Chapter 19 #2
“You don’t have to observe from behind anymore, you know.” She laughs, turning to catch my eye. “Unless that’s still your preferred view?”
I crack a grin. “I don’t think I have a preference, out here,” I tell her, quickening my pace to walk beside her instead of a few feet behind. There was no red truck or any other noteworthy cars on the highway this morning while driving here.
We round the closest house, her family’s cabin, together and slip off our shoes when we reach the sand.
Inhaling the scent of heated pine needles in the air, she closes her eyes, tilting her chin up to feel the warmth of the sunbeams on her face, bouncing lightly off her cheekbones and nose.
Her light, copper strands give off a faint auburn tint in the light, and her whole body glows from the front, bathed in the flush of an early morning sky.
I try not to notice, but it’s impossible. Bailey takes my breath away. Especially when she smiles like that with the light reflecting off her face, but then again, she’s always been beautiful here. There’s something about seeing her again in this light that just feels right.
“We’re baaack,” she sings, glancing over at me, letting her grin grow wide and easy. “Feels good, doesn’t it?”
I try to stop, but I can’t help myself.
“You know what else will feel good?” I ask.
Without waiting for an answer, I lunge. Picking her up by the waist, I throw her over my shoulder like I’m about to run across the dock and drop her in, just like I’ve done hundreds of times right here.
“Rhett, no!” she screams as I take off toward the slatted spine of wood jutting out from the sand.
I pick her up like I’m about to toss her in, but don’t have the heart to follow through.
Just wanted to scare her a little. When we get to the start of the dock, I set her down.
She skips backward toward the houses, taunting me as she goes while I stalk the open space between us, pretending I might grab her again.
“I’m not the girl I was before!” she calls out, breathlessly, bending at the waist, holding a finger up to stop me.
“You’re right,” I say, moving closer, hearing my own laugh echo across the water. “You’re a lot drier than you ever used to be.”
She scoffs back a laugh. “I’ve taken kick-boxing classes. You’ll never get me in that water now.” She glues her feet and plants her hands on her waist. “You should see my roundhouse kick.”
“Bailey.” I laugh, continuing to move toward her, using that same mocking tone she’s just used on me. “If I can’t get a five-foot-nothing woman who’s taken a few what I’m sure are very good kick-boxing classes into that lake, then how could I have ever called myself a SEAL?”
Her smile drains. “Please just let me change first?” Her voice is weak.
I laugh, then spin around and jog out onto the long dock at the water’s edge.
“I’m not tossing you in,” I call back to where she’s cringing on the sand. Then I yell even louder, “Not today, at least!”
“They were very good classes!” she yells back, eyeing me as she follows me out onto the dock. “And I swear if you push me in now I’ll never come out here with you again.”
“Promise,” I say, slowing to a stroll so she can catch up.
We make our way down the long, narrow structure floating over the water. Sending gentle waves echoing out in ripples across the surface with every step we take.
When we reach the end, she tightly hooks an arm through my elbow and looks up at me nervously. I pat her hand to reassure her that I won’t be throwing her in.
She inhales deeply. “Do you feel that air in your lungs?” she asks. “It’s waking me up more than that cold brew I had on the way here.”
“I feel like an oxygen addict who hasn’t had a fresh hit in years,” I answer.
She grins, and we stand there, taking repeated deep breaths in, admiring the view.
I’m sure we’re both wondering why we haven’t come back to this spot sooner. Or why anything else in our lives could ever feel as important as bathing our lungs and bodies in this view, this nature-filled air.
An older couple in a small, silver motorboat is trolling a few dozen yards out from where we’re standing.
The elderly man holds a fishing rod, while his wife leans back against her own seat, reading a book beneath the wide, oversized brim of her hat.
A few ducks swim slowly, leaving a trail of water cut behind them, but otherwise it’s only the man’s fishing line breaking the surface as he flicks it back and forth to catch whatever might be swimming around their boat.
Pan trout, most likely, as my dad used to call them. Perfectly sized to fit in a frying pan.
The water’s barely lapping up on the shore. So peaceful, you could hear a pin drop on one of these rocks.
I glance sideways at Bailey. She’s watching them with a goofy grin on her face.
“Maybe we can do that while we’re here?” she asks quietly, loosening her grip around my elbow.
“Fishing?”
“And boating. Do your parents still have that ski boat in the garage?”
The classic woody. Identical to the one she’d texted me a photo of a few months ago.
Looking back, I wish I’d asked her to meet me here the second I’d seen her text about that old boat, but I was still reeling from Cory’s death, and I couldn’t.
I’d sent some half-assed Gorgeous as my response instead, because to me, a boat’s just a boat.
But when I remember it with Bailey in the front seat — sun on her face, the wake spreading out across the surface of the water behind her — the boat takes on the meaning of the word I’d sent back to her.
It becomes something worth admiring. Something gorgeous.
“Yeah, it’s one of the things my dad asked me to take a look at while we’re here, if there’s time. Something about the engine not turning over,” I tell her.
She nods as we watch the guy pull a decent-sized fish out of the water. His wife looks up from her book to smile at his catch. She lets out a little cheer of approval, and the man whistles at its size.
God, if only everyday life were that simple.
I point to the couple.
“Earlier, you asked me what I wanted in life,” I say, too quietly for them to hear. “I think that.” I jerk my chin toward the boaters, and Bailey’s gaze follows mine. “I want to wake up to that.”
“It could be that easy,” she says, quietly, her voice vibrating gently against my side.
We watch them for a moment in silence.
“I bet they don’t white-knuckle anything anymore,” she says, watching the man loop the trout through a string to set it behind the boat so it can stay cold until it comes home with them, probably for dinner later on tonight. “Got it all figured out, don’t they?”
I turn to look at her.
“Why haven’t we come back sooner?” I ask.
Heat flashes in her eyes, and she gives me a knowing smile.
“Do I really have to say?” she asks, but her stomach growls loudly.
“Groceries first,” I tell her. “Fishing later. I know how hangry you can get.”
“Everyone gets hangry,” she deflects, groaning. “I wish we would have hit a store on the way into town. Feels like a crime to leave this spot so quickly, even if we’re coming right back.”
But neither of us moves to head back to the car.
Instead, we watch the couple take the boat further out onto the water, chatting, reading, then pulling in another trout while the woman gives the same small cheer.
When we finally make a move to walk back, both of us are moving more slowly than when we first came down.
Two hours later, we’re unloading a week’s worth of groceries from Ridley’s while Bailey’s catching me up on her schedule.
I’ve done a safety check on both houses, and everything is as it should be.
As if nothing has changed since the last time we were here, other than a bit dustier, but nothing we can’t handle with a thorough sweep.
“The Heartbreak tour will start in a few weeks now that Hollis has pushed everything out as much as we can. All the other signings around New York are on hold until they catch him, or we give up and I go out on tour anyway.”
The police called while we were shopping, and I’d stepped away from her in the coffee aisle to take their call.
After reviewing the camera footage outside of her apartment a few times, it seems the intruder had taken an elevator up from the basement storage area, keeping a wide hat pulled low over his face with a hood cinched up beneath it.
He’s smart. I’ll give him that.
Being this far away from everything happening back in the city seems like it’s helped her relax a bit.
Even with everything still going on. But seeing her here in this kitchen again is doing weird things to me.
We’ve shared so many past memories between these walls, it’s making me feel like I’ve somehow slipped down a rabbit hole.
Back inside another place and time compared to where I’ve been the last couple of years.
She’s busy making a joke about how she wishes she could finish the book tour without having to leave, when there’s a small but clear-as-day knock on the cabin’s front door.