Chapter 14
Clementine
I wake tangled in my sheets, the nightmare clinging like smoke. I toss for an hour, counting breaths, bargaining with myself not to reach for my phone.
Because I know what I’ll find.
An email notification, glowing smugly on my screen. Confirmation that the clothes I panic-bought on Wednesday are already being wrapped in tissue paper and packed.
Gran still thinks her shredded morning glories were the work of a rogue moose. I haven’t told her the truth, that I stress-shopped and the lattice was collateral.
I know. I’ll just stash the boxes in my closet when they show up. By the time the credit card statement lands, the qualifying round will be over, and maybe we’ll all forget about it.
It’s such a cosmic joke. The very thing that calms me down is the thing drowning me.
I kick off my blanket like it’s personally responsible for capitalism and lurch out of bed. If I stay in this room one more second, I’ll implode.
Outside, the night is ink-black, sticky with the hum of crickets. Bugs fling themselves into the cone of my phone flashlight, kamikaze-thwacking the glass like they’re trying to knock it out of my hand.
It’s four a.m., which, yes, is technically insane. But Alec strikes me as the kind of person who either never sleeps or wakes up before his dreams are finished. His schedule says I’m not due at the lodge until seven, but maybe showing up earlier will show initiative!
I run across the path between our houses and climb the porch steps, my pulse jittering like it wants out.
The lodge isn’t technically ours anymore, but our family’s blood is in those beams. Literally. Grandpa sliced his hand installing the front porch banister and bled all over the wood. It’s basically still mine.
The key is still where Grandpa hid it, behind warped cedar under the porch elk antlers. The leather tag still says back door, his handwriting half faded. Aha! Still here. Which means Alec left it here. If he didn’t want me to let myself in, he would’ve moved it.
Duh.
“Alec?” I whisper, nudging open the back door.
Nothing.
I step inside, tote bag sliding off my shoulder, eyes adjusting to the dark. Inside, the hallway is still. I expected it to be a disaster of dust and creaking floorboards, like it was a week ago, but all the floorboards have been replaced with dark wood.
This must have taken hours. What I’ve gleaned from my first two weeks at Got Wood? is that installing floors is grueling work.
The lodge smells the same as it did years ago. Pine and soap and old smoke. It hits me square in the chest. I used to lie right in this hallway as a kid, listening to Grandpa’s climbing buddies through the metal air vent.
Woodsmoke tickles my nostrils and pulls me to the main room.
The fire’s low, just embers. In front of it, an unrolled sleeping bag lies on the floor with a bunched-up pillow.
The zipper’s half-open, like someone got too warm sometime in the night.
Next to the pack, there are three folded stacks of clothes, a dented metal water bottle, and his notebook.
He’s staying here? There are fifteen bedrooms in this place. Fifteen real beds. And he chose to sleep on the floor. Something twists low in my stomach.
I bend down to run my fingers over the plaid sleeping bag. It’s cold. He’s probably been up for hours or never came to bed at all.
Next, I waddle over to the stone fireplace, hunting along the base. There. Just behind where the firewood basket used to sit. A small dent in the stone.
Clem’s Crater.
I must’ve been six. Maybe seven. Climbed the stone ledge in slippery socks trying to prove I was brave enough to hang with the grown-ups. Slipped and smacked my head so hard I saw stars. Grandpa declared the lodge would remember me forever. Someone made me cocoa with two marshmallows.
Things like that stick.
“Getting your breaking in done early?”
I jerk upright. Alec leans in the kitchen doorway, half shadowed.
“Are you…sleeping here?”
He rakes a hand through his chestnut hair, gaze never leaving me. “Yeah.”
“The other rooms not cutting it?”
“I like the view.” He tips his chin toward the floor-to-ceiling windows, where the lake sits black and endless.
“Ah, of course. The bleak darkness over a warm mattress.”
“I haven’t slept on a lot of those.”
“Mm.”
“You come here to admire my bed, Clementine?” He pushes off the frame, closing the space between us, work belt hanging low, black tee pulling across his chest like a threat.
“Uh—no.” My throat goes dry. Maybe I should’ve stayed tangled in my own sheets. “Couldn’t sleep. Thought I’d get a head start helping you.”
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” His brows knit. “My schedule has you down for eight hours at minimum.” His tone is tight, like it has been since we got back from the river yesterday.
I snort. “Are you getting eight hours?”
“Don’t worry about me.”
Does anyone? The thought sticks in my throat. My eyes snag on the rings inked on his forearm. “I would love eight hours. But nightmares…don’t really care about schedules.”
“You have nightmares?”
“I think they have me,” I joke, but my voice thins at the edges.
“I get them too,” he says after a beat, words pulled out like teeth.
“Do yours involve homicidal ribbon and bloodthirsty tulle?”
Something almost like a laugh huffs out of him, but it dies quickly, leaving the space between us restless.
“They’re usually about Finn.” His gaze holds mine. “I mean, I’m not the one getting hurt in them.”
The words feel like a slip, a breadcrumb he didn’t mean to drop.
I search his face for regret, but there’s none, just exhaustion etched into him.
The kind of exhaustion that runs bone-deep, like he’s been hauling a pack of hundred-pound bricks on his back day after day, without pause.
Maybe that is what spooked him after our kayak flipped.
“Right, your partner,” I say softly, fumbling for neutral ground. “How did you two meet?” I ask because if I can’t crack open his nightmare, maybe I can at least move him somewhere gentler.
“First day of a summer program at a climbing gym. We were five.” His eyes flick away, then back. “He sat down next to me while I was Velcroing my shoes. Introduced himself as my new best friend. And then he just kept showing up.”
Buried beneath the exhaustion, his voice carries a flicker of warmth.
“I like him already,” I say.
“He’s hard not to like. You’ll meet him after the qualifiers.”
The silence that follows isn’t comfortable, but it isn’t empty either. It hums, restless, like there’s more he could say but won’t. I want to press, but the look on his face tells me this is all he has to give today. He didn’t flinch when talking about Finn. We’re making progress!
“So, how long have you been up?”
“A few hours now.”
He tips his head toward the kitchen, and I follow. The space is gutted, stripped bare except for the black-and-white tiles. It’s nothing like I remember. The plaid curtain that used to flutter over the sink is gone, replaced by a yellowed pane of glass.
Still, if I close my eyes, I can catch the faint scent of mason jars stuffed with herbs and wildflowers. I can almost see Grandpa leaning on the counter, grinning at me while I splashed in the lake. I miss him so much it hurts. I wish I’d spent more time with him before he passed.
“Let me grab the paint swatches from my bag,” I say, already buzzing with nervous energy. “I’ve been torn between two ideas for this room.” Which is mostly code for me scrolling Pinterest between customers at Got Wood? until a Mary Janes ad derailed me.
“I trust you to just order them.”
The black Amex hasn’t moved off my dresser since I planted it there. I barely trust myself with it, and yet here he is, trusting me as if I’m financially responsible. “I will. Tile samples for the backsplash should be arriving at the store today. I can bring them by tomorrow.”
“What exactly is the purpose of a backsplash?”
“It’s to make things look cute.”
“Cute.” He repeats the word like it has no meaning in his vocabulary. “If you say so.”
“Don’t worry, I have a whole PowerPoint on cute.”
“God help me.” He exhales through his nose, the barest glimmer of amusement in his eyes.
“I’ll grow on you.” I wink.
“Help me decide on the stain for the cabinets.” He pulls a handful of samples from the drawer like he’s been waiting for me to ask. “I want them finished before the sun’s up. The faster they dry, the sooner I can install them.”
“I’d go darker,” I say immediately, holding one up to the light.
“Balance the flooring, keep the walls neutral, add texture with curtains and art. There’s a guy in town who makes frames out of reclaimed wood, perfect for photos.
Do you have anything you’d want to hang?
Something special, just for you and Finn? ”
“I don’t keep anything. Besides the stuff on Instagram.”
“Okay, then I’ll figure something out. I’ll make it special. Something that feels like you two.”
“Great.” He grabs the darker stain can, clipped and final, then pushes open the back door.
Cold air slaps my cheeks as we step outside. Dew beads the ferns at the base of the lodge. A handful of stars are clinging stubbornly to the horizon.
Floodlights buzz to life, washing the clearing in harsh white.
Neat rows of fresh cabinets are lined up like soldiers, and a plywood slab balanced on sawhorses doubles as a workbench, littered with tools.
Alec flips on a speaker, and a silver, palm-sized iPod blinks awake. He spins the tiny wheel with his thumb.
“I’ve literally never seen one of those in person,” I laugh, bracing the bench. “I mean, I know they exist, but I thought they were, like, in museums now. Next to dinosaurs and dial-up internet.”
“I keep forgetting how young you are.”
“I’m not that much younger than you.”
A crease forms between his brows before he turns back to the iPod, scrolling with that same unhurried thumb. “Well, good things never break.”
“Tell that to my fifth iPhone in two years. God forbid a girl wants to watch a movie in a hot, steamy shower. They say it’s waterproof—”
“I’m glad you’re taking hot showers.” His tone is flat. “Are they long?”
“My…showers?”
“Yes.”
My brain short-circuits. He’s picturing me in the shower.
Nope. I’m picturing him in the shower, water sliding down his chest, over that sharp V—
Nope, nope, abort, abort!
“How much time do you allot to your showers?” I ask.
“Long enough for my muscles to recover.”
I choke on a laugh. “Oh. Right. Muscles. Recovery. Totally normal.” I wave my hand like I’m conducting an invisible orchestra. “Yeah, me too. Really focused on muscle recovery lately.”
His eyebrow arches, and my face goes nuclear. It probably looks as if I dipped my face in liquid blush.
Mercifully, he taps a button, and music fills the yard. It’s a piano playing from the bottom of a lake. Satie. I’d know it anywhere.
“Gnossienne: No. 1?”
He glances at me, surprised. “You know your pieces.”
“It’s all I listen to when I dance.” The melody lilts, a little sad. “You being a Satie guy explains a lot, though.”
His forehead creases. “Like what?”
“Like you’re the kind of person who could sit alone in his truck for weeks and watch the rain hit the window.”
An actual laugh escapes him, so soft I almost miss it. It’s only a second, but it hits me like sunlight through clouds, warm and dizzying.
I slap my thigh. “Seriously? That’s what gets you? I’ve been at peak charm level for six days, and you finally crack for Satie?”
“No one makes classical music jokes.”
I beam. “Look at us, Alec. Agreeing on things. We’re becoming best camp buddies. BCBs!”
He doesn’t reply, but the left side of his lips twitches, which for him is practically a sonnet.
His laugh, still echoing. The soft way his face shifts when he lets himself smile. He looks younger, lighter, almost breakable. I feel it everywhere. Like the urge to move closer. To touch. To lean in. To do something.
Which is absurd. He has his walls, his baggage. I had to beg him into this partnership. He’s made it clear: We’re a transaction.
So, naturally, I want him. I always want the impossible. The complicated. The just out of reach.
That’s my flavor of pain through and through.
He crouches, prying open the can of stain like none of it happened.
I strip off my sweater, purely so it won’t get ruined. Not because my skin feels like an oven left on through a summer afternoon. Not because the strap of my overalls slips loose, pink bandeau showing, braid sliding forward over one bare shoulder.
If he notices, he doesn’t show it. Which is either comforting or infuriating.
Maybe the mountain froze more than just half his toe.
I risk a glance. Slowly. First at the floor, then at the smear of stain on his forearm, and finally lower. The hem of his shirt rides up as he crouches, gray sweatpants hanging loose on his hips. My stomach flips, traitorous.
No. Definitely not a eunuch.