“That’s not true,” she says, before conceding, “but yeah, it would have been harder. Launching from solid ground is much easier than launching from a flaming dumpster being swept downstream in a flood.”
I grin. “That meme has resonated with me way too often lately.”
She nods, her eyes going wide. “Right? Every time I turn on the news this year, I feel so helpless.” She sighs, a troubled look tightening her features. “Sometimes, I wonder if it’s responsible to want to bring children into a world like this one, with so much suffering and danger in it.”
I stop, turning to face her on the trail. “Of course it is.”
Her brows pinch closer together. “You really think so?”
“I do. Children are hope. And that seems like exactly what the world needs right now. Lots of hope. Lots of compassion. Lots of people trying to love each other the best they can, even when they disagree.”
Her eyes begin to shine, and she blinks faster. “Where did you come from?”
“Small town in coastal Maine,” I murmur. “Weird name. You might have heard of it.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” she whispers. “I just feel like…”
I take her hand and step closer, holding her gaze. “You feel like?”
“Like I…” She trails off, swallowing hard. A beat later, she shakes her head, her breath rushing through her parted lips. “I don’t know. Ignore me. I’m sleep deprived.”
“No, tell me,” I insist. “I want to know what you’re feeling.”
“I honestly can’t remember what I was going to say,” she says with a laugh. She steps back, sliding her hand from mine. She props her fists on her hips and turns her back to me, gazing through the trees. “I bet it’s gorgeous here in the fall, too. And the winter. I bet this path has a great view when the leaves are off the trees.”
“We should come back around the holidays,” I say, watching her profile. “Spend a couple of days playing in the snow. Think you might be up for it?”
“Of course. Sounds like fun,” she says.
But she’s lying, and she’s not very good at it. Her lips are saying what I want to hear, but I can tell, as things stand now, there’s no chance she’s coming back here with me. Something stands in the way of the feelings she has for me, something that blocks her from letting them out into the open.
But at least I know I’m not alone.
She doesn’t have to say it out loud. When she asked where I’d come from, I knew what that look in her eyes meant. She feels it too, this pull, this sense that she’s found what she’s been looking for.
Or, in my case, what I was too stupid to be looking for.
But I’m not too stupid now, and I’m not giving up until I clear every obstacle between her heart and mine.
Chapter Nineteen
Colette
We continue past the turnoff into town and up a mountain trail so steep it makes conversation almost impossible.
Thank God.
The harder it is to breathe, the less likely I’ll say something I’ll regret.
It would be stupid to tell Zack that I’m falling for him, that he’s the most extraordinary person I’ve ever met, that all I want to do is whisk him back to Hidden Kill Bay and play house with him for the next forty or fifty years. Sixty if we’re lucky.
Stupid and selfish.
Zack and I aren’t the same kind of dreamer. If we were, he wouldn’t have left the band to strike out on his own.
People like me find communities, groups, friend pods where we fit, and we do everything in our power to hold onto them, even when things get tough. I still have friends I’ve known since elementary school, and I would have stayed in a job that only partially fulfilled me for the rest of my life if I hadn’t been fired. I was loyal to Theresa, my amazing boss. That loyalty and our connection to each other and her business were more important to me than finding a way to make interior design a viable career path.
Meanwhile, Zack is on a quest to be the most authentic artist he can be and is willing to make the friendship and safety and comfort sacrifices to make it happen. Making music he believes in is his top priority, and I’m sure it always will be.
The world needs people like him, driven to make and share their art. Just as it needs people like me, who put connection and strong emotional ties first.
It takes all kinds to make the world go round, but Zack and I together would be like a fish falling for a duck. They might love each other passionately, but where are they going to live?
Speaking of living…
“Dying,” I pant, collapsing onto the bench at the end of the trail and sucking oxygen into my burning lungs. “I’m dying.”