Chapter 7 #2
Also, still no luck on the decorators. Here are a few available in October within your $30k budget, portfolios are attached.
—J
With or without Finn.
The words land like ice in my veins.
Finn
Hip surgery went well! Two more rods. You're gonna have fun walking through tsa with me.
Alec
did my mom drop off the care package?
Finn
Toblerone already gone!
Hired a PT. Misthaven local. Planning to walk next month.
Alec
send her info. background check.
Finn
Send pics of the lodge or I wheel myself there.
Alec
you’ll see it when it’s finished.
Truth is, his room’s nowhere near finished. The roof’s sealed, the bed frame holds, the pendant light’s up. But there’s no paint. No pillows. Nothing soft. Against my will, my mind drifts to someone who is.
Finn
You’re a perfectionist.
BTW, saw Jill’s email. Iceland doc. You doing it?
The text feels like a test, as if he’s checking to see if I’ll break the promise I made him. We beat the mountains, Alec. His words loop in my head louder than the damn rain.
He says retire, so I retire.
Because if I break that, what do we have left?
Alec
no time. your room first.
Finn
Work on your own room too. You’ll have a lady over soon.
Test passed.
Alec
no ladies. just people bugging me about wild trails. annoying
Finn
Looked it up. 15-mile rapids? Lol. Remember the rapids on the Russian River? We did that hungover.
Alec
you puked and lost your oar.
Finn
Good times. Enter it, warm up the locals for me
I hesitate, thumbs heavy over the keys. Even typing it feels wrong, like I’m cheating on him somehow.
Where the fuck is my head? The words burn in my chest. I want to delete them, bury them, pretend they never came.
But the lodge needs this, and if I don’t tell him, it’ll sit in me like rot. So I hit send.
Alec
Bill’s granddaughter asked me to do it.
Finn
Already nailing the wife part.
Alec
she’s 24.
Finn
Perfect, y'all will have the same maturity level.
Alec
I don’t have time for games.
Finn
No, you’re doing it.
In fact, bring me back a date too.
Alec
you want me in the comp?
Finn
Yeah man, they’re our neighbors now. Our people. Our village. Come on, it’ll be great.
The main room hums with how much I haven’t done.
I drop down onto the sleeping bag in front of the warm flames.
On the stone fireplace sits the wicker basket Clementine hurled at me yesterday.
I pull it into my lap. Muffins, big ones, with chocolate chunks bulging at the tops, glossy from the heat. I take a bite.
Fuck. Good enough to make me see her, nose scrunched, sharp brows crooked like she’s already winning an argument with me.
I look around the hollow room with bare windows. The bathroom door is still leaning against the wall. Everywhere I look, there are empty corners with too many problems to fix.
Finn’s out of the hospital in twenty-six days, and it already feels as if I’m out of time.
Clementine said we could trade services.
And Finn, well, he wants me to do Wild Trails.
Really, he wants me to find a wife to play out his retirement fantasy, but that part’s a lost cause.
Still. If I compete, maybe he’ll think I’m not stuck.
Maybe he won’t hate me for saying yes to Iceland, maybe he’ll tell me to finish what we started.
We climbed the same route on Vatnajokull five years apart to track how much ice had melted.
The difference back then was unreal—multiple inches already gone.
Now it’s been a decade. I want to document it again.
I glance at the eight black lines inked around my forearm. Eight names. Eight people I once thought I’d watch grow old. It would’ve been nine.
The one thing I’ve learned to be consistent in life is that people die, especially on the mountains.
I reach for another muffin. Hiding underneath it is the flyer. I smooth it flat on my knee. The competition won’t kill me…or her. It’s easy.
Day one, kayaking fifteen miles of rapids. Finn’s right—I could steer a tandem kayak solo if I had to.
Day two, sixteen miles, five thousand feet of gain up Mt. Euspuko, where most hobbyists will fold.
Day three, a four-mile descent followed by a technical rappel down the mountainside to finish.
Immediately, Finn’s shout and the pop of the anchor shifting fill my ear. I shut my eyes and clench my fist, refusing to feel the gutless slack in the rope or the way my palms burned or how my voice shattered against the wind as I fought to get to him.
I press harder on the flyer, like force alone could keep me steady.
Resolution slides over me. I need to do this.
Not for Clementine. Not for Finn. But to prove that I can clip into ropes and scale mountains without feeling like the ground is splitting open and dragging me into an endless black void.
If I can’t, I may as well retire and be stuck here in Misthaven, calling it home because I won’t deserve anywhere else.
There are less than eight weeks until the competition. Clementine’s a ballerina, so she’s at least fit. Work and pain are her daily bread. She’s clearly stubborn and irritatingly determined. She can have the prize money in exchange for her design services. It’ll be simple and clean.
I reach for my notebook and flip to a blank page.
CLEMENTINE’S TRAINING SCHEDULE
Week One:
Gear
Weight training
Endurance build
Nutrition
She’s a risk, but so am I.