Unplugged Hearts (Rugged Mountain Men #2)

Chapter 1

LOLA

Here’s the thing nobody tells you about hiking backpacks: they’re incredibly, unreasonably heavy. Especially when you’ve stuffed them to the brim with too many brand-new, tags-still-on gadgets and accessories.

Even the stabilizing straps and rigid body don’t help with this one, which is a combination of light and dark pinks, just like my branding. The company said they color-matched my stuff online, which was surprisingly thoughtful of them.

Maybe when I was growing up, my dad didn’t make me carry that much stuff, or maybe I just managed to forget the pack-to-person ratio.

Either way, when I swing the pack around to put it on, it hits me squarely in the back, and I topple, landing on the floor with a loud oomph, the air knocked out of me.

For a second, I’m on my stomach, lying amongst the dust on our hardwood floor, holding my breath.

It’s one of those things that makes you cringe and wait to see if the downstairs neighbor is going to pound on the ceiling. It is, after all, just after six in the morning, and our neighbors aren’t used to hearing sound from me until at least ten.

There’s no pounding from below, but the sound does manage to wake my roommate. I can hear her moving around in her room, reacting to the thump.

Desperately, I try to roll over, but all I manage to do is maroon myself on top of the bag, trapping myself like an overturned turtle. I go limp, waiting for Maisie to come to my rescue.

“Lola!” Maisie’s door opens with a squeak, her rough voice floating down the hallway toward me.

I hear the gentle thud, thud of her bare feet against the hardwood floor as she makes her way to me.

Knowing her, she’s probably salivating over the possibility of putting some of that med school knowledge to use.

I’m clumsy, which is good for her, since she gets to clean my wounds and wrap me up, then guess whether my ankle is sprained or broken before the X-rays come back. (Always a sprain. I’ve had a weak ankle since the first time I sprained it in a middle school volleyball game.)

Maisie appears, her hair brushed, her face scrubbed clear of makeup, two shining golden gels pads stuck under her eyes. So, Maisie was already awake and getting ready while I was tiptoeing around in the living room, desperately trying to be quiet for her.

“What the hell happened?” she asks, leaning over me, clearly taking in the situation. I squint at her, worried that one of her under-eye patches might slide off her face and land on me instead.

“I’m fine. I just tried to, like, throw the bag on, and it hit my back, so I fell on the floor…

” I wheeze, though I definitely knocked the air out of myself.

My eyes unfocus and settle on a point just over Maisie’s shoulder, where the sleek black metal of my tripod reaches up and out of view. “Will you stop the camera?”

Maisie blinks, then whirls around and stands, laughing. “You recorded that?”

“I thought it would be cool!”

“How much does that bag weigh?” Maisie tuts as she kneels beside me, her eyes roaming over me like she might have X-ray vision. “You could have thrown out your back!”

“Is that the medical term?”

“You’re not taking this seriously, Lols.”

“Hello. I’m still trapped here.” I flail my arms and legs at her helplessly. “Can we have this conversation after you free me from this thing?”

Maisie rolls her eyes, then reaches up and snaps off the little clasp over my sternum, which mercifully releases me and — after slipping my arms free of the straps — allows me to roll, face-first, onto the floor.

I blink at her pink toenails for a second before finding the energy to get my arms under me, push up from the floor and sit. She’s right. The backpack definitely could have thrown out my back, which is now sore from the impact.

“Can you breathe?” Maisie asks, raising an eyebrow at me. “Are your ribs cracked?”

“You’re the doctor. You tell me.”

Once again, she rolls her eyes, but kneels over me, poking and prodding at my ribs.

I stare over her head, out at the city beyond our windows, just starting to wake up, light refracting off buildings, fog drifting out over the windows and spires.

It’s gorgeous and distracts me from the pain in my back for a moment.

We’re not rich enough to have one of those stunning views of the water, but from this angle, I can make out a sliver of the great wheel through a crack in the buildings. And if you stand on your tiptoes in our bathroom, you can see the very side of the Space Needle.

All in all, it’s not a bad place to live.

We might not be in a penthouse, but she’s a med-student, and I’m what the industry likes to call a mid-tier influencer.

We’re lucky we can afford to live in downtown Seattle at all.

If we were somewhere else — Los Angeles or New York — we definitely would not be this close to the city center.

When I start to laugh at her poking, she rolls her eyes and mutters something like, you’re fine, before disappearing back down the hallway. I can’t see her, but I know the sounds of her walking into the kitchen, the familiar click of the coffee pot coming off the warmer.

I close my eyes in appreciation. At least in ten minutes, there will be a warm mug in my hand.

“What are you doing up this early, anyway?” Maisie asks, her voice floating in over the breakfast bar. I grimace, force myself to turn over and stand up, eyes locking on my phone, where the video is playing again and again.

It shows me grabbing the hiking bag, clipping it on, and jumping into the frame so it bounces against my back. I thought it would be a cute little clip to add in my hiking GRWM, but all you can see on the screen is my constipated look of pain before I lurch forward from the weight of the pack.

“Earth to Lola,” Maisie says from the kitchen, and I give her a sheepish look as I close out the app.

Her eyes drift away from me and onto the other items in the living room — the brand-new hiking shoes on the ground, piles and piles of leggings and zip-up hoodies on the couch, lights and chargers and a million other gadgets heaped onto the armchair.

When her eyes find mine again, her eyebrows have nearly disappeared into her chocolate brown hair.

“Lola,” she says, shaking her head and turning to pour a mug of coffee. “No way you’re actually doing that thing.”

“It’s an opportunity to travel the world, Maisie.”

“Yeah, sure, but half of the world is like, the outdoors. And you hate that stuff.”

A brief flicker of shame lights through me at the history I’ve kept hidden from her, but I tamp it down. It’s not like she wants to hear my little sob story background.

Maisie grew up in a family of twelve and had to claw her way through school while helping to take care of her siblings. Still, she managed to graduate at the top of her class and get into an amazing medical program here in Seattle.

“You’re right.” I shoot her a grin to cover the insecurity I’m feeling. “But I hate not winning a free trip to travel the world more.”

I accept a mug of coffee from her and settle in at the breakfast bar, taking a break from my packing to enjoy the warm, soothing taste of the pecan coffee, the caffeine buzzing pleasantly through my veins.

The Ecotra thing is not so much a free trip as it is a brand deal of sorts, and I fully intend to win.

Ecotra is a travel agency that focuses on ethical and sustainable travel.

Instead of partnering with massive hotel chains, they make deals with farmers and local tour guide companies across the world.

When you go on a trip with them, you’ll end up staying in the last surviving independently owned hotel in the area, or a bed and breakfast with a back story.

That, or you’ll be camping on the side of a mountain, preparing yourself for a grueling hike in the Swiss Alps.

That’s part of their brand image — travel meeting nature, a love for the environment going hand-in-hand with a love for history and culture.

The perfect spokesperson for the brand would be able to move seamlessly from city to country to the thick of the rain forest, and my video submission has to prove to Ecotra that I’m that girl.

Luckily, living in Seattle is perfect for that. The city is bustling and fresh, and Washington state is rife with outdoorsy opportunities. Or so I’m told.

“And where did you hear of this campsite, again?” Maisie asks, once her coffee cup is nearly empty.

I wave my hand at her. “A friend at one of those networking events. They mentioned going out there with a group a few summers ago for a campaign with the Washington State Park Association.”

Maisie pauses before setting her mug in the sink. “Right. I’m just worried about you going on your own. Don’t you have another influencer friend who could come with you?”

There’s only one other person I know for sure is also going for the Ecotra thing. An influencer I follow, whom I’ve seen around the city, but it’s not like we’re really friends. And it’s also not like I want to give up my secret spot to someone who might make better content than me.

“I’ll be fine.” I wave dismissively over my shoulder, toward the pile of stuff littering our living room. “There’s a GPS thing in there somewhere, and a flare gun, I think.”

“See, the word gun doesn’t actually make me feel any better.”

Maisie disappears to go get ready — either for class, clinicals, a study group, or her internship, I’m not sure — and I turn back to the looming prospect of sorting through and packing all the stuff.

I’m at the point in my influencing journey that, with a little prompting, most brands will ship something to me for free, just in the hopes that I might give it a little exposure.

But I am not at the point yet where sponsorships and paid brand deals are a given.

So, all this stuff was free, but it’s not necessarily going to help me pay the rent.

It’s one reason why I need to get this Ecotra thing.

The other reason floats back to mind when my phone buzzes gently in my pocket.

Probably an Insta notification, but it could just as easily be another text from my mom.

I close my eyes and try to forget the first one, which came through a few months ago and to which I responded with no more than a thumbs up.

Mom: Maybe you could show Darlie around the city!

The thought of it makes my stomach turn and provides a fresh stir of motivation for me to get packed, get in my car, and start up the side of the mountain.

If I’m lucky, I won’t even have a cell signal up there.

My mom’s texts will get caught somewhere between her phone and mine, rather than pinging right to my hands.

When I came out here to start my journalism program, I thought it would be far enough. New York City and Washington State are about as far apart as you can get in the continental United States.

But apparently, it’s still not a sufficient distance. I’ll have to go international if I want to avoid my mother and her real family.

I’m just finishing dividing the camping gear into two piles — maybe taking, and maybe not taking —when Maisie appears with perfectly straight hair, wearing a gray sweat set that she makes look amazing. If I had it on, it would simply be a groutfit.

“All right, I’m taking off,” she says, grabbing her lunch from the counter and moving to the door. I shove down any trepidation I feel and flash her a wide, steady grin, hoping it will make her stop freaking out, too.

Pausing on the welcome mat, she sighs and says, “Just do me a favor, Lols?”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t get eaten by a bear out there.”

I roll my eyes at her, but the moment she turns the lock behind her, I pick up my phone, tap over to the browser, and search chance of bear attack in pacific northwest.

The results are not completely promising.