Chapter 18
It was nearly midnight when I got back to my cabin. I hadn’t drunk any alcohol, but I still stumbled out of my car as I walked up the gravel drive. I was so tired I felt like I was going to pass out. I really needed to build up my social tolerance. Right now, I was level grandma.
But I was happy to be tired. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had friends to go to the bar with. They’d asked for my number, and now we were all on a group text thread. Macey had named it Flossy Posse. I hated to admit it, but I liked that sort of cheesy stuff.
MACEY: Next week, you two! Mark your calendars!
HOPE: Can’t wait.
MACEY: Also, I just got this picture. What do you think? Should I swipe up?
Macey sent a picture from her dating app. It was a shirtless guy in a cowboy hat, leaning on a pickup truck.
TYLER: Macey, he’s wearing a literal cowboy hat. Absolutely not.
HOPE: It wouldn’t hurt to say howdy.
MACEY: I think I can lasso him, you feel me?
TYLER: No. Just no. I’m still waiting to hear back from my cousin. Please do not do any swiping before then.
HOPE: Swiper, no swiping.
I giggled as I shuffled up the gravel drive. Then I heard footsteps in the bushes to my right and froze.
“Who’s there?”
I whipped around, expecting to face the bear that had nearly broken down my door the other day, but the darkness and my imagination had definitely gotten the best of me.
Not the bear. Just the dentist.
He was walking Luna along the trail next to my cabin, a flashlight in hand and dressed in black sweats.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Jay said, holding his hands up in mock surrender.
I breathed a sigh of relief. All my fatigue was obliterated. I was now positively wired from the shot of adrenaline that had just gone through my body like lightning.
“You scared the crap out of me,” I said, glaring at him.
Luna tugged on the leash, forcing her way over to me. Unable to resist the fluffy creature, I leaned down to scratch her soft, white ears.
“I can’t believe you’re out walking at this hour,” I said, immediately picturing all the creatures that could eat someone out here. Needless to say, I was still traumatized from the bear.
“Midnight walks are her favorite,” he admitted. “And mine.” He smiled, and his perfect teeth gleamed in the darkness, almost fluorescent under the glow of my new porch lights—the ones he’d installed for me.
“Why are you out so late?”
“Uh, I went out with a few friends.” I wasn’t sure what to call them yet. Acquaintances felt wrong, so friends would have to do.
“Glad to see you settling in.”
I nodded, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I was actually hoping I’d run into you again,” Jay said. “I wanted to see how work is going. Are you liking it at the clinic?”
“Yes,” I said. “It’s going well, Dr. Jay. Thanks for asking.”
He winced dramatically, clutching his chest. “Ouch.”
“What?” I asked, genuinely confused.
“Dr. Jay?” He gestured toward the trees. “We’re not at the clinic. You can call me Jay.”
I shook my head. “Respectfully, I cannot call you Jay anymore.”
“And why exactly is that?” His grin widened, flashing more of those perfect teeth.
“Because,” I said, crossing my arms, “you’re my boss now. And that would be unprofessional.”
He laughed, tipping his head back and looking up at the trees.
When his eyes met mine again, they were lit with amusement. “Hope, I’ve seen you hit yourself in the face with a hammer. I’ve seen you cry. You’ve been over to my house for dinner. I think we’re past formalities.”
“Well, that’s all in the past,” I said quickly. “You’re my employer, and I think we need to keep things strictly business.”
He shook his head, that annoying smirk tugging at his lips. “Am I allowed to ask how the new lights are working? And if the step is functioning okay? Or does that fall under unprofessional, too?”
“They’re working fine, thank you,” I said quickly. “And you really didn’t have to do that.”
“I kinda did,” he shrugged. “If you trip over that step and get mauled by a grizzly bear, that’s basically on my conscience.”
I narrowed my eyes. “I’m not as nature-inept as you’d like to think. I’d be perfectly fine out here without you and your fancy tools.” I gestured to the LED light bathing us both.
“Oh?” He took one slow step closer, amusement sparking across his face. “You’d be fine?”
“Yes,” I said, lifting my chin. “I would’ve figured things out on my own.”
“I don’t think you’re being honest with yourself,” he murmured.
“You know, cockiness really doesn’t suit you, Dr. Jay,” I shot back—an absolute lie.
“You want so badly to be this strong, independent woman who doesn’t rely on her daddy anymore that you can’t even admit the tiniest weakness.” His voice lowered, and that maddening half-smirk appeared again. “Oh, Amapolita. You’re adorable. And impossible.”
My mouth fell open. “That is not what I’m doing. I can admit my weak—wait. Did you just call me adorable?”
“No,” he said calmly. “I accused you of being impossible. The adorable part is just a fact.”
I scoffed and let out a sharp laugh that echoed through the trees. “You’re unbelievable.”
“I’ll consider being less insufferable,” he said, “but you’ll have to stop calling me Dr. Jay out here, Hope.”
“Stop telling me what to do.”
“Maybe I would if I didn’t think you liked it so much.”
“Jay…” I warned, though it came out a little breathless.
“That’s better,” he murmured, eyes flicking down to my mouth and then back up to my eyes. “See? That wasn’t so hard.”
“Jay.” I swallowed. “I know that before I knew you were a dentist, I sort of… flirted with you.”
His expression barely changed, but something in his eyes darkened a bit, like he remembered every second of it.
“But now you’re my boss,” I continued. “Now that I work for you… We can’t. I can’t.”
He shook his head once, slow and deliberate.
“I’m not trying to start something with you, Hope.
You’re my employee. I would just appreciate it if you called me Jay when we aren’t in the office.
I really don’t think it’s too much to ask to be friends outside of the clinic.
” His eyes held a sort of challenging glint in them.
I swallowed, hating that everything he said made complete sense. “Okay. Fine. We can be friends. But friends don’t call each other adorable.”
“They don’t?” Jay asked, his forehead scrunching as if this were genuinely new information to him.
I shot him a flat look. “No, they don’t.”
Jay’s brow furrowed, giving a faux expression of seriousness. “Huh. Then I guess it’s a good thing that’s not what I was doing.”
I blinked. “Jay.”
“I’m serious,” he said, and for once, there was no teasing in it. “Calling you adorable wasn’t flirting. It was an observation.”
My jaw dropped. “Do you hear yourself?”
“Yes.” His eyes softened. “Do you?”
I closed my mouth, opened to say something, then closed it again. “Jay…” was all I could manage again.
“Look, I’m not rewriting basic facts of the universe just to make you feel less flustered.”
“I am not flustered,” I said a little too quickly before I could hide the defensiveness in my tone.
Jay laughed under his breath, a warm, husky sound that made the butterflies return full force to my stomach.
“Sure, whatever you say.”
Before I could come up with a comeback, he stepped back from my decrepit cabin, running shoes crunching softly on the gravel driveway.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, tugging gently on Luna’s leash for her to follow him. “At work.”
And with that, he turned and jogged into the trees, disappearing into the darkness, leaving me standing there, still a little flustered, wondering what in the world just happened.
The next day, I had the day off. I cleaned my kitchen and the bathroom.
I folded a bunch of laundry and even prepped some meals for the week.
It felt weird having free time. Because I wasn’t paying rent, my three days a week at the clinic were enough to provide for my minimal needs.
It was so ingrained in me that I should be studying at all times if I wasn’t working that I kept getting the feeling I’d forgotten to submit an assignment.
It was odd just having time to myself that didn’t involve studying an anatomy chart or a math equation.
I tried my best to appreciate the quiet time, and after I finished my chores around the house, I decided to sit down and write for a bit.
I stared at my computer screen and the blinking cursor for about twenty minutes before I gave up.
Of course, now that I had the time to write, I didn’t have the inspiration. Wasn’t that just my luck?
Maybe it was the conversation I’d had with Jay last night or maybe it was just the pressure I was putting on myself. Either way, my mind was distracted, and I needed to relax.
I went to my bookshelf—the place I’d always gone when I needed an escape.
Ever since tenth grade, my father had made sure I knew he didn’t approve of extracurriculars because they would interfere with my studies.
The only time I was allowed to do anything fun was if it would look good on an application.
So I hid my novels inside my textbooks, letting him think I was studying organic chemistry when, really, I was just trying to catch a break and slip into a fictional world for a moment.
I’d discovered Lindy Parker at age fifteen.
My parents had a big library at home, but it rarely contained books that weren’t academic.
One day, though, there had been a stack of Lindy Parker novels on my father’s desk.
He often received patient gifts, and someone must have given them to him because I’d never seen them before.
I remembered picking up The Wildflower Apartment that day and being utterly consumed by the story.
It was the first time I’d ever read a book front to back in just a few hours.
It was the beginning of my love for reading, which would later turn into my motivation to write.
I reached for the familiar, flower-dotted cover of The Wildflower Apartment out of habit. The flimsy copy felt like an old friend as I flipped through the pages to my favorite part of the story.
It came halfway through the book, right after Lina arrived in Spain following her grandmother’s death and began trying to understand the quiet, unreadable carpenter who lived in the apartment next door.
“I keep telling myself I’m not responsible for trying to decipher another adult human being and all their motivations… and yet here I am, exhausting myself anyway.”
I snorted under my breath.
Yeah. I knew the feeling.
My mind betrayed me and drifted back to the conversation we’d had outside my cabin last night. He’d called me out for my daddy issues while simultaneously calling me adorable. Adorable. And then there was the time he’d used the word addictive. Who even said things like that?
And right after that, he’d insisted I call him Jay and that we be friends. But the way he looked at me with those dark blue eyes didn’t feel like he wanted to be just friends. It felt like something else entirely.
Then he’d added that he wasn’t trying to date one of his employees—which should have helped, but somehow only confused me more.
Was he really just trying to help me rebuild my confidence in dentistry?
He’d said he needed a hygienist and hated that I thought so little of his profession, but why did it feel like so much more than that?
I stuffed my face into a pillow on my bed and groaned.
There were too many reasons to stay away from him.
First, he was a dentist. Second, he was my boss now.
Crossing that line could blow up my chances of keeping this job, and if I was being honest, I didn’t hate it there yet.
If something happened between us, there was no way I could continue working for him.
Relationships were messy, and if I was serious about staying in Big Bear and writing my book, I didn’t want to risk any drama that could ruin that.
And third, he was seven years older. He seemed settled, steady, and put-together. I was still floundering. I didn’t really know what I was doing with my life. I’d just disappoint him. I could end up living in Mason’s cabin forever. I had no plan, no direction.
So I would just have to keep repeating those reasons whenever I caught myself feeling anything around him. I wasn’t going to pretend I wasn’t attracted to him—that would be a lie. But something could be beautiful and enticing and also incredibly dangerous.
There were many things in the world that fit that definition.
So I’d just have to open the first page of Hope’s Dictionary every morning—mentally—and read my personally crafted definition of Dentist to remind myself why I needed to keep my distance.
Dentist:
noun.
1 A medically trained professional licensed to diagnose, treat, and traumatize Hope Elmswood for the rest of her natural life.
2 A human person who, despite having objectively attractive features, is to be avoided romantically for reasons including (but not limited to): anxiety and job jeopardization.
3 See also: danger, chaos