Chapter 16
Jake
The alarm on my phone finally signaled morning. Thank fuck. I’d tossed and turned all night, my sheets a tangled web around my legs.
I reached over and tapped the screen to turn off the alarm.
It continued to wail. Tap.
Still wouldn’t shut up.
I smacked the side of the bed and sat up on my elbow. Tap. Tap. Tap.
Finally, it shut up.
Early wakeups didn’t normally bother me.
And this 4:30 alarm meant I’d be seeing Ali at the end of the dock, so I looked forward to it.
But I hadn’t gotten a decent night of sleep in weeks.
Not since before Cheers and Cheese. I couldn’t stop replaying that night in my head.
Especially the end of it. Was a kiss on the cheek the right move? Was I too careful?
I tossed the phone back onto the nightstand and rubbed my face.
It was definitely the right move. I respected Ali’s boundaries, even if it had taken everything I had in me to walk away from her that night. It was what she said she wanted.
It didn’t mean I was any less frustrated with myself. Thoughts of Ali consumed me.
She was different from any woman I’d ever met.
She carried a kind of energy that she clearly mistook for a tornado.
But to me it felt like a rock skipping across the water.
Smooth. Intentional. Graceful. She made an impression, yes, but it wasn’t the kind that left things destroyed.
It was the kind that moved. Impossible to ignore.
Unstoppable. She was kind. Humble. And somehow, without realizing it, she changed the shape of everything around her just by passing through.
I wanted to listen to all her ideas. Her crazy stories. I loved witnessing how her mind worked through problems. How she knew how to greet people to make them feel welcomed. Interesting. Important. Simply because they were in her orbit.
I wanted to bask in her laughter and let myself ponder all the different hues captured in the blue of her eyes. I wanted to memorize every curve and dip on her body—and not just with my eyes. But with my hands. My mouth.
Like the notch at the base of her neck and the delicate curve of her clavicle. My hand twitched with want every morning when her white robe inched off her body, exposing all these little parts of her before she dove in.
My hand wasn’t the only thing twitching when I thought of Ali.
I lifted the sheets up. “Do not get hard right now. She’s off-limits.”
My phone chimed again. This time with a message.
1 new message from Ali.
Ali
Skipping plunge. Wyatt arrived late last night.
Dinner went long and we’re meeting early this morning.
Ali
Raincheck?
Chic lifted his head from the end of the bed.
“Not today, buddy.”
He sighed heavily and laid his head back down. My thoughts exactly.
“Time to get up anyway. Let’s go for a run today, Chic. We haven’t done that in a while.”
Chic was slow to move from the bed.
“You okay, boy?” I was walking over to pet his head when another message chimed:
Ali
Might have a chance to stop in to your clinic.
He’s a dog guy. Chic can win him over.
Great. Can’t wait. I gave her message a thumbs-up, without the sarcasm.
His name was Wyatt Sinclair. I’d gone down a rabbit hole on his YouTube channel to get a read on this guy. He was a carefree, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants adventure seeker. With indisputable rugged good looks.
He was legit, as far as influencers go. His social media grid was tightly curated with decent photography and videos of his many travels.
He had an impressive follower count. It seemed everyone loved him.
Even some celebrities had appeared on his feed—collabs as Ali called them.
So Ali was probably right to be excited that he’d agreed to feature Lakeside and our wildflowers.
But I did not have a good feeling about him.
He demanded too much. It started when he wouldn’t attend the industry-standard familiarization tour that we had organized for influencers and bloggers that had occurred last week.
I say “we,” but it had really been all Ali.
She was so focused and driven and really, really good at everything.
She just knew how to connect with people.
Her enthusiasm was infectious. My role as project liaison was never exactly well defined, and at this point, Ali had won over most of the town.
My day-to-day involvement wasn’t exactly necessary.
But I’d do just about anything to be around her. So I continued to introduce her to more people around town. Encouraged her to bounce new ideas off me. I offered up a word here or there for social media captions. Hell, I even fixed things around her cabin. Anything to be near her.
I think the whole town felt the same. Everyone got involved. It was astonishing how quickly Lakeside was able to swing into action with the right person leading the charge. Ali was that person.
But this guy—this Wyatt Sinclair. He wasn’t as interested in Lakeside’s story.
He wanted choreography. Unique arrangements.
Intimate meals and drinks. Private garden access.
A list of particular items waiting for him in his room like we were his butlers.
And most irritating of all, he demanded Ali’s undivided attention while he was in town.
It got under my skin. He got under my skin.
My feet pounded the trail and my breathing intensified. This was exactly what I needed. The rhythmic footfalls. The glide of my joints propelling my body forward. The fullness of my chest. Carefree. Light. Solitary except for Chic keeping pace by my side. I missed this.
Running had been a big part of my old routines.
But those had been dismantled since Ali came into town.
I told myself it was because of the campaign and the clinic.
But honestly, I just wanted to be in Ali’s orbit.
It was growing harder to accept the limits of friendship with her—harder to pretend I wasn’t already living on the wrong side of them.
The trail narrowed and bent as I got deeper away from the well-trodden path and toward one of my favorite spots. There were no fences or barriers here. Just land that had never been tamed. And right now, in late June, it was carpeted in color.
The wildflowers were in full bloom—coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, and the orange tufts of butterfly weed shone like fire next to the purples of prairie phlox and the dusky blues of chicory—the old ditch weed that had no business being so pretty and for which I’d named my four-legged buddy.
The whole field seemed to be breathing in unison as the soft breeze tugged at the tops of the flowers.
They swayed delicately. Bees hummed as they worked steadily, collecting from each bud.
It was all so cooperative. Harmonious. Functioning.
All on its own. It didn’t need fixing or curbing. It existed for itself and by itself.
All I thought about as I took it all in was how much Ali should see this too. Not with Sinclair around. But later. I’d bring her here and watch her face light up.
“Let’s go, Chic. Time to head back,” I said, realizing the time and noticing that Chic was not at my legs like I expected. I’d gotten carried away taking in the field and lost in my thoughts about Ali. I hadn’t even noticed.
“Chic. Come on, boy. We need to get home.” I added a whistle.
I stepped around a small bend on the trail leading away from the meadow and noticed Chic lying on his side in a shady spot, taking a break from the morning heat and humidity. Although, it was so early. Was it really that stifling?
“Hey, buddy. You okay?” He lifted his head and looked toward me, then laid it back down with an exhausted whimper. His breathing seemed labored. I should have brought my backpack with a water bowl and a bottle of water for him. I had been distracted leaving the house.
I laid my hand on his side to feel his chest and belly. The old boy lifted his back leg to give me access and to invite a belly rub.
“We’ll take a slower pace walking back. Can you get up?”
We sat there for a few moments longer, Chic panting on his side, me soothing him with light pets, all the while assessing his vitals as best I could.
He pushed himself upright with the slow, aching determination of an elderly man climbing out of a beanbag chair—geriatric, as far as dog years went.
We walked side by side at a leisurely pace all the way home.
Back at the clinic, I gave Chic a good checkup and even drew some labs.
The boy was getting up there in age and up until now rarely showed signs of it.
Something had changed, though, in the last few months.
The worry tugged at me, but there wasn’t much to be done.
I set him up with a subcutaneous hydration treatment to replenish his electrolytes.
The temporary hump between his shoulder blades would dissipate within a few hours. He seemed much better.
Other than working on Chic, we had only a trickle of other patients into the clinic today. Unfortunately, that meant my mind had room to wander. I found myself gazing out the front lobby toward the square, hoping to see Ali and Sinclair.
“Sheila.” A whisper-shout echoed through the empty lobby of the clinic and interrupted my spying.
“Are you here? I’ve got it! We were right.”
It was Carol Lopez, decked out in a large pair of dark sunglasses and a silk scarf wrapped around her head.
Sheila popped up from her spot on the floor where she was holding her plank. “Carol, what are you doing here? And why are you dressed like Audrey Hepburn in that movie Charade?”
“Do you really think I look like Audrey Hepburn?” Carol asked, fluffing her hair.
Sheila gave an unconvincing shrug in response.
“Oh, never mind. I’m incognito to show you this,” Carol said as she pulled out a square booklet from under her cape—yep, she was even wearing a cape. She turned to hold the item up to all of us.
“What is that?” Sheila asked warily.