Chapter 5 #2
No. That is too far, too fast. Still, I cut a short practice piece of rope from the coil and hand it to her.
“Loop around once,” I say. “Cross over. Around the other side. Then finish with a half hitch.”
She stares at the rope. “You realize those were technically English words, but not in any order I understood.”
I sit beside her on the dock, closer than necessary. Mistake. I reach around, taking the rope with her hands still on it. “Here.”
She goes still. I guide her fingers through the motion. Around the cleat. Cross over. Around again. Half hitch to finish. Her shoulder brushes my arm. She smells like lake water, sunshine, and something soft beneath it. Vanilla, maybe.
“Like that?” she asks.
Her voice is quieter now. I look down at the messy knot, realizing it will hold with practice.
“Like that,” I say.
She smiles, pleased. “I made a dock knot.”
“Cleat hitch.”
“Dock knot.”
“You’re a teacher. Terminology matters.”
She laughs, and the sound warms me. A little boy on the grass yells for his mother to watch him do a cannonball in three inches of water.
Layla turns her head at the sound, her smile softening in an aching way.
There and gone so fast most people would miss it.
I’ve watched enough guests to know the difference between irritation and longing.
Between noise that annoys someone and noise that hits a hollow place.
A woman who loves children and teaches them and has sad eyes when a little boy runs laughing across the grass is not a woman built for my life.
I shift away and stand. “You should eat something real.”
Her head turns back to me. “There you go again.”
“What?”
“Bossing.”
“You had a granola bar before jumping off a cliff.”
“It had oats.”
“It was not breakfast yesterday. It’s not breakfast today.”
“You are weirdly passionate about nutrition.”
“I’m passionate about people not passing out on my watch.”
“Useful things again?”
“Yes.”
She studies me from where she sits on the dock, one knee tucked under her, damp braid over her shoulder, green eyes too thoughtful.
“What?” I ask.
She looks away toward the lake. For a second, I think she won’t answer.
Then she says, “Do you ever get tired of feeling like you don’t have one home to go to?”
There’s no accusation or judgment in her voice. I don’t get the feeling she’s suggesting I should fix myself by choosing one zip code and staying there. She asks like she is wondering how freedom feels from the inside after dark.
I look out over the lake. Cabins behind me. Water in front of me. Mountains rising beyond it. A place I know better than I know most people. I could say Cady Springs is home. It is, in a way.
My cabin sits back in the trees on the far side of town, locked up half the year, waiting for me like an old dog that never asks why I leave. I know the bends in the trails, the bad rocks, the best fishing spots, the places where the lake warms first in June and turns cold first in September.
But I also know the Gulf Coast at sunrise. Desert nights in January. Georgia rain on a tin roof.
Home has always been less of a place and more of a direction forward. Moving away before stillness gets its hands around my throat.
“Sometimes,” I say.
Layla’s gaze comes back to me. It feels like I’ve handed her more than I meant to.
“I think I understand that more than I probably should,” she says.
The dock, the lake, the whole damn morning seems to shift beneath my feet.
A second-grade teacher with soft curves and ugly-toe shame and a safe ex-husband named Harold should not understand that.
She should want one town. One school. One house with flower beds and a pantry full of labeled bins.
She should want Christmas lights on the same porch every year.
She should not look at my half-wild, half-working, never-quite-still life and see anything but a temporary thrill.
But the way she’s looking at me now?
She sees the lonely parts too. And she isn’t flinching.
Wanting her body was easy. Wanting her to understand me is the dangerous part.
I clear my throat and reach for the loose board near the kayak rack because fixing something is easier than standing here with my chest cracked open. Layla follows.
“You don’t have to trail me around while I work,” I say.
“I know.”
“But you are. Why?”
She shrugs, but there’s nothing careless about it. “I like watching you make things safer before anyone knows they needed it.”
I stop with the screwdriver in my hand and look at her. Layla’s face is open in a way that makes me want to touch it. Push the damp hair from her cheek. Find out whether her mouth tastes like lake water and nerves and that wild laugh she let loose after the jump.
She steps closer. “Hudson,” she says.
I set the screwdriver down and take one step toward her. She tilts her head back, green eyes fixed on mine. My hand lifts before I tell it to. My fingers brush one wet strand of hair from her cheek and tuck it behind her ear.
Her breath catches. The sound goes straight through me. I should step back, but her face turns into my palm. The want that moves through me is not simple. Simple would be her body under mine, her soft mouth open, her legs around my waist, one hot summer memory we both understand for what it is.
This is not simple. This is me wanting to know what she looks like in my cabin in the morning.
What she sounds like when she says my name in the dark.
Whether she’d hate the desert. Whether she’d love the Gulf.
Whether she really means it when she says free like it’s something holy instead of something irresponsible.
I lower my head, watching her lips part. Just then, a shout comes from the kayak rack.
“Mr. Hudson! Mom says I have to wear the orange life jacket, but orange makes me look like a traffic cone!”
Layla jolts. I close my eyes for half a second. The Morrison kid. Layla’s cheeks go pink.
I look toward the boy in dinosaur swim trunks and a scowl too serious for his face. “Orange keeps traffic cones alive.”
He considers that. “Can I have blue?”
“If it fits.”
The boy sprints toward the life jacket rack. Layla makes a small sound. I glance at her. She is trying not to laugh.
“I should… go.” She points vaguely toward the cabins and steps back. I let her because if she stays where she is, I’m going to kiss her anyway. She lifts her gaze to mine one more time. Whatever nearly happened still sits between us, warm and unfinished.
“Thank you,” she says.
“For the jump?”
“For letting it be mine.”
I nod once. “You earned that.”
Layla smiles, but there’s something tender beneath it now. Something that did not exist yesterday on the wrong ledge. She turns and walks toward the cabins, damp braid swinging between her shoulder blades, shoes squeaking slightly on the dock boards. I watch her go longer than I should.
Kelsey appears beside the office porch, arms folded, eyes narrowed.
I point at the loose board. “Don’t start.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You’re about to.”
She looks toward Layla, then back at me. “She’s pretty.”
I pick up the screwdriver. “Lots of women are pretty.”
I crouch beside the board and drive the screw down harder than necessary.
Pretty is not the problem. Temporary is the problem.
Freedom is the problem. The way Layla asked about home like she knew it wasn’t a simple question is the problem.
I almost kissed her in broad daylight beside a kayak rack is also a problem.
I tighten the last screw and test the board with my palm. It’s solid. Safe. Fixed. If only everything worked that way.
One home to go to. For the first time in years, the idea doesn’t feel like a trap. It feels like a woman with green eyes asking softly whether I ever get tired of being alone.