Tess lit up with painful hope. “Yeah? You’ve got someone special in your life, then? A good guy? They exist?”
“Um, not exactly. I’m only here for the ski season. After that, I’ll be contracted somewhere probably far away from here. Not exactly relationship material.”
Tess was quiet a moment. Reflective. “That sounds . . . lonely,” she finally said. “Is it hard to always be on the go, no connections?”
There was that word again. Connections. “I’m not that great at connections.”
Tess nodded. “You’ve been hurt, too.”
“Haven’t we all?”
Tess laughed a little mirthlessly. “Touché. Tell me you’re in a relationship with someone good. Give me some hope.”
“In a relationship?” It felt silly to say I feel a deep connection to a man I met only a couple of weeks ago when we nearly died together . . . “No, but . . .”
“Oh don’t stop there,” Tess said with a smile. “That ‘no, but’ sounds exciting.”
Jane let out a small laugh. “To be determined, I guess.”
Tess knocked her soda can to Jane’s. “To the ‘to be determined,’ then.”
LEVI COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time he’d felt nerves bubble in his chest, but he felt it now. It was date night—pretend date night, as Jane would say. A few days ago, Jane had agreed via text they could practice getting to know each other over dinner somewhere.
Louie’s on the Lake was just as its name proclaimed—right on the water, and a popular local dining spot that would be extremely public. As for neutral, he was going to try and remain just that and stay awake. He was exhausted, having spent the past few days catching up with his own company, while also doing a deep dive into Cutler Sporting Goods accounting.
The store’s situation wasn’t good. In fact, it was bad, really bad, but at the moment, the knowledge of that was all on his shoulders. He needed to talk to his family but wanted another day to finish going through everything first.
Either way, it was going to suck. At the heart, his mom and dad were good people who didn’t have filters or personal space boundaries because they expected the best of everyone.
And Cal had clearly counted on—and taken advantage of—that and them. And Tess. When she found out, it’d kill her. It was keeping him awake at night.
As was something else.
He’d been here two weeks. Longer than any other time since living here. He should be feeling claustrophobic and desperate to get out of town; he should be feeling San Francisco pulling at him to go back.
But he wasn’t. Oddly, Sunrise Cove was the thing pulling at him, calling to him. Being back here, even under duress, reminded him how damn alive he’d felt living in the mountains again.
He’d left because he’d needed some space.
But at some point, that need had gone away.
When his phone buzzed with an incoming call from his dad, who never called him, he answered with a quick “Everything okay?”
“Yeah, why wouldn’t it be?” his dad asked, sounding puzzled, and Levi had to let out a rough laugh.
“Because you never call me?”
“I do so,” his dad said.
“Name one time.”
“When your sister had Peyton.”
“Dad, that was six years ago.”
“Still happened.”
Levi put a finger to his twitching eye. “What’s up?”