Chapter 7
LENNON
There was something not right about this place.
First of all, there were an awful lot of men at this wellness retreat. Men, in my experience, defined “wellness” as well-fucked and well-fed. They did not participate in juice cleanses and sound baths—both of which had been promised on the website, although neither actually materialized.
Hell, I’d had to trick Benny into going to his annual prostate exam and afterward he pouted for a whole week.
I had expected to be surrounded by women recovering from burnout and trying to lose five pounds.
But unless they were all hanging out without me, I had the dubious honor of being the only female guest at Mercy River Ranch.
Secondly, those men were…something. I didn’t know what that something was yet, but there was something binding them together that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.
They weren’t friends—as far as I knew, all seven of them had arrived separately and hadn’t known each other prior.
They were all different ages, anywhere from Jarod, the baby of the group at twenty-three, to Caleb, who was fifty-seven.
They didn’t have similar backgrounds, education, or look the same.
But they all knew CPR.
I knew this because one night when they had all clustered together around one table at dinner, I overheard them discussing their go-to song for CPR.
Stayin’ Alive by the Bee Gees was Caleb’s favorite. “The classic.”
Michael’s song was Beyoncé’s Crazy in Love.
Flowers by Miley Cyrus was Randy’s choice. “Only God can judge me,” he’d said when they laughed.
Aaron and Paul liked Purple Rain by Prince.
And Tyler and Scott relied on Glory Days by Bruce Springsteen.
It wasn’t that weird to know CPR. But all seven of them not only knowing CPR, but performing it so often that they had a favorite song to help them keep the beat? That couldn’t be a coincidence.
But the strangest thing about this place—and most relevant to the painful position I now found myself in—was that it was nothing like the website promised.
When I booked my cabin for June, I had been under the impression that my days would be spent pampering my mind and body with the kind of bougie shit I had come to associate with self-care: hot yoga in the mornings led by a bendy white woman, warm tea and organic vegetables for lunch followed by an afternoon nap and guided meditation, before closing out the day with a slow sunset hike on a gentle incline.
The website hadn’t said a damn thing about a she-demon named Tamilee Jones masquerading as a physical therapist and personal trainer.
“Do you understand what failure means, Lennon?” Tamilee demanded, hands on her hips.
She was Black woman with deep brown skin that didn’t show a single line even though I suspected she was over fifty, blue eyeshadow up to her brow line and bright pink lips, standing at a mere five-foot-four, although her high-top hairstyle added another three inches.
I gave her a baleful glare despite the trickle of sweat that ran into my eyes and blurred my vision. “Yes. It means I can’t.”
“That’s right. Can’t. Not won’t. As in, physically impossible. Now, is it physically impossible for you to lift those weights one more time?”
I wanted to say yes so damn badly. Because that next rep was going to hurt. I really didn’t like to hurt. My idea of a good workout was super light weights and high reps that the instructor counted down for me, allowing me to zone out through the hard parts.
“Yeah, you have one more in you.” She nodded firmly like there was no question of it. “You got this, baby.”
Who knew a warm woman’s voice calling me baby was all it took for me to summon superhuman strength and live up to my potential?
Tamilee Jones should take her show on the road.
Teach high school guidance counselors and mothers her ways.
Maybe if I’d had someone like her telling me I could do it, maybe I would have actually believed it.
I hinged my elbows, curling the weights to my shoulders with a mighty grunt.
“Hell, yeah!” she hollered. “Now, see what happens when you try one more.”
I gave her a baffled look but tried to tighten my biceps again. The weights jiggled, but I would have had to lift with momentum from my whole body to get them to the top of the rep. “I can’t,” I said.
“Exactly. You can’t. Not without hurting yourself. That’s failure. It’s not your goal for every workout, but when you’re finding your benchmarks, that’s how you do it.” Her bright pink lips tilted into a smile. “You did great, baby.”
Feeling pretty damn proud of myself, I smiled back. “So we’re done now?”
“We’re done with arms. Now we move on to legs.”
Goddammit.
The silence woke me up again, as it had every morning this week.
I didn’t fight it. It was becoming my new normal, waking up before the sun to watch the stars fade into a purple dawn before I headed to the lodge to help Cecily and Amos make breakfast for the cowboys.
It had stopped feeling like jet lag two days ago.
Now it felt good—although I suspected that if anyone from my old life could see me now, they’d think I had lost my damn mind.
Blink once if you’re having a mental breakdown, Lennon.
Maybe I was.
But it didn’t feel like a breakdown.
It felt like…like letting out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding.
All that tension I hadn’t even been aware of slowing melting from my body with that one long exhale.
A week ago, I wouldn’t have said I was stressed—no more so than the average person, anyway.
Maybe that was true, but it was also true that the average person was really fucking stressed.
There was just so much. Catastrophes around the world we couldn’t do shit about.
Catastrophes we could do something about, but that something felt so small that we rarely did even that.
The daily grind of bills to pay, work to do, people to care for.
A never-ending stream of things vying for our attention.
I felt like I was constantly running as fast as I could, even though in actuality, all I was doing was standing still, staring at my phone.
There wasn’t a single part of my body that didn’t hold on to the effects of that, of treating every ding of my phone as life or death, wondering if that DM was going to be a floral arrangement inspired by one of my designs or a dick pic.
My shoulders ached. My back spasmed. My stomach was constantly twisted in knots.
And the funny thing was, I hadn’t realized any of it.
I hadn’t let myself feel any of it.
Until now.
A week without Wi-Fi—only using my phone to listen to audiobooks before I went to sleep and checking the burner phone once a day for an update from Hector—and I felt everything.
It hurt, but a good kind of hurt. A tingly, achy feeling, like sticking your hand in hot water after you played outside in the snow without gloves. My body coming back to life.
The clouds hid the stars, but I didn’t mind.
The brewing storm had its own beauty. Wind whipped at my cheeks, and I tugged my hair loose from its bun so the wind could have its way with that, too.
Maybe I really was smack in the middle of a mental breakdown, because I kicked off my Uggs so they would stay dry, tossed Jeremiah’s borrowed coat onto the rocking chair, and left the safety of the porch.
The sky grew darker. I didn’t hear thunder or see lightning, but I could sense a sudden shift in the air as the storm bore down on me. A cold drop of rain splashed against the crown of my head, followed seconds later by another one on my shoulder. Here comes the storm.
I closed my eyes and lifted my face to the rain.