Chapter 25. Callan
Callan
I let the truck idle, heating vents blasting while I wait for Lenore so we can head out.
A few minutes past nine, the storm door whines open and she steps onto the porch.
Her black leggings are tucked into a pair of hiking boots with purple laces, and she’s got on a thick sherpa jacket and a beanie with her hair in a messy braid.
It’s different than her usual look, less polished, but I like it just as much.
She pops open the passenger-side door. Her expression falls when she sees my backpack on the middle seat, and she climbs inside.
“What?” I ask.
Lenore turns to me with a wide-eyed look. “What?” she echoes. “Nothing.”
“You look disappointed about something.”
After a beat of hesitation, she says, “I thought maybe you’d want to bring Duke on the hike with us.”
“Ah, no,” I say, a little sadly. “He’s developed hip dysplasia as he’s gotten older. Breed issue.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
It doesn’t feel right to say thank you when someone offers their condolences, so I grunt in acknowledgment. I sound like a fucking caveman. Shifting into drive and pulling down the driveway, I add, “We can stop by the house later if you want to see him.”
She nods enthusiastically. “I miss having a dog,” she says. “My landlord doesn’t allow pets.”
It’s hard to understand why she is so set on going back to the city when it sounds miserable, but I keep my mouth shut.
I pull onto the road and we fall into easy conversation, reminiscing about her grandmother’s Jack Russell terrier, who was an actual demon, chasing kids on bikes down the street, nipping at their back wheels.
I crank the driver-side window down to rest my arm, sun baking into my skin, wind ripping through our hair.
We don’t broach the subject of yesterday, much less the night before.
I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know whether she counts what happened in my truck the other night as a one-time thing, and I’m not sure where we stand now. It sounded so simple when we laid everything out on the Ferris wheel, maybe because my brain wasn’t functioning at full capacity.
We pass beneath the old covered bridge at Temple Stream, shadows washing over us. I pull over about ten miles outside of town, onto the shoulder of a winding two-lane highway flanked by thick forest. A mangled guardrail stands over a steep ditch where we climb out.
“Are you sure this is an actual trail?” Lenore asks, staring off into the trees.
I stand at the open driver-side door, digging through my backpack.
“Maybe not on paper,” I say. There’s no parking lot, no trail markers, but the locals know it.
“Here. Put this on.” I wad up an orange HiVis vest and toss it across the open cab to her.
She catches it, shaking out the fabric and then holding it up.
“What for?”
I nod toward the woods. “It’s not quite hunting season yet, but better to take precautions. You don’t want anyone mistaking you for an animal out there.”
Lenore shoots a horrified look at me through the open cab.
I shut the door and round the hood to join her, shrugging into my own vest and hooking my backpack over a shoulder.
“It’ll be fine,” I assure her. Even over her thick jacket, the vest hangs loose and shapeless. It belongs to my dad. “You look great.”
Her mouth twitches in a smile, faint amusement battling with the murderous look she’s giving me from beneath dark lashes. “Shut up.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her Make me. I hoist my backpack higher, lifting my chin toward a narrow split in the trees. “Come on. It’s this way.”
We slosh through dead leaves, the air fragrant with moss and rain.
It really is the best time of year, not for the colors and the rush of road trippers but for the stillness that settles in their wake.
Muted woods and empty roads. The world taking a deep breath before it goes dormant for another long winter.
Large boulders are scattered between the trees, like a giant leaving breadcrumbs.
“You know that these were moved here by glaciers,” I call over my shoulder.
Lenore stops to catch her breath, eyes drifting over the nearest rock. It’s taller than she is, moss overtaking its northern face. “Is this what we came to see?”
I exhale a laugh. “No. I wouldn’t drag you all the way out here to look at some rocks.”
The look she tosses my way is needle sharp, like she’s poking holes in my words, looking for whatever’s hidden underneath. I swallow around the knot in my throat. There isn’t some grand purpose to me bringing her on this hike. I don’t want her to be disappointed.
We push deeper into the woods. Sunlight sifts through the trees and passes behind clouds.
Conversation falls away as we struggle up a steep bank, breathing hard.
I grab on to a tree to steady myself and turn back to check on her.
Both hands are planted in front of her, hiking boots slipping over dead leaves as she scrambles uphill.
I take her hand and heave her toward me, hooking an arm around her waist when she teeters backward. Her fingers twist in the loose fabric of my vest, an anchoring point.
We lock eyes and she blows out a sharp breath. “Good thing you’re sturdy.”
I huff a laugh. “Yeah.” It’s a compliment, I hope.
The remainder of the hike is a scramble over dark, wet rock. We stop periodically to catch our breath. Clouds gather overhead, growing fat. Finally, the trees break away and we emerge onto a granite slab.
Lenore plops down on her ass, panting, and wrestles out of the HiVis vest. “It’s not supposed to be this fucking hot.” She unzips her sherpa jacket and wriggles free, revealing a thin white undershirt, her black sports bra showing through.
I shrug out of my own vest and lower myself onto the ground beside her. A broad valley sweeps out before us, the treetops a mosaic of color. Far below, a two-lane road traces the shores of a glassy lake, mirroring the heavy gray sky.
“It’s beautiful,” she says.
“It is,” I agree.
“When I first moved to New York, everything felt so new. I fell in love with the noise, the way that there was always something happening. The city never stops moving, never pauses to catch its breath.” Lenore takes a steadying breath of her own, staring out toward the horizon.
“As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned to appreciate this more, I think.
Those moments where everything is quiet.
You’re more aware of time passing, so you remember to stop and appreciate it. ”
Her hand is planted flat on the rock beside me, and I inch my own fingers closer, hooking a pinky over hers. It’s half meant as a comforting gesture, half almost primal desire to touch her, to be close to her.
Lenore leans into me, resting her head against my shoulder as we take in the view. It’s quiet up here but for the rustling of wind through the trees, chittering squirrels, the distant hum of cars winding along the highway.
Her head angles toward me, nose grazing my cheek. Our mouths hover inches apart, warm breath mingling on the crisp air. Her eyes flutter shut in anticipation, but neither of us closes the gap.
“Callan,” she says in a small voice. Not quite a plea, but a preface.
My pulse trips over itself, because this sounds like the start of The Talk. The one we’ve been tiptoeing around, despite whatever pretense has shaded us from it these past twenty-four hours. “Yeah?”
“What are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I admit.
Her posture stiffens against me, like that wasn’t the answer she was hoping for. Seconds pass, and then she pushes up from the ground, walking toward the edge with her arms folded. “I have to leave in a week.”
I clamber to my feet. “You don’t have to go anywhere.”
Lenore rounds on me. “Yes,” she says fiercely, “I do. I signed away my claim to the farmhouse, and I have to find a way to come to terms with that—with everything.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t stay here,” I say.
“Yes, it does.” Thunder sounds in the distance, clattering across the open sky.
My frustration mounts. At not being able to fix this. Unable to get a read on her. “I don’t know what you expect me to say. No matter what I suggest, it’s like you’re determined to prove that it’s the opposite.”
“I want you to show me that you actually want this,” she cries. “For fuck’s sake, I can’t stay here forever chasing after the past. I’m supposed to have a future, too. But all I keep thinking, over and over again, are all the times you’ve already proven that you’re not going to fight for this.”
I blow out a disbelieving laugh. “What?”
“The wedding,” she accuses, stalking toward me. “You said it yourself. You don’t chase after the things you want, so here I am, laying it all out on the table for you.”
“You don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m not an idiot. You’ve spent our entire lives handling me with kid gloves, all because, what, Damien told you not to get too close to his sister?”
It’s ridiculous that she thinks I’m worried about her brother when she’s the one who doesn’t want him to know about this. “I don’t give a shit what Damien—”
“Then what?” she demands, taking another step toward me. “Why don’t you want this as badly as I do?” Up close like this, her dark eyes glisten with unfallen tears, and it punches me right in the gut. “Because I keep putting myself out there, Cal, but I can’t keep doing this.”
“You think I don’t want this?” I ask weakly. “I’m not enough for you, Nore.”
“Don’t you turn this around on me.”
I’m breathless, the weight of this looming admission crushing all the air from my chest, but it needs to be out in the open. Her eyes are dagger sharp and wary, looking at me sideways.
“I didn’t go to college. I’ve barely left my hometown,” I say, desperate, now, to make her understand. “Hell, I’m not all that good at anything except handling things around the farm, and even that’s being taken away from me. I have nothing to offer you.”
“You could’ve offered me a dance at my brother’s stupid wedding,” she says. “One bright spot on the worst night of my life, but no, you couldn’t even do that, because you—”
“Because I was drunk!” I blurt out, throwing my arms wide. “I took too many shots at the bar because I was nervous about giving the best man speech, and I thought you deserved someone who wasn’t tripping over his own feet. I was embarrassed.”
“You didn’t have to be such an ass about it.”
I hunch my shoulders. “Yeah, well, you got over it pretty quickly.”
Lenore reels back a few inches. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It took you, what, three months before you turned around and got engaged?”
Her mouth judders open on a scoff. “It was eight months, actually.”
“For all I know, you were already seeing him when you came home for the wedding. All I would’ve been was a distraction.”
“I wasn’t seeing anybody,” she says. “And yeah, maybe I rushed into things because it was convenient, and because a part of me wanted to get married while my grandmother was still around, for her to have a chance to know the man I was going to spend the rest of my life with, but”—she chokes out a wet laugh—“that all blew up in my face, so the universe sure showed me.”
“Lenore,” I say, feeling like a complete dickhead, but she presses on.
“And I can’t even figure out how to deal with any of it.
” Her voice winches higher. “I can’t even focus, my entire life is in shambles, but all I can think about, all I want…
” She falters, the words caught in her throat for what feels like an eternity before they finally spill over, a frustrated tear streaking her cheek. “Is you.”
At that moment, the storm breaks, lightning lancing the dark sky.