9. CHAPTER 9
Locke
I’m completely confused as to what’s going on. Livia texted me an address that turns out to be a winery in Newberg, about twenty-five miles southwest of Portland.
She offered no explanation and no context.
Just an address and a time, and I have no clue what I’m walking into.
I don’t like how it makes me feel off balance.
I like having enough information to decide how to position myself before I arrive somewhere.
Livia took that from me before the morning even started and I’m a little salty by the time I pull up.
Arvendale Winery sits on a low rise with the valley spreading out behind it in every direction—rolling hills gone amber and rust with the season, row after row of dormant vines running in clean lines down the slopes.
The main building is old wood and dark stone, modest from the front with a hand-painted sign above the door.
A covered porch holds two empty chairs that beg for someone to sit in them, but there’s a November chill in the air.
It’s fifty-five degrees and frankly, invigorating.
I get out of the car and stand there, wondering where I’m to meet her. There are a few cars in the parking lot and I have no clue if she’s already here, but before I can make the decision to walk inside, the door to the main building opens.
Livia comes out carrying a wicker basket. She’s in dark jeans and boots, a navy blue and beige flannel with a puffer vest over it. She looks completely at ease, which only makes me feel guarded.
A woman steps out behind her, petite with flaming-red hair worn in a short cap around her head and freckles covering every bit of real estate on her face.
“You found it,” Livia says with a bright smile.
“GPS works.”
“I had all the faith in the world,” she intones and then gestures to the woman. “Locke Donovan, this is my friend Sena Vail.” She gestures to the woman who holds out her hand to me. “She manages the property.”
“Hey,” I say, giving a quick handshake before stepping back and shoving my fists into my pockets.
Sena smiles graciously, inclining her head. “Enjoy the valley,” she says to me, then touches Livia’s arm. “Good to see you and welcome home.”
The woman leaves and that’s the entirety of that interaction, but my curiosity is piqued a bit. “Welcome home?” I ask, glancing at the door Sena disappeared through.
“She means welcome back to the Portland area. We went to high school together.”
Interesting, but I refuse to ask the dozen follow-up questions that pop into my head. I don’t want to be curious about this woman.
I look at the basket. “Is this a date?” I ask dryly.
She doesn’t miss a beat, chuckling at the suggestion. “No. In a perfect world, if it were a date, the guy would have arranged all this.” She holds the basket out toward me without ceremony, clearly expecting me to take it, so I do. “Come on.”
She leads me around the side of the building and onto a path that winds down through the vines.
I follow her because I don’t have a better option, the basket hanging from one hand, the gravel crunching under my boots.
It’s crisp outside but the sun is fully up and the light on the valley has a golden quality.
Nothing but rolling hills in every direction and the valley floor is wide and flat between the ridges. I had no clue this even existed.
We walk for maybe five minutes without talking and I appreciate that she doesn’t try to fill the silence. I have found that means she’s confident in the space between us, which I begrudgingly admit is a very attractive quality.
The path opens into a flat clearing between two rows of dormant vines. Someone has already spread a blanket on the ground… dark green wool weighted at the corners with smooth river stones. A small wooden board, a bottle of wine and two glasses sit at the center.
I halt, shocked by the scene before me. “You had this set up ahead of time?”
“Sena handled it.” Livia tugs the basket from my hand and settles onto the blanket, tucking one leg under her. She starts unpacking the basket like this is entirely normal and I glance around, uncertain as to what the hell is going on. “Come sit down, Locke.”
I jolt, looking back at her. If I could remove everything that’s uncertain and just look at her sitting there in the early-afternoon sun, a beautiful woman with an open, warm smile on her face, I’d have thought I hit the lottery. But this isn’t that.
The ground is cold through the blanket as I settle beside her, stretching my legs. The sun hits us full on, taking the bite off the air. I see why she said to dress in layers because in about ten minutes, I’m going to be hot.
Livia sets out containers of cheese, meat, olives and dried fruits.
“What is this?” I finally ask, needing her to give me a little clarity because the unknown is making my skin feel tight.
“It’s a picnic.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “I’m aware of that. I’m just wondering why.”
She glances up briefly before turning her attention to the bottle of wine. “I wanted a neutral place for our first meeting and well…” She looks around at the splendor. “You have to admit this is a lot nicer than sitting in my office.”
“I’ll give you that,” I grumble.
“Sena loves doing this type of stuff and I love the Willamette Valley, so this seemed like a good spot.” She works the cork free, and it comes out clean. She pours two glasses, offering me one.
I take it.
“You drink wine?” she asks.
“Not often.”
She takes a sip, hums her approval and says, “You mention that after I already handed it to you?”
“You didn’t ask before you handed it to me.”
The corner of her mouth shifts. “Fair. What do you drink?”
“Craft beer mostly.”
“Anything specific?”
I stare at her, wondering how my alcohol preferences matter to her.
“Depends on the season. Right now, I’m on a Pacific Northwest IPA kick.
There’s a brewery called Steeplejack that does a double dry-hopped I like—” I stop abruptly, wondering why I’m running on at the mouth.
“So yeah… I prefer beer, but I’ll drink wine. ”
She holds up her wineglass and studies it. “Okay. Since you’re not a wine person, let me at least make the case for what you’re holding.”
I look down at the glass. Dark ruby, almost garnet at the center where the light hits it.
“That’s an Arvendale Estate Pinot Noir. The Willamette Valley is one of the best places in the world to grow Pinot—the climate here is close to Burgundy in France, cool and wet, long growing season.
Pinot Noir is a difficult grape. Thin skinned, temperamental, needs very specific conditions.
” She swirls her glass once, unhurried. “It doesn’t perform well under stress. ”
I’m aware of the metaphor she’s building, and I choose not to acknowledge it.
I stare at the glass dubiously. “What am I supposed to be tasting?”
“Try it first. Then I’ll tell you.”
I take a sip and am surprised by the silkiness. I don’t have the words to describe the quality beneath it.
“It’s not bad.”
“High praise.”
“I’m not a wine critic.”
“What do you taste?”
I take another sip because apparently, I’m doing this. “It feels… dark. Fruity, but not sweet fruit.” I think about it. “Almost like… dried cherry with an earthy quality underneath.”
She gives me an amused smile. “You have a very sophisticated palette,” she says. “That’s exactly right. Cherry, a little plum, and what you’re calling earthy is probably the forest floor note—it’s characteristic of Willamette Pinots. That’s the soil coming through.”
“Dirt, huh?” I say blandly and take another sip. I’m not about to give up my craft beers, but this is acceptable.
“The poet says soil, the hockey player says dirt. But they’re the same things, right?
” She chuckles at her own joke and the corners of my mouth want to pull upward in a smile.
I berate them to stay down. “What the vine pulls from the ground shows up in the glass.” She says it simply, matter-of-fact, reaching for a piece of cheese.
I consider her words and the distrust I have upon hearing them. Maybe she’s forcing another subtle metaphor on me, or maybe she just knows about wine.
“Dive into the food,” she says, reaching for an olive.
We eat for a while without talking. The valley is quiet and a gentle breeze starts up to help cut through the sun’s warmth. The scenery is spectacular which I have come to love during my short time here in Portland. I’ve spent a lot of time hiking and there’s not a bad view anywhere.
I don’t hate it.
Livia refills both glasses without asking and I don’t stop her.
“Okay.” Her tone shifts. Not dramatically, but enough of a gear change that I know we’re past niceties. “I want to talk to you about how this is going to work between us.”
Here it is. I set my glass down on the board and wait.
“We’re going to do just three sessions,” she says, and I open my mouth to object, but she holds out her hand, palm up, and I snap it shut.
“Be thankful it’s three and not ten. And in those three sessions I’m not going to ask you about your past. I’m not going to push you to open up about anything you don’t want to open up about.
No couch, no probing questions, no clinical anything.
” She holds my gaze. “You just have to show up.”
I study her, suspicion running through me in hot waves. “That’s it?”
“That’s not it. There’s a condition.”
I knew it, and I’m strangely disappointed because I’d started to think that maybe she’s different. “What’s the condition?”
“You know that word that got yelled from the Calgary bench.” She says it plainly, just a statement of fact, delivered with the same tone she used to describe the wine.
I freeze. “I heard it. I know it struck a chord in you. I’m not going to ask you what it means or where it comes from, but I know something is eating at you, Locke, and I know it’s older than this season and older than this team.
It’s causing you problems and I hope one day you’ll trust me enough to tell me.
But until then, I’m telling you directly that I will never push on it. ”
My heart is beating a hundred miles an hour. She named it. She walked right up to the edge of the thing I carry everywhere and then she stopped and took a step back and I don’t know what to do with that. I expected the push. I was braced for the fucking push.
And she’s telling me it’s never coming. She reaches for a dried apricot, completely calm, without any idea that she almost gave me a heart attack and then completely soothed away the angst in the same breath.
“What I do need from you,” she continues, “is camaraderie.”
I come back online, confused. “Camaraderie?”
“You don’t have relationships with any of your teammates. Not real ones. Every other player on that roster has built some degree of personal connection with the people they play alongside, and you have built none.” She’s not unkind about it, but she is accurate. “That has to change.”
“I do my job.”
“You do your job exceptionally well, until you fuck it up.”
Ouch. I blink at her crudity in calling out my mistakes. But again… she’s not wrong.
“You do your job completely alone and this is a team sport. The two things are not unrelated to each other.” She takes a sip of wine.
“Part of our arrangement is that you make a genuine effort to be present with this team off the ice. Team events, gatherings, whatever comes up—you show and you actually try.” She tilts her head slightly.
“You give me that and you get to keep your past exactly where you want it. We do three sessions that won’t feel like sessions and then I’ll push Patrick Rowe to leave you alone. ”
I look at her, considering her terms.
She’s offering me the thing I didn’t know I needed—a way to comply without surrendering anything. Rowe gets his mandate fulfilled. She gets whatever she’s building toward. I give up nothing of actual consequence.
I’m suspicious of how clean it is. Nothing this clean is ever actually clean. “Why the team? Why does that even matter?”
“Because a man who has everything to lose plays differently from a man who doesn’t,” she says without hesitation, like she’s thought about this carefully.
“Right now, you play like someone who genuinely does not care what happens to him on the ice. That’s dangerous for you and it’s dangerous for the people around you.
If you care about the men you’re playing with—actually care, the way you let yourself care about people before whatever happened that made you stop—you’ll think twice before you make a mistake that costs them. ”
I pick up my wineglass. “Three sessions?”
“Three sessions, plus your commitment to the personal side of being on a team and having teammates. I expect you to attend the team get-together for Thanksgiving.”
“And you’ll stay off my past?”
“Completely. Promise me you’ll go to the Thanksgiving get-together.”
“Why?” I grumble. “I don’t even celebrate that holiday.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s about developing a bond and that’s part of our deal for three sessions.”
“Fine,” I mutter.
“And I know when I want to do our first session,” she says, like she’d been carefully building up to this. I look at her, suspicion weighing my brow. “Come to my parents’ house for actual Thanksgiving dinner. The party at Miller’s is appetizers and such.”
I frown and narrow my eyes. “Why?”
“Because I’d like time with you in a casual, easy environment. It’s the best way to get to know someone and with you, I have my work cut out for me.”
“So you want to soften me up with a family dinner?” I ask.
“Possibly.”
“Fine. First session is dinner at your parents’.”
“Great,” she exclaims with a bright smile. “See how easy that was?”
I take a drink and look out over the valley. Beside me, Livia’s refilling the board with quiet efficiency, giving me the space to sit and consider our arrangement.
It’s a good play. I’ll give her that.
She doesn’t make a big deal of the bargain we just struck. She just picks up her glass and tips it very slightly in my direction.
“Tell me more about craft beer,” she says. “I like beer just fine but I’m not a fan of IPAs. Too bitter. But I’m willing to learn.”
And because the valley is quiet and the wine is better than I expected and she has somehow made it so there is nothing here to fight against, I start talking.