Chapter 8
Chapter Eight
VICTORIA
I ’m fine,” I tell Gwen. “Really.” My sister’s so quiet on the other end of the line that I have to check to make sure she’s still there.
“I’m here,” she says. “I just don’t believe you.”
“Okay. I’ll be fine.” I keep my voice low because it’s after 11 p.m., lights out for the kids. I’m using the landline in the lounge, curled up by the window in one of the dorm-style chairs that’s just as uncomfortable as it looks. I’m pretty sure there’s solid rock under this cheap, scratchy upholstery, but it fits the whole woodsy-cabin-meets-doomsday-bunker vibe they have going here.
“But you’re there with Noah Noah?” Gwen says. “As in the first guy you were hopelessly in love with?”
“Hopelessly is a stretch.”
“Agree to disagree,” she says. “And then he broke your heart.”
“I can’t argue with that. But I think he didn’t mean to.”
“You were devastated,” she says. “In pieces. He doesn’t get a pass for that.”
“We talked it over, and I see now that there was some miscommunication on both sides. He thought I never wanted to see him again.” I breathe out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know where he got that idea, but now I wish I’d tried reaching out again.”
There’s another long pause—the kind that means my sister’s thinking hard. Or hiding something.
“What is it?” I say.
“Nothing.” There’s a clatter of dishes in the background. “How did you not know he’d be there on staff?”
“Roxy didn’t send me anyone’s names. Some of the staff work together every year, but a lot of new people show up, too. I think unless you already know someone you’re working with, you don’t meet your staff until you get to camp. Plus, I never told her about Noah.”
“I’ve got to say, if it were me, I’d have jumped back in my car and floored it down the mountain. I couldn’t work with any of my exes.”
“I thought about it,” I mutter. “But I didn’t want to run this time. In the last year, I’ve fled my fiancé, my job, and all of Jasmine Falls.”
And years ago, I ran from Noah after kissing him hard enough to make me see stars.
“Technically, you ditched an arrogant, manipulative jerk, and just in time,” she says. Unlike our mother, Gwen has never made me feel guilty about making that decision.
“Sometimes I’m afraid Mom might be right,” I tell her. “That I always run when things get hard.”
“Ugh,” she groans. “Things Mom is right about include which shade of green we can wear with our skin tone, when to send a thank-you note, and how to mix a proper martini. They don’t include your decisions about when to stop doing something that no longer aligns with what you want from life.”
“Wow, that’s?—”
“Super accurate?” she interrupts. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that for a while. I’ve also learned that walking away and giving up are not the same thing.”
“Sometimes that annoying little voice in my head still likes to tell me that they are the same, and I’m a big fat chicken.”
“Tell that voice to take a hike,” she says. “It’s courtesy of Mom, and it’s a big fat liar. Contrary to what we’ve been told for most of our lives, we get to reject what doesn’t serve us. We’re never obligated to go down a path that someone else pulls us onto.”
“I like that idea.”
“Good,” she chirps. “Then put it into practice.”
“Bossy pants,” I tell her.
“It’s because I love you,” she says. “Now I have to go because there’s a hot, lonely Scot in my bed.”
I snort. “Love you more, Gwennie.”
“Call me anytime, okay?”
After we hang up, I head back to my room. A wave of giggles erupts from one of the rooms near mine, but otherwise, it’s quiet. After taking a quick shower, I put on my tee shirt and sleep shorts and climb under the covers. My bed is by the window, so the moonlight slices through the room and casts everything in a soothing blue light. I tell my brain to let these old mistakes go and to stop thinking about Noah, but that just means that his face is the last thing I picture as I fall asleep.
My brain is struggling to make sense of the noise I’m hearing. It’s like the crinkle of a candy bar wrapper or the crunching of a peanut shell. But that’s impossible because I’m alone in this room—or at least I should be.
The room is dark as a cave, no longer filled with moonlight. It takes me a minute to remember that I’m in a tiny bed in a cabin in the mountains, and not in my house by the lake. My brain leaps to high alert, and all at once, I’m certain that this is Friday the 13 th and some weirdo in a hockey mask is lurking in the shadows, waiting to do me in so my story can end up on the next true crime podcast.
Stop, I tell myself. It’s probably a limb scratching against the window since I’m basically up in the treetops here.
But the crunching noise starts again. I’m not imagining it.
I fumble for the lamp on the bedside table. When the light flashes on, I squint and survey the room, looking for the source of the noise. And I find it at the foot of my bed.
A mouse is perched on the blanket by my feet, sitting up on its haunches, its beady black eyes fixed on me. It’s holding a half-eaten peanut butter cracker in its paws, nose twitching as if daring me to say something about it.
“Gah!” I shriek, scrambling back towards the headboard. I hate the idea of a tiny creature scurrying up my pant leg or diving into my sleeve while I’m helpless in slumber. Ugh. This is not the kind of nature I signed up for.
I expect it to run away and disappear into a hole in the wall, like any self-respecting critter at the bottom of the food chain. Instead, it holds its ground and stares me dead in the eye while it gobbles up the last half of my cracker.
I ease myself off the bed, trying not to startle the mouse, because I can see tiny wheels turning in that furry little brain, and it looks like it could cause some mayhem if it wanted. Based on that diabolical glint in its eye, it’s definitely planning to crawl over my face as soon as I fall back asleep.
I scramble to find anything that I might use to trap it—a jar, a box, a paper bag—but there’s nothing in this sparse room that can be used to catch a rogue mouse. When I reach the desk, the mouse springs from the corner of the bed and zips across the room, right towards me, fast as lightning. I climb on top of the desk chair so it can’t run over my bare feet, and it dives into the empty sneaker I left by the door.
“Ha!” I whisper-yell. I grab my pillow from the bed, yank the case free, and tiptoe over to the shoe. In one swift motion, I sweep both the sneaker and mouse into the pillowcase. Then I shove my feet into my fuzzy slippers and hurry out the door.
I’m halfway across the parking lot, headed for I don’t even know where when I hear a twig snap. I freeze, turning slowly as my heart leaps into my throat. That snap sounded like it was under the foot of a huge animal—a catamount? A bear? Some beastly thing with big teeth and ghastly claws and an appetite for young wayward women in fuzzy slippers who don’t know what to do with their lives anymore.
Noah’s voice comes out of the shadows. “Leaving under cover of darkness?” he says.
I startle, feeling the hair on my neck stand up. “Holy shirtsleeves,” I breathe. “Lurk much?”
He smirks, walking over from his spot under a big evergreen. His thin tee shirt strains across his shoulders, and his plaid pajama pants hang low on his hips. If he ever wanted a career change, he could model loungewear like this and probably retire at forty. Because even in an old tee shirt and flannel, Noah Valentine is drop-dead stunning.
“Should I even ask what you’re doing with that?” he asks. His hair’s standing up in every direction, and his big eyes look even wider in the moonlight.
“I caught a mouse in my room,” I reply, trying hard to ignore the faint outline of taut muscle I can see through that thin shirt. “He was helping himself to my snacks.”
“The audacity,” Noah says, his voice a low rumble.
He looks delicious with all that wild hair and scruff—and I’d sell my soul at the crossroads just to have him kiss me again, whispering my name as he tugs my hair and slides his stubbled cheek over my skin. But this is not a thought that needs to be planted in my mind before I go back to sleep because my dreams are vivid enough already, and my subconscious is a shameless, starving beast.
“They were very good snacks,” I say.
“I’m sure they’re delicious,” he says, his gaze dropping to my lips.
A tornado of butterflies swirl in my chest. No , I think. Focus.
Carefully, I empty the pillowcase next to a sprawling rhododendron. When the mouse scurries into the underbrush, I retrieve my shoe and turn back to Noah.
“What are you doing out here?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “Couldn’t sleep. Sometimes taking a walk helps.”
I almost tease him about leaving the kids unsupervised, but I know Noah won’t stay out long, and he won’t be out of earshot because he’s a responsible man and he cares about people’s safety. It’s his thing. He’s a protector, and it’s one of the many traits I always appreciated about him. His “walk” was probably no farther than thirty yards from these cabins, and with those Thor-like thighs of his, he can no doubt make it back to his room in three seconds flat.
He looks tired, like he needs to sleep but can’t. Is it because I’m here?
“Don’t let me keep you up,” I tell him. “That’s all the excitement I have planned for tonight. Disaster averted.”
He smirks as his eyes drift over me, and I realize with horror that I’m wearing my old threadbare Stevie Nicks tee shirt and boxer shorts that are about three nights away from falling apart at the seams. And my goofy fuzzy pink slippers. I hadn’t expected to encounter another human as I dashed out into the night and had only been thinking of removing the mouse in the fastest way possible. But it’s chilly out here, and these clothes are far from modest. I clutch the empty pillowcase to my chest and blurt, “Okay then, good night.”
“Come on,” he says, nodding towards the cabins. “I’ll walk you back. Wouldn’t want you to have any other close encounters.”
He matches my stride back to the entrance to the girls’ cabin, raking his hand through his hair like something’s on his mind.
I feel a tug in my chest because that’s typical Noah. Making sure I get in safely, even though I was within a stone’s throw of the cabin.
He can play that grumpy card all he wants, but I see him. Under all that muscle and furrowed brow is still a big softie who wants to make sure everyone around him is okay and knows that he has their back.
I didn’t realize how much I’d missed having someone in my life who made me feel that way. Because other than my sister, no one else truly has.
He pauses by the picnic table that’s situated just a few feet from the cabins. “Can I ask you something?” he says. “Why are you really here?”
“You mean out in the woods, doing a job you think I’m completely unqualified to do?”
He frowns. “That’s not what I think at all. If anything, you’re overqualified. When Roxy told me she’d hired a replacement, I was expecting another Sophie.”
I snort. “Exactly. Another super outdoorsy person who can do all this nature stuff in her sleep. The opposite of me.”
“No,” he says. “I meant a college student.”
I sigh, sitting down at the picnic table. “I just blew up my career,” I tell him. “My whole life, really. And now I’m looking for what’s next. I thought doing something completely different would help shake something loose and give me some perspective.”
“What did you do?” He sits next to me, leaving just a few inches of space between us. “For work, I mean.”
“Real estate.”
“Interesting,” he says. “I wouldn’t have guessed that.”
I choke back a laugh. “Young Me wouldn’t have either. I sort of fell into it—when my mother pushed me.”
“Oh,” he says, and that tone tells me he remembers plenty about my mom and the endless pressure she put on me to aim higher and be better, lest her reputation be tarnished by my mediocre actions.
“At the time, I was in an entry-level marketing job that my mother thought was beneath me—or, more accurately, beneath her . She acted like she was doing me a big favor by pulling these strings and getting me hired as an assistant in her friend’s top-notch firm.” I cringe at the memory of her telling me she’d set this up and fixed the problem—like I was incapable of finding my own way. “I couldn’t say no because that would be like throwing gasoline on a fire. To her, it would mean I was being lazy, ungrateful, unambitious, or worse. I knew she’d never let it go and keep using it against me until I did what she wanted.”
“Vic,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair to you.”
“Then the pressure was on—I had to be flawless because if I wasn’t, then Mom would take it personally, like I was trying to ruin her reputation. There was no way I could leave the firm because that would mean I wasn’t grateful for Mom’s intervention . But that’s how she is—any favor or gift comes with serious strings. I felt like I had to stay, so I got my real estate license.” I shrug. “Turns out I was good at it, but I didn’t love it.”
His knee brushes against mine, and I know I should pull away, but I don’t.
“I felt like I was successful,” I confess. “I was making good money, climbing the ladder, and doing all the things my parents expected of me. I had a nice home, a savings account, and was getting married—you know, all the things that feel like success. Pretty soon, I was just coasting along on autopilot. But I felt empty.” My chest loosens as the words come out—Gwen’s the only other person I’ve ever said these things to.
It feels good to finally let these feelings out.
“You got married?” he says, his brows pinching together.
“Nope. Wrecked that, too.” I force out a smile. “But actually, that was for the best. Even though I left him at the altar and fueled the town gossip mill for the next three years, the real tragedy would have been going through with it.”
Noah rakes a hand through his hair. The look that passes over his face looks like relief, and my heart flutters in my chest.
“I let myself believe we were good together, but now I see that I was settling. Truth be told, I was just afraid that something better wasn’t out there.” I shrug, feeling like a dam has burst and all these truths can finally emerge. “I told myself that what I had was good, but I was just so wrapped up in everyone else’s expectations that I couldn’t see how lost I’d become. And now sometimes I feel like I don’t know who I am because of that.”
He nods, resting his hands on his knees. “You shouldn’t let other people’s expectations run your life.”
I nod, listening to the chirping crickets and the calls of the night birds. Something about being here makes me feel free, and Noah is still so easy to talk to. It’s like he sees parts of me that I can’t always see so clearly. “Sometimes that’s easier said than done,” I tell him.
His brow lifts. “I know.”
“It probably sounds silly to you,” I tell him. “But Roxy thought I’d be a good fit for another position that’s coming up later this year. This was a way to get my foot in the door, even though it’s totally out of my comfort zone.”
“Doesn’t sound silly.” He shakes his head, shifting so his knee’s pressed against mine again, grounding me. “But you know, my mom told me once that other people’s thoughts about you are none of your business. So why bother worrying about them? At the time, that concept blew my mind. But then I understood what she was saying. People are going to feel the way they feel, but don’t let that undermine how you feel about yourself and your dreams.”
I stare at him for a long moment, feeling once again like Noah Valentine can see right through me. Right into the deep corners of my heart where all the fears lie. It’s both comforting and unsettling, and the truth is that no one has ever made me feel seen the way that Noah does.
“What about you?” I ask. “How’d you land here?”
He’s close enough that I can see his unfairly full lashes, the faint freckles high on his cheeks.
Frowning, he leans back against the top of the picnic table. “The short version is that after graduation, when Samantha dropped me like a hot potato, I decided to finish that backpacking trip on my own. That led me to a group that was sort of like Outward Bound, and then I found this program.” He shrugs. “I just decided I was going to be open to whatever happened next, and things clicked into place.”
“That’s an incredibly mature response to being dropped like a hot potato.”
His lip curves in a hint of a smile. “I wasn’t so mature about it at the time. In the moment, it felt like she was following the pattern.”
“What do you mean?”
Another shrug. “I’m never the most interesting guy,” he says. “I’m the guy people talk to until someone more intriguing comes along.”
“Noah,” I breathe. “That’s not true.”
His sidelong look is the only argument he offers.
“I’m sorry that happened,” I say. “The hot potato part, that is.”
“Are you?” His brow lifts.
“Well, maybe not. Since everything seems to have worked out all right.” I give his shoulder a nudge. “We have to have some rough patches to appreciate the good things, right?” I gesture toward the cabins, the towering firs that encircle us. “And anyway, you seem to have found your happy place.”
His eyes meet mine, and something tugs tight in my chest. Then he smiles and says, “I have no doubt you’ll find yours, too. You always could do anything you set your mind to.”
“Except salsa dancing. I will forever be terrible at that.”
He laughs because he clearly hasn’t forgotten the time I insisted we join the ballroom dancing club during our junior year. I stomped on his feet no fewer than one thousand times and gave him a black eye when I flailed my arms during an over-energetic swing lesson.
“It’s okay to not be amazing at everything,” he says. “If you don’t fail, then you can’t grow.”
“You make that sound so simple.” Failure wasn’t an option in the Griffin household. Failure meant embarrassment. Shame. Weakness. Logically, I know that’s not true—but for decades, my parents made me feel like it was.
“Our feelings make it complicated,” he says.
Right. Feelings. Like the tingly ones surfacing now. The ones I have to keep locked down because this is Noah, my colleague, practically my supervisor.
He’s completely off-limits, but I don’t want him to be. And all that stuff I said about pretending we don’t have a history? I don’t want that, either.
“I should turn in,” I blurt, jumping to my feet.
“Yeah,” he says, following me the last few feet to the cabin. “We should try again.”
I know he’s talking about sleep, but a tiny part of me lights up at the idea of us trying again for real—to be friends, or something more.
With Noah, I always wanted more—even when it wrecked us.
“Good night, Noah,” I whisper, opening the door.
“Night, Vic,” he says, his voice gravelly. “Sleep tight.” His gaze drops to my slippers, and just as he turns back toward the boys’ cabin, I see a hint of a smile.