within the cabin hoping to find an umbrella, "Where could she be in this rain?"
Leonardo could not find an umbrella, but he could not just leave her out in the rain, so he went out. He was not sure which path to take, but since she said she was going to check the road, he tried going through where the driver has brought him through.
He walked for a while and did not find her, the rain had stopped now, and the sun was up, his clothes were getting dry now and judging from the atmosphere he would guess it was around noon, he must have been walking for hours.
Deciding that he needed to get back to the cabin, Alisha was probably back there, he went back and soon discovered he was walking in circles.
He was lost.
Alisha was back at the cabin. The road was bad so she didn't go far, instead she went back and while it was raining she sat behind the cabin by a little covering.
She had even dosed off by the corner she sat and only woke up when she was feeling hot.
She went into the cabin and assumed Leonardo was in the loft. She took her bath and washed her boots.
It was when she went down to fix dinner she realized Leonardo was not in the cabin. She wondered where he was, but didn't bother herself as she was glad he decided to give her space.
When it was last noon and she had eaten and had not yet seen Leonardo she began to worry. She confirmed that his items were still in the cabin.
She decided to not worry about him, instead she hoped the road would be better so she could drive her truck in the underground garage of the cabin and go into town so she could try to get her phone from the cab driver of the previous night.
She needed the phone just so she could call her dad or Mary so as to check up on Ina. To distract herself from her numerous worries, she took out her journal and wrote out a few new recipes she would love to try.
She was so engrossed in writing that she didn't realize it was getting late until there was not enough light in the cabin for her to see with to continue writing.
She abandoned her journal, picked up a big torch she had in the cabin and went in search of Leonardo.
She went through the path she had taken earlier that day, but could not find him. She decided to take another route that could lead to the cabin.
This was her third time here, the first time she came to purchase the cabin, she had wandered off and got lost, the second time, she had come to be sure the renovations and redesign was exactly the way she wanted, now for the third trip she told her time to study the map, since this was the first time she was coming alone without her property manager or his team.
She decided to try out the route she too the day she got lost. She went quite ahead and had given up on finding Leonardo when she saw him looking lost.
She flashed her light towards him and he turned to her direction. She saw relief wash over him, she turned and started going through the right path, but when she turned again she saw that he was not following her.
She went back to him and this time she came closer. His leg was held up in a rabbit trap, he looked like he was in so much pain. She looked around for something she could use to hack the trap, it was getting dark and to make matters worst the rain started pouring again.