Chapter 13
AJ passed the city limits sign for Hope Falls, the chill of early morning slicing through his slightly rolled-down windows as he coasted down the pine-shadowed road.
The car was silent except for the steady rhythm of his own breath and the faint, familiar drone of rubber on blacktop.
It was a silence that felt clean, a decompression chamber separating him from the intensity of the night before.
The previous night, with Poppy, had been a jumble of the unfamiliar and the deeply, viscerally good, and his nervous system didn’t know what to do with the dissonance.
The truth was, he’d never found sleeping at someone else’s house anything less than impossible and stressful.
The first time he’d stayed over at a girlfriend’s place, sophomore year at college, he’d lain awake all night listening to the mechanical whine of her box fan, the muffled thuds of her roommate’s feet, and the smell of unfamiliar detergent in the sheets.
He had left at three in the morning, walked the length of campus back to his apartment, and only then, in the neurochemical safety of his own bed, fallen instantly asleep.
But last night had been different. Last night, AJ had slept—actually slept—beside Poppy, a solid, continuous block of four hours that left him rested in his body, balanced in his soul, and quiet in his mind.
He’d woken up with her hair tickling his nose, her hand resting on his chest, and her body curled against his side and experienced a flood of contentment so intense it nearly unraveled him.
The only place he’d wanted to be was there, with her.
He wondered if that was because he was in California and the option of being in his own home was not available to him.
If the same situation had occurred in Virginia, would he have felt differently?
It was only hypothetical, so he couldn’t be certain, but his gut was telling him that he wouldn’t have.
It wasn’t about the location, his desire was about the person he was with.
It was the improbable rightness of sharing space with a person whose very existence seemed to reprogram the rules of his internal operating system.
As he turned into the narrow drive leading up to the resort, AJ thought about the repairs he’d made at Poppy’s.
It was a compulsion he hadn’t tried to fight.
Growing up, Papou was a handyman, and AJ realized he’d learned a lot by observing him.
He started out fixing things when he was around ten.
It was a way to channel his energy into tasks, keeping his hands busy when his mind spun out.
Later his skills were useful when Niko convinced him to flip houses during college.
It had been nearly a decade since AJ put his home improvement expertise to use, but it all came back to him.
The drippy faucet in her bathroom had been the first thing he noticed the night before, the steady plinks of water, a constant drum beat in the otherwise still house.
At four in the morning, while Poppy slept, he’d padded into the dark bathroom and dissected the problem.
It was a worn washer, a missing O-ring, nothing he couldn’t handle with a flashlight and pink pliers that he found under her kitchen sink in a 40-piece WorkPro Pink Tool Set.
He’d fixed it in less than ten minutes, satisfied by the silence that followed.
Then, as dawn ghosted in through the gaps in her curtains, he’d walked the perimeter of her tiny house, taking inventory of what needed to be done.
He tackled the water pressure in her shower next, followed by the electrical in her kitchen, a half-dead outlet over the countertop that sparked if you wiggled the cord just right, and rounded out his work by taking care of the creaky step on her porch.
Even if he never saw her again, which he hoped was not the case, he felt better leaving knowing that those things were taken care of.
Statistically speaking, there was a good probability AJ would see Poppy again. They had family members in common. Whether or not it would be in a personal capacity was yet to be determined.
He’d left Poppy a note on the table along with flowers, and he wondered if she’d read it.
If she had, he wondered what she thought.
He had to actively stop his mind from obsessing about her.
If he didn’t, he’d get hyper-fixated on her aquamarine eyes, her unique fresh floral and laundry scent, the sweet tangy taste of her arousal on his lips, the melodic cadence of her voice, and the pressure of her body pressed against his ribs, which felt like she’d been made to fit there.
When he’d asked why she was single, he wasn’t kidding.
He honestly had no idea how that woman didn’t have men fighting to the death for her.
What sort of world did they live in that men weren’t lining up to be with her?
He’d known her less than twenty-four hours, and she’d made him question everything he knew about himself, about his life, and about the world.
Gravel kicked up under his tires as he pulled to a stop in the resort parking lot.
He cut the engine and sat for a moment with his hands on the wheel.
In the distance, the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada shouldered up against the sky, lit from behind by the rising sun.
His eyes took in the shapes of the landscape, how the mist clung to the treetops like a living thing, and how the steep highway out of town twisted and disappeared among the ponderosa pines.
Determined to put Poppy out of his head, at least for an hour, he grabbed his phone off the charging pad, put it in his pocket, then got his carry-on out of the back and headed up to his cabin.
He was looking forward to the silence, to recalibrating after thirty-six hours of cross-country travel, family reunions, and the strange, exhilarating experience of waking up in another person’s bed and wanting, for once, to stay.
The morning sun was just high enough to burn off the last shreds of fog, leaving the air dewy and cold.
Rustling trees, the crunch of his boots on twigs and leaves, and the faint tinkling from the resort’s wind chimes in an odd, minor-key melody that would drive a wild turkey insane were playing as nature’s soundtrack as he walked up the path towards his cabin.
He’d made it thirty meters, maybe thirty-five, when his name broke the tranquil melody.
AJ stopped and turned, squinting into the sun until the silhouette resolved itself.
Amanda Jacobs—now Barnes—who inherited the resort from her late father Parker Jacobs, waved at him from the lodge’s wraparound porch, a mug of something steaming in her hand.
She was in jeans and an oversized Hope Falls Huskies sweatshirt, her long blonde hair pulled up in a ponytail.
She rushed down the steps of the deck to meet him.
“AJ!” she called out as she hurried towards him. “Your family has been trying to reach you.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket and saw that he had fifteen missed calls, nine voicemails, and eighteen text messages. His phone was dead when he left Poppy’s, so he’d set it on the charging pad in the SUV. He had no idea when the calls came in.
Before he had a chance to check any of them, Amanda continued, “There was an incident with Dr. Sterling last night. He had a medical emergency and was taken to Pine Ridge Memorial. Your mom, Tristan, Niko, and Yaya are there now. They were looking for Liam and Frankie as well, I don’t know if they found them. ”
There was a momentary lag as the information sank through AJ’s skin to the bone.
Dr. Sterling. Medical emergency. Hospital.
Mom, Niko, Tristan, and Yaya. All of them gathered at the hospital, presumably at the brink of something catastrophic or potentially tragic.
He felt the cold slide not just down his throat but straight into his stomach, roiling with the rest of his unfinished breakfast, the caffeine now an accelerant instead of a balm.
He managed two words. “How bad?”
Amanda’s already large blue eyes widened further. “That’s all I know, I’m sorry.”
AJ nodded once, a clipped movement, and snapped into practical mode. “Thank you.”
It seemed he would not be able to get in his workout after all. He headed back up the path to his vehicle and got in.
The engine roared as it came to life. He reversed down the drive as Bluetooth synced to his phone. The screen exploded with missed calls and texts—fifteen calls, eighteen unread texts, and a flood of notifications from the family group chat and individual threads.
The first three voicemails were from Niko. He sounded out of breath in all of them.
Niko’s first voicemail was stressed and a little panicked. “AJ, call me back. Now. Shit, you need to call me back, okay.”
In Niko’s second voicemail, he sounded scared. “AJ, where are you?! I just checked the cabin, and you’re not there. Call me. Fuck. Frankie’s gone too, if you know where she is, tell her to call. Just—call me. As soon as you get this!”
In Niko’s third voicemail, his voice was raw and shaky, his nerves and fear were transformed into anger.
“This is an emergency! Mom just left in an ambulance with Dr. Sterling, or, I don’t…
what the fuck are we calling him now? It doesn’t matter.
Just…where are you?! Mom’s a mess. Tristan’s freaking out.
We can’t find Frankie, or Liam, or you. Where the fuck are you guys? !”
The next voicemail was left by his mom, and she used his full name, which she only ever did when it was a very serious situation or she was angry. Never at him, it was typically when he was being lumped in with something either Niko did on his own or Niko and Tristan did.