Chapter 33 – Davis
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
DAVIS
Olivia: Good luck tomorrow!
Callie: Break a leg. Or don’t. I don’t know what to say with a bike ride.
Lying in her bed, Davis smiled at her phone and responded.
Davis: I’m so nervous.
Olivia: About the ride? Or about finally telling Kev your sneaky little secret?
Davis: Both. Hard both.
Callie: I never knew you were such a romantic, but I am loving this side of you.
Olivia: I want to be you when I grow up.
Davis: Girls’ night next weekend?
Olivia: Yes please.
Callie: Yes, but bring Kev. We can go out for pizza or something.
Davis: Then it wouldn’t be a girls’ night.
Olivia: We don’t care!
Callie: Text us tomorrow when you cross the finish line, you absolute badass!
Olivia: Be safe too, okay?
Davis: I will
Rolling over, she plugged in her phone, set her alarm for four thirty a.m., and thought about how she was going to tell him. It was silly, how long she’d kept the real reason she was riding tomorrow a secret. There were so many times she could have easily told him. But she was invested now. And even though she wasn’t a romantic at heart, not like Kev was, she wanted to try. She wanted to be more romantic for him. She just hoped she’d pull it off.
Shoving her bike shoes into her bag, she zipped it up, hauled it over her shoulder, and trudged up the stairs.
“There she is,” Madigan said, his coffee mug paused halfway to his mouth. He was sitting with her mom on one side of the dining hall counter, her grandma on the other side. All of them looking bright-eyed and bushy-tailed even though the sun hadn’t even considered rising yet.
“You’re all up early,” she said through a yawn, rubbing her eyes and joining them at the counter .
“We had to see you off,” her grandma said. “Besides.” She gave a deep, long-suffering sigh. “I’m always up this early.”
Leaning in to kiss her temple, her mom asked, “Are you excited?”
“I’m more nervous than anything,” she admitted. “I just hope I finish the ride.”
“How much did you end up raising?” her grandma asked. She set a plate of blueberry muffins on the counter. “These are just out of the oven.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” Davis said, her stomach already tied up in knots. “But I’m not hungry.”
“Oh well,” her grandma said in a huff, one hand on her hip. “You have to eat. You can’t just raw dog your bike ride, Davis.”
Madigan— not exaggerating —spit out his coffee.
“Raw dog?” Davis repeated while her mom snorted out the laugh she’d been trying to hold back.
“What?” her grandma asked, baffled by their responses.
“Where did you learn that term?” Davis asked back.
She straightened. “Clay said it when he was here. He said it like,” she paused, cleared her throat, and stated as clearly as if she were in a court of law, “like it was being unprepared.”
Madigan was gone, wheezing, actually getting up from the counter and taking a lap around the dining hall to pull himself together.
“I guess that’s kind of right,” her mom said, barely getting the words out through her laughter.
“Oh, ha, ha.” Her grandma flicked a hand through the air, swatting at all of them. “If you were there, you would have gotten it.”
“Sounds like someone definitely got it,” Davis muttered, barking, “ow!” when her mom elbowed her in the arm.
Immediately apologizing, still trying not to laugh while she rubbed Davis’s arm, her mom attempted to shift the conversation back on track. “Anyway, sweetie. How much did you raise?”
“Around two grand, I think,” Davis said. “Thanks mostly to all of you. But Cole and Mira donated too. And Jen. And Bud. And Clay. Jimmy. All the Little Timber men chipped in what they could.”
“What you’re doing for Kev,” Madigan said, returning to the counter, still red-eyed but at least able to breathe, “and for people like him, it’s pretty amazing.”
Her mom gave her a squeeze. “We’re so proud of you.”
“Couldn’t be prouder,” her grandma said, completely composed again as she reached across the counter to pat her hand.
Sitting there, surrounded by some of the most important people in her life, a light switched on inside her, flickering, growing brighter. Her mom, her grandma, Madigan, each one of them, in their own way, had been helping her, supporting her, rooting for her—and for Kev. This whole time, they’d been there for her, never trying to tell her what to do or judge her choices, never trying to intervene, at least not in any way she was aware of. It had probably been hard for them, watching from a distance while she and Kev found their way back to each other. Watching them struggle, seeing them hurting. Waiting for them to figure it all out, one way or another. Because that was the thing about growing up; nobody could do it for you.
She wondered if they knew how grateful she was for them. She wondered if they knew how much they meant to her.
“Guys,” she said, meeting their stares one at a time. “Thank you. Thank you for being there for me, for us. I love you all so much.”
After Madigan and her mom hugged her tightly, and then each other, her grandma stiffened her spine and said, “We love you too, dear,” reining in the emotions in the room before they spiraled out of control. Placing two warm muffins into a paper bag and handing it to her, her grandma said, “Now go ride your bike for far longer than anyone ever should, you ridiculous child.”
Taking the baggie, Davis shook it gently and said, “No raw dogging for me.”
While Madigan coughed on his coffee again, she gave her grandma a loud, smacking kiss on her cheek. Then she stopped at the stairs to give Murphy—who seemed to be waiting for her—scratches behind both ears before she went to find Kev.
“What do you want to listen to?” he asked, scrolling through her music while she drove them out of the parking lot.
“I don’t know.” She tightened her grip, clinging to the steering wheel like it was a fraying rope suspending her over the Grand Canyon. “How about something fast and hard?”
“Hmm,” he hummed. “A little challenging while you’re driving, but if it’s what you need, then I am up to the task.”
She laughed, but it came out too loud.
“You’re nervous, huh?” he said, still scrolling. “I would be too, after all the training you’ve done. But you’re gonna do amazing.”
If only he knew why she was so nervous. She’d wanted to tell him about the fundraiser so many times. Almost had after he’d ridden River for the first time. But when he came back home after Jen had offered him a job and a house that Davis couldn’t wait to see, he’d taken one look at her, fallen into her arms, and wept. After he’d told her why he was crying, they were both too wrecked to add any more emotions into the mix.
“Here.” He clicked play. “I think this will do the trick.”
While techno started thumping through the speakers, she turned up the volume, slid her sunglasses over her eyes, and stepped on the gas.
Two hours and several rambling conversations later, she checked the GPS. Three miles until their exit. She was running out of time. Stalling. If she didn’t tell him now, he’d figure it out on his own before she could.
Turning the music down, she said, “Kev, I have something to tell you.”
His head swiveled toward her. “Is it something bad? ”
“No. It’s not bad. It’s just… I haven’t been completely honest with you.”
“Uh, baby. I don’t mean to disagree with you, but this is usually how bad conversations start.”
Reaching over the center console, she took his hand and squeezed. “I promise, it’s not bad. It’s not even that big of a deal. I mean, I should have told you this a while ago. Like, you probably won’t even care.” She knew that wasn’t true. Because Kev cared about everything. It was one of her favorite things about him, how much he cared. “At first I didn’t tell you because we weren’t talking. And then I didn’t tell you because I was embarrassed. And now, I don’t know.” She laughed at herself. “The closer we got to the ride, the more I wanted to surprise you with it.”
Squeezing her hand back a little too tightly, he said, “Okay, so this might be a good time to tell you that I hate surprises.”
“It’s a good surprise,” she said. “Really good. But it might take a second to get to the good part. Because a few months ago, something happened.” A little fire kindled to life inside her chest. “Someone I loved needed help. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t figure out how to help him.”
His fingers threaded through hers.
“And because I couldn’t help him, I thought I might have lost him forever. I thought it was too late. But I was wrong.” She flicked on her signal, taking the off ramp at their exit. “It wasn’t too late. It was just that he needed to go away for a while. He needed to be with people who were like him, people who understood him.”
“Wait,” he said, looking around at the intersection at the top of the ramp, probably recognizing the gas station on the right, the mountains rising to their left. “I know where we are.”
“But even though he was where he needed to be,” she continued, turning left at the light, “I missed him. I missed him so much. And I felt helpless because I couldn’t talk to him or see him. I wasn’t a part of this thing he was going through. ”
She felt him watching her again as the road took them toward the mountains, pavement giving way to dirt beneath their tires.
“And even though we weren’t talking anymore, even though I thought I might never see this person again, even though my heart was so broken I wondered if it would ever heal, I still wanted to help him. I needed to help him. Even if it was only in a small, insignificant way.”
“Davis,” he said, his voice thick. “This is where my rehab is. Willow Creek. It’s right down that road.”
She nodded, swallowed the lump rising up her throat, then explained, “So I found the place he’d been sent to. I found their website. I saw how he might be spending his days. I read about all the programs available to him. I learned about all the support he was getting. And I felt better. Because even though I couldn’t help him, I knew they could.”
She turned onto another mountain road, heading up a switchback, the trailhead where the race would begin looming on her GPS. “And then I saw that they had a yearly fundraiser. They called it the Ride For Recovery. It was no joke either. Fifty miles?—”
“—of pure hell,” he finished for her. And when she looked at him, his eyes were wide. “You’re doing this fundraiser for my rehab? You’re doing this ride for me? You’re grand gesturing”—he placed his other hand over his heart, his round eyes going glassy—“for me?”
Her eyes went glassy too, and with a watery laugh, she said, “Yep.”
“But you’ve been training for this ride all summer, right? I mean, when? When did you sign up?”
For some reason, admitting this, saying it out loud, felt like reaching into her chest and yanking her heart right out into the open. Oh well . It belonged to him anyway. “I signed up the day after Madigan checked you in. He had a brochure for Willow Creek. I stole it. I found the website.”
“But you hated me then. Why?—”
Jerking the wheel, she pulled off onto the shoulder, slamming the brakes so hard rocks shot up from their tires. If she was late, she was late. But he couldn’t go one more second believing that was true.
Throwing the car into park, she twisted in her seat, took his face between her hands and said, “Kevin Lowes, I have never hated you. Not a single day of my life. I have only ever loved you. That love may have hurt more than anything else for a while. I may have tried to push it down. I may have tried to hide from it. But it has always been there.”
Dropping his chin to his chest, he said, “Thank you, Davis. I’m so…” He squeezed his eyes shut for a long blink. “I can’t find the words. Just, thank you.”
“You can thank me more thoroughly in about six hours. But for now…” She cupped his jaw, raised his head, leaned in, and kissed him. Then she said, “You’re welcome.”
Had she ever ridden a bike before? Had she even trained at all? Was it all some cruel and meaningless fever dream? Or had she died here, and this was her purgatory, pedaling up this fucking mountain for all of eternity?
These were the questions rolling around her head while she pushed herself up the final climb of this evil, seventh circle of hell ride. She only had five miles left, but the previous forty-five had redefined pain, knocked her down all the pegs, humbled her to the point of tears not once, but three times.
They’d made it to the trailhead where the race started, and might someday finish, in the nick of time. And after she’d stood by Kev’s side during an emotional reunion with his lovely rehab therapist Rick—which included one of those intense man hugs complete with two hearty back slaps—she’d waited with the other riders at the starting line so long ago now it felt like a different geological era. Like she’d need a time machine to find her way back.
And now she was pedaling alone, almost at the back of the pack, with what she was pretty sure were no longer feet but just socks full of blisters. With each pedal stroke, she pictured Kev and Rick sitting comfortably in their camping chairs, chatting, soaking up the early fall sunshine while she wiped beads of sweat off her forehead before they dripped into her eyes, unable to do anything at all about the sweat dripping down her ass.
But she kept going, kept pedaling. Because even if she was dying, even if this was the way she’d meet her end, she wasn’t going to stop. She wasn’t going to give up. She’d come too far now.
Finally reaching the top of the last climb, the finish line coming into blessed view below her, she paused to catch her breath and drink some water. Then she took in her surroundings. The larches were already turning, yellow and orange branches dappling the mountainsides. The sky was the deep, almost nautical blue of early fall. And the love of her life was waiting for her at the bottom of a run that, despite her complete exhaustion, actually looked pretty fun.
Pointing her tires down the trail, she rose out of the saddle, pedaled hard to clear a wicked rock drop, and bombed it down to the finish line. Where she found Kev, up on his feet with a champagne glass of Gatorade in one hand, a chocolate cupcake from Glazed and Confused in the other, and a million-dollar smile on his face.
Smiling back, she thought, this is my life . It hadn’t always been easy. It hadn’t always gone the way she’d wanted it to. It would certainly get harder in ways she couldn’t anticipate. But right now, it was good. It was really, really good.