Chapter 15 Forrest
15 FORREST
After risking another obliterating review for nearly giving Margot hypothermia and then groping her during last week’s wilderness excursion, I played it safe this time by leading the group on one of Alaska’s most boring but quintessential winter experiences: ice fishing. Shockingly, everyone caught something, and perhaps more shockingly, no one sprained an ankle or required me to get half-naked in a sleeping bag with them. In other words, it’s the first excursion that went exactly according to plan, apart from my complete inability to keep my distance from Margot.
Ever since learning the truth about what made her flee to North Star, I’ve found it harder and harder to deny that my simple physical attraction to her has morphed dangerously into something more. It was never more painfully obvious than when I witnessed her helping my father with his nerve pain, her beautiful features schooled into complete focus as she worked with targeted acupressure points that I’ve since researched and practiced on him as well. All week, my interactions with Margot have been cordial, if awkward, and I can only hope she hasn’t noticed how fucking difficult it’s been for me to tear my eyes off her.
Back in the snug little fishing shack, I watched her eyes and nose scrunch every time she took a sip from the flask of whiskey that’s almost as essential to ice fishing as rod and reel. Listened to her laugh as everyone’s tales of misadventure got taller and taller, their hand gestures wilder and wilder. I didn’t indulge, of course. I knew it would eventually be up to me to lead five tipsy guests back to the lodge on snow machines without any mishaps, which is what I’m doing right now, with Margot riding pillion behind me.
The snow is a deep, soft blue in the falling twilight, and her arms tighten around my waist. I know it’s not something I should be feeling so goddamn self-satisfied over, since it was either ride with me or walk, but the way she automatically climbed onto the back of my machine without a single look over at Ollie had me revving the engine like a balls-for-brains idiot. Ultimately though, an urge to extend this ride as long as possible won out over the Neanderthalic urge to race him, and I led everyone back at the speed of a drifting snowflake. Now, as glittering powder swirls in the beam of my headlight and the lodge looms up ahead, my hand lets off the throttle against all sense and reason. I slow to an idling stop, and Alice and Yoon drive up next to me on one side, Ollie and Topher on the other.
“Everything okay?” Alice shouts over the rumble of our engines.
My mittened hand lifts to form a thumbs-up before I signal with a chopping motion for the group to go on ahead without us. What the hell do I think I’m doing?
“We’ll be back soon,” I shout, like this was all part of a presanctioned plan and not a sudden and alarming loss of impulse control.
Alice and Yoon give a thumbs-up and accelerate ahead, while Ollie gives me a long stare before throttling reluctantly forward with Topher behind him. Something like joy leaps in my chest, and with a flick of my wrist, I whip the machine around, snow spraying in an arc behind us. Margot presses closer against my back as we face the darkening trails once more.
“What are you doing?” she yelps through her helmet, but I can hear her excitement too. Feel it in the way her arms and thighs tighten around me.
I turn my head. “Want to go for a real ride?”
Her mittens curl into my stomach. “Yeah,” she says breathlessly. “Let’s go.”
I rev the powerful engine, and we shoot off like a rocket. Margot screams, then laughs, then screams again as her body welds itself around mine, and I decide that devising ways of making her this happy is now my number one priority. We practically fly over the snow, weaving in and out of trees and making hairpin turns on snowbanks that leave even me breathless. Margot is wrapped around me so tightly that she’ll need a crowbar to peel herself off, and that only spurs me to go faster. I grew up driving snow machines and know these hills and valleys like they’re an extension of my own body. With every one of Margot’s surprised shrieks and laughs, I feel more and more like a fifteen-year-old kid trying to impress the girl of my dreams, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s working.
By the time we’ve circled back to the lodge, we’re both covered in snow and grinning like idiots. I can’t remember the last time I’ve had this much actual, smiling-till-my-cheeks-ache, belly-laughing fun. Probably not since before my mother passed away, which, considering that happened almost a decade ago, makes my life seem pretty fucking grim. But there’s something about the adorable way Margot is stumbling off the snow machine and leaning on my forearm that makes me want to forget about the past, the future, and anything else that isn’t happening at this exact moment. I stare as her long golden hair seems to tumble out of her helmet in slow motion and she aims her megawatt smile up at me.
“Just so you know, I never signed off on being in the Fast & Furious: Alaska movie,” she scolds.
I pull off my own helmet, grinning right back. “Should I have talked to your agent first?”
Margot’s eyes lock on my post-helmet-disaster hair. “Only if you wanted a strongly worded email about the testosterone-fueled downfall of American cinema.”
“In that case,” I say, pointlessly trying to smooth down the unfortunate collective of cowlicks that is my hair, “I’m offended on behalf of the entire Fast & Furious franchise.”
“I didn’t realize you were such a Vin Diesel stan,” she teases as we walk toward the lodge, her mittened hand on my forearm like it belongs there. “Ever try cosplay? I bet you’d look great in a leather vest.”
“The vest only comes out when I’m writing my fan fiction,” I say.
She beams up at me. “You’ve never seen a single Fast & Furious movie, have you?”
I pause. “No.”
Margot throws her head back and laughs, tipsy on whiskey, adrenaline, and this thing ricocheting between us. In the quickly gathering twilight, I feel as intoxicated as she is.
“Come on, California,” I say, holding the door open for her. “You need to eat something.”
Instead of protesting the pet name, she bites her lip against the smile she’s trying to tamp down and walks right in.
Inside the lodge, the rest of the group is hanging out at the large rustic dining table, the wine already flowing. Ollie sees us approach and looks glumly at Margot smiling beside me. Absurdly, it makes me feel like I’ve won some sort of antler-locking mating contest, and despite my agreement with Margot to keep things platonic, it costs me physical effort not to throw a possessive arm around her shoulders.
“Hey, everyone,” Margot says, accepting a glass of white wine as she walks up to the table. “Thanks, Yoon.”
“Would you like some, Forrest?” Yoon asks.
“Sure, why not,” I say a little too cheerfully. “I need to get cooking, though. Did Jo already grab the fish from you all?”
“She did,” Alice confirms, passing me a glass of red.
I nod and look to Margot, who hasn’t sat down in her usual spot yet. It’s an odd moment. Leaving to cook the group’s meal after spending all day shooting the shit with them feels like redrawing the line of staff and guest separation, which has become increasingly blurry. She raises her eyes to mine like she’s sensing the same thing, and after a moment, she says, “I love to cook. Can you show me the kitchen?”
Something untamed leaps in my stomach at her offer, but I clamp it down. “You’re a guest,” I say, despite the immediate protest my brain makes: She’s not just a guest. She never has been. I ignore the illogical feeling and say, “Relax. You don’t need to help.”
But I also know she doesn’t like being told to do anything, even if it’s to put her feet up, so I’m not really surprised when she smiles and says, “I insist.”
We find Jo and my dad already working in the kitchen, Scout lying in his corner bed, and they all greet Margot with enthusiasm when they spot her. I start telling them she’s only having a look around, but Jo’s already handed her an apron.
“How’s the shoulder, Trap?” Margot asks, looping the neck of the apron over her head. “Any more luck with that pressure point?”
Dad answers in the affirmative, but my focus closes in on Margot’s hand coming to rest affectionately on his shoulder. They say the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but the way to mine is apparently caring for my disabled father.
“So what needs chopping?” Margot asks, breaking the spell and tying her apron strings as I fumble to put my own on. “I know my way around the kitchen.”
I see Jo exchange a conspiratorial look with my dad.
“In that case,” my father says slowly, “what would you say to letting two old coots kick back while you and Forrest take care of dinner? Everything’s nearly prepped, anyway.”
I repress a groan. Not as familiar with Jo and my dad’s Machiavellian matchmaking schemes, Margot seems caught off guard. “Oh,” she says with a nervous half-glance at me. “I mean, of course. You should absolutely rest if you need to.”
“Great!” Jo beams before I can call bullshit. “Thanks, you two! Come on, Scout!”
They vanish from the kitchen faster than a couple of freshly baked biscuits, Scout trotting after them. The kitchen door is still swinging from their hasty exit when Margot and I look at each other, finding ourselves very much alone.
She laughs awkwardly. “So, that was subtle.”
“You mean one of them didn’t slip you a key to my cabin?” I deadpan.
She pats the front pocket of her jeans. “Nope, just a condom.”
I half-snort, half-cough into my wineglass and feel my ears catch fire as I try to recover. “I wouldn’t put it past them.”
“Wow. Do they try setting you up with every available woman who stays here, or just grumpy romance writers from Los Angeles?”
I take a deep, fortifying drink of wine as the word “available” seems to hover and then bloom between us. After what happened on the camping trip, I obviously assumed she was unattached. But hearing her say it out loud feels like the smallest opening of a door that my baser instincts want to rip off the hinges.
“Playing matchmaker is their favorite sport,” I confirm, rolling up my sleeves. I pick up Jo’s abandoned knife and continue scaling the fish she left in the sink. “Extra points if the woman in question has zero interest in me.”
“And have they ever been successful?”
At her question, the memory of her gasping against my mouth is like a bright red flare streaking across a cold black sky. The fish slips out of my grip and lands with a wet flop at the bottom of the sink.
“With past guests, I mean,” she hurries to say, glancing at me and then back down at the thick wedges of lemons she’s cutting.
Her clarification summons a barrage of less pleasant memories of Charlotte, who, now that I’m thinking about it, my dad and Jo never tried setting me up with. They didn’t need to—she’d made her intentions clear from the moment she arrived. It was only at the end of her stay, when I stopped giving in to her demands, that things blew up in my face.
“Have you ever been successfully set up by your parents?” I counter, ignoring the prickles of warning skittering up my neck.
Margot goes silent as she begins picking parsley leaves. I begin to wonder if she’s just going to ignore my question when she says, “Parent. Singular.”
Oh .
“Sorry,” I say, clearing my throat. “I didn’t mean to assume.”
She lifts a delicate shoulder, her eyes on the herbs, while I work on gutting the fish. “It’s fine. My dad’s alive, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says, cutting her eyes to mine briefly. “He’s just a cliché.”
It takes a moment for me to process what she’s said, but when I do, sadness blends with the anger I’ve been nursing ever since learning about her career crisis. I think of her Happily Never After file and wonder if all the fictional dipshits she’s written about are based not on a former lover but on someone much closer to home.
“He left?” I say quietly.
Margot’s full lips press together as she picks up her knife and begins mincing parsley. She nods once. “When Savannah got sick. Mom wanted him to get a job to help cover the medical bills, but he was a painter ,” she says with mock loftiness. “His art always came first.”
Before his own child . I think of the sweet Polaroid of Margot and Savannah in their cheap Halloween costumes and struggle to respond. I’ve personally only ever known the love of a kind and committed father and can barely fathom what that yawning absence must feel like.
“And your mom,” I say finally, trying to pivot. “What’s she like?”
At this, Margot’s right dimple tucks halfway in as she smiles faintly. “My mom is amazing. We didn’t have a lot of her growing up because she worked around the clock to keep us afloat, but when she was there, she was there , you know?” She pauses, her smile sliding into a smirk. “And to answer your question, no. She’s never tried setting me up with anyone because, A, she’s way too busy, and B, she’s still hoping I’ll finally find my gay side and write men off altogether.”
“Fair enough.” I chuckle, halfway through the last fish.
Spotting a basket of fingerling potatoes, Margot grabs a handful and begins slicing them into small, creamy halves.
“And what about you?” she says. “You obviously won the cosmic jackpot in the dad department. Was your mom just as sweet?”
A snort escapes me as I remember my mom bossing me around this very kitchen. She taught me to put care and intention into everything I do—to strive for excellence—even if I’m just chopping chives. I automatically adjust my knife grip in case she’s looking down on me with one of her signature eyebrow raises.
“?‘Sweet’ isn’t the word I’d use. She was pretty fierce. But fiercely loving too.”
And yet all the love in the world didn’t save her .
The ache that lies beneath all my reasoning for not getting too involved with anyone draws my abdominals in tight. It’s quickly followed by the irrational belief that my mom would still be here if I’d just been present for her treatment. Logically, I know it’s not true, but try telling that to the guilt that cracks a whip at me every time I even consider going back to California. It won’t listen to reason, even though the rational part of me knows that whether it’s cancer or, in the case of Margot’s father, garden-variety selfishness, the people you open yourself up to always leave you in the end. Margot herself will be leaving here in three weeks, and I would do damn well to remember it. But then her arm brushes mine as she reaches for the salt, and the dull ache of loss disappears as my nerve endings turn into sparklers.
“Trapper mentioned that you went into breast cancer research after she passed,” Margot says, and her voice sounds like she’s tiptoeing through broken glass. “Would you have chosen a different field if she hadn’t, or…”
At her gentle curiosity, my larynx rusts over like it’s been sitting under salt water for a century. I give her a tight nod. That excruciating year of my life isn’t a topic I’ve discussed with anyone, and I’m not sure I ever will.
She’s quiet, and I feel her gaze on my profile. I lift my eyes to meet her honey-brown ones.
“I’m sorry, Forrest.”
Something tight eases slightly in my chest. I nod, and after a beat, we both look back down at our workstations.
“So what were you studying before the left turn into breast cancer?” she asks, tossing the bowl of sliced potatoes with olive oil, herbs, salt, and pepper.
I slowly release my breath, grateful for the change in topic. “Originally?” I say. “I had my heart set on pediatric cardiothoracic surgery.”
She ignores the terrible joke and turns to face me, hands on her hips. “Wait, wait,” she says. “You’re telling me you were going to be a heart surgeon? For babies ?”
“Well, technically pediatrics includes children up to eighteen, but yes, I suppose I would’ve worked with babies too.”
An incredulous laugh gusts out of her before she reaches for her wineglass.
I laugh, completely bemused. “What?”
“Nothing,” she says after a healthy gulp. “You just keep proving my theory over and over again.”
“Which is?”
“Never you mind,” she says primly, and I watch the tips of her ears go pink.
“You can’t tell someone you have a theory about them and not reveal it. It’s a crime against humanity.”
“Maybe I’m a sadist.”
“Or maybe,” I drawl, moving on to trimming asparagus, “you’re just a chicken.”
Margot slides the potatoes into the oven with surprising crispness for someone who’s been day-drinking in an ice-fishing shack. “I am not a chicken,” she says.
I tilt my head in mock concentration. “Did I just hear… clucking?”
“You know what?” she says, shutting the oven door with a bang. “Fine. You really want to know my theory?”
“I’m all ears.”
She makes an exasperated sound, picking up her wineglass again. “But that’s exactly it. Of course you are. You’re probably a great listener, because your type is bound by law to be good at listening.”
I’m surprised to see a fevered, almost miserable look in her eyes as they travel up and down the length of me. “I’m… not following,” I say.
“Oh, please. The PhD for a worthy cause? The muscles for days? The genetically inherited carpentry skills? The rolled shirtsleeves ?” She points her wineglass toward my bare forearms as if they, above all else, prove her point. “Everything about… this ,” she says, waving her hands and wineglass up and down to indicate my entire being, “is straight out of an overserved romance novel. And I would know!” she cries. “I write them!”
When I don’t respond, she closes her eyes and rubs her temple with the same hand that holds her wineglass, sloshing it slightly. “My point is, you don’t seem… real. Or if you are real, then you’re obviously hiding something. Like volcanic bacne. Or an elbow fetish.”
I can only stare until Margot makes the cutest hiccup I’ve ever heard, jump-starting my brain. Is she really saying what I think she’s saying? That I seem too good to be true? I might feel elation if it weren’t for the clear disgust she’s radiating.
“I’m not sure if I should feel insulted or flattered,” I say slowly, “but I can assure you I don’t suffer from any eruptive skin conditions or extremity fetishes.”
“Oh, don’t feel flattered,” she scoffs as she begins clearing up her station. “If it’s not an elbow fetish, it’s something else. You’ve probably been collecting your own fingernail clippings since you were eight, or you have a secret Edward Cullen tattoo.”
I snort. “Now, Margot. You of all people should know the only face I have tattooed on my body is Vin Diesel’s.”
Margot spits the sip of wine she’s taken back into her glass, laughing. When she recovers, she says, “I’m sorry. I’m just not buying it. I’ve been in too many tropes with you for this to be reality. I’ve either had a Pilates accident back in L.A. and all of this is a romance-novel-inspired coma dream… or you collect clown masks.”
I sigh, dropping the asparagus stalks into the steamer basket. “Maybe. Then again, maybe my fatal flaw is not keeping well enough away from grumpy romance writers from L.A.”
Our eyes catch, and something hot lurches in my lower abdomen.
“We might be dangerous, but I doubt we’re fatal,” she says with a smile.
My eyes drop to her mouth. Slide over her curving lips to each dimple in turn. “I guess we’ll see about that.”