Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Aspen ran her hands along bare skin and felt the body beneath her shudder.
“Oh. Oh, that’s—right there—”
“You like that?” Aspen couldn’t keep the smile out of her voice.
“Don’t get cocky. I’ve had better.” Michelle Chen said into the face cradle.
“We both know that’s a lie.” Aspen leaned her weight in, her forearms braced, and worked her thumbs into the tight muscle around Michelle’s rotator cuff.
Michelle was a forty-six-year-old retired Navy captain turned triathlon-athlete with a series of joints that had not gotten the memo that retirement meant they’d be working double time.
Morning light poured through the open windows of Treatment Room Two, carrying the salty smell of the beach a hundred yards south of Offshore Wellness and the low percussion of waves that were the backing track of Aspen’s daily life.
Aspen loved this room. She preferred being in here to the main room, which was cluttered with equipment.
While Treatment Room One was shared by the massage therapist and acupuncturist on staff, this one was just hers.
The room was small and intentionally minimalist, with white shiplap walls and reclaimed teak floors that her boss, Lena, had refinished herself one weekend and never let any of them forget about.
A low oak shelf hung along the north wall, holding neatly rolled towels, two ceramic diffusers releasing eucalyptus into the warm air, and a bowl of beach stones Aspen had collected with her niece, Maisie, three summers ago.
A banner hung above the door—hand-stitched by Bunny’s sewing club—reading: THE BODY IS THE FIRST WITNESS in dove-gray script.
She could hear her best friend Grace’s yoga class winding down on the ocean deck. Grace’s voice carried through the glass, warm and calm, coaxing them into savasana.
A flash of blonde hair passed the window, and Aspen’s hands stuttered against Michelle’s shoulder before she got a look at the blonde’s face. Just someone from Grace’s class heading inside.
She shook her head at herself and pressed her thumbs back into Michelle’s muscle with focused intention.
She’d been managing this since approximately 5:45 p.m. the night before, when she’d driven away from the Sterling house with both hands on the wheel and her heart hammering in her chest.
Fifteen years. She hadn’t seen Maddy Sterling in fifteen years.
And last night, Maddy had walked into Bunny’s kitchen all wide-eyed and messy-haired, and Aspen’s whole body had remembered…
well, everything about the girl she’d spent four years memorizing in high school and the past fifteen years trying to forget.
Aspen had moved to Coronado the summer before her freshman year of high school and became fast friends with her neighbor, Tiffany, who was a year ahead of her.
When school started in the fall, Tiffany begged Aspen to join the debate club with her because she had a massive crush on a senior named Connor—the star quarterback, abs for days, too cocky for his own good—who had conned his way into debate to get out of detention.
Aspen begrudgingly went along but had no intention of participating.
She’d planned to sit in the back, doodle in her notebook, and wait for Tiffany to get the courage to talk to Connor so they could leave.
And then a gorgeous blonde with bright blue eyes stepped up to the podium across from Connor and absolutely tore him to shreds.
And Aspen couldn’t look away. She’d nudged Tiffany and asked “Hey, who’s that? ”
“Maddy Sterling,” Tiffany had whispered back, “her family is basically Coronado royalty.”
Aspen set her pen down and watched Maddy deliver her arguments with her chin up and eyes blazing, locked onto her opponent.
Then, when it was Connor’s turn, she watched Maddy’s elegant, impatient fingers drumming out a rhythm on the edge of the podium.
And Aspen had seen the exact moment that Maddy knew she had Connor beat.
Her eyes lit up with something fierce and knowing, the tiniest uptick of the corner of her mouth, a smirk so subtle and quick she was certain no one else had caught it, but Aspen had.
And Aspen, sitting six feet away, her palms tingling against the laminate desktop, had watched all of this and thought: Oh. Oh no.
Because her body had known exactly what that feeling was.
The tightness in her chest, the heat creeping up her neck, the way her eyes had refused to leave Maddy Sterling’s face.
Fourteen years old, sitting in a classroom that smelled like dry-erase markers and Connor’s smelly gym bag, and the most interesting and attractive person she’d ever met…
was a girl. And not just any girl. That girl. Maddy Sterling.
And they hadn’t even technically met yet. She didn’t have the language back then to name the jealousy that burned through her at seeing Maddy’s attention laser-focused on Connor, but she knew one thing for certain: she did not want that intense gaze locked on anyone but her.
So she’d kept showing up. Every day. Every debate. Even when Tiffany had quit.
She’d pushed herself harder than she ever had before.
Studied longer, read wider, arrived more prepared.
Because every point she scored within range of Maddy’s was another moment of those stunning blue eyes locked on hers, another hit of that intoxicating rush of being the center of Maddy Sterling’s attention.
Aspen had never been much of an overachiever in school.
She liked PE and biology, and that was about it.
But suddenly, she was taking AP History and AP English and Government & Politics just to have more classes with Maddy and keep Maddy looking at her.
And she did. She watched Maddy’s eyes light up with the challenge every time they were in the same room, and she loved being the source of it. It became like an addiction to her.
Michelle shifted on the table and cleared her throat. “Aspen? Did you hear what I said?”
Fuck. Aspen blinked. Her thumbs had gone still. Her hands were trained, disciplined, reliable instruments that did not get distracted by memories of high school and the adorable crease between a specific girl’s eyebrows when she was concentrating.
“Sorry.” She found her rhythm again, anchoring herself back in the body on the table. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”
Michelle snorted. “I asked if we could move our next session back an hour?”
“Yeah, that shouldn’t be a problem.” Aspen released her pressure on Michelle’s shoulder and gave her a pat on the back. “Sit up. Let’s see how it feels.”
Michelle swung her legs over the edge of the treatment table and sat upright.
She rotated her left arm in a windmill motion, testing the shoulder—tentatively at first, then with more range.
Aspen watched the joint track the way it should.
“Alright, you’re looking good. I want you to do your stretches—”
“Twice a day in between sessions, I know the drill.” Michelle’s grin creased the salt-weathered lines around her eyes.
“Good answer.” Aspen smiled and leveled a finger at Michelle. “But no butterfly stroke until I clear you.”
Michelle was already reaching for her bag, the strap swinging over her good shoulder. “Yeah, yeah.” She said, halfway to the door with one hand raised in a wave that was more dismissal than farewell.
Aspen shook her head, a sound caught between a laugh and a sigh, and watched Michelle disappear around the corner.
She had thirty minutes until her next patient. She seriously had to pull it together.
* * *
Grace was already in the breakroom when Aspen walked in, pouring a smoothie from the blender into a tall glass, dark hair up in a top knot and slightly damp at the temples from teaching in the morning sun.
She dropped a metal straw into the glass and took a long pull, eyes half-closing in satisfaction.
She’d met Grace six years ago, on Grace’s first day at Offshore.
Aspen had walked into this break room to find a very petite woman standing in front of their high-powered blender, covered chest to forehead in green liquid, mouth hanging open, hazel-green eyes wide, both hands up like she’d tried to protect her face and failed.
The blender lid sat on the floor where it had launched off the top.
Lena clearly hadn’t warned her about keeping her hand on top of it when she turned the blender on.
Aspen looked at the ceiling. A green starburst had hit the white paint and was beginning a slow, gravitational descent back toward the counter.
Grace stared at the blender like it had betrayed her trust, then slowly turned to look at Aspen. “I was just trying to support my adrenal system.” She said in a small voice.
“Looks like your adrenal system fought back.” Aspen had replied, biting back her laughter.
Grace lasted two seconds. Then she folded, laughing so hard she slid down the cabinets and landed on the floor.
Aspen had grabbed a towel, sat down beside her, and helped wipe green smoothie off her face.
The starburst on the ceiling never fully came out.
Lena pretended not to see it. Grace called it modern art.
The smoothie Grace was drinking now was yellow, mango, if Aspen had to guess.
Grace looked up at Aspen for approximately two seconds. Then her face shifted, and she set the glass down on the counter with a deliberate clink as she turned her whole body and put a hand on her hip. “What happened?”
“Good morning to you, too.” Aspen leaned against the counter beside her and stole the glass, taking a sip through the metal straw. Pineapple. She grimaced. Too sweet. She drank more of it anyway. That was the tax Grace paid for being annoyingly perceptive.
Grace raised her brows, waiting.