Chapter Thirty
CALLIE
Once at Blackrock, I shaded my eyes from the intensity of the sun and released a cleansing breath. Light shimmered on the water’s surface as I scanned the densely wooded area surrounding the lake’s edge. Everything was just as Davis described, private and peaceful. We’d only seen a handful of cars parked on the side of the road on our way in, and I was yet to see one other person since Davis had hiked down to the rocky bay, a kayak carried over his head as if he were a participant in a fitness competition.
Propping myself against Davis’s bumper, I yanked the first of Clem’s water shoes on, cursing the fact that her feet were a full size and a half smaller than my own. After snapping the neoprene fabric over my left heel, my gaze latched on to the beauty of this magical setting once more.
Enormous redwoods circled the lake’s entire perimeter, standing tall like the Queen’s Guard. Patches of dappling sunlight broke through the branches overhead and speckled the large boulders that led to the water. The back of my neck prickled, leaving a déjà vu sensation in its wake. Had I been here before? I dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. I’d never been this far west of Lenox.
Still . . . I wanted to tuck the mental picture away for safekeeping and pull it out whenever I needed to remember something beautiful. Something good. Or maybe when I simply wanted to remember the man readying our kayak at the edge of the water. Only an hour ago he’d held me in his arms as if time was of no consequence to him at all, as if he could somehow understand the sadness I’d tried—and failed—to starve. “Just in case you’re wondering, I think you’re pretty incredible, too.”
Though they’d originally been my words to him, he’d owned them in a way that wouldn’t—couldn’t—be matched if spoken by anybody else.
Anybody else. Just the idea of another set of arms around me, another voice caressing my ear, another mouth pressed to mine . . . felt wrong.
What was happening to me? I’d never thought in such exclusive relationship terms before.
As if sensing my stare on his bare back, Davis turned around to bracket his hands on his hips . . . his hips, which were only slightly lower than his taut chest and trim waist. And only slightly higher than his muscular thighs and calves.
He cupped his hands around his mouth and called up to me. “I have an extra pair of sunglasses in my glove box. You’ll want them on the water.”
“Thanks.” I gave him a cheesy thumbs-up. “I’ll grab them.” I slid off the bumper and took heed of my footing. Luckily, the passenger-side door required only three steps. “Do you need anything else from up here?”
“Only you.”
I twisted back to see him watching me from below, his smile that of an excited school-age boy, not of a veterinarian who’d graduated top in his class. Still, for the second time today, his words nested inside me.
Toes pinched in my too-small shoes, I made the slow trek down to the rocky shoreline below. But not even cramping feet could have kept me away. I’d have walked across shards of obsidian if it meant spending the day with Davis Carter.
And something told me he knew it, too.
I tucked the arms of his sunglasses around my messy updo and met him near the tandem kayak.
He stretched tall, and I worked to keep my eyes on his.
Water lapped at the back of his heels. “Were you planning to go in the water like that?”
I looked down at my cutoff shorts and tank. “No, I have my suit on underneath.”
Though it was far from new, I’d be hard-pressed to find a suit with a more perfect fit. While I adored the daisy-patterned tankini with swirly petals of yellow and cream and matching boy-short-style bottoms, the cute factor of the suit was far surpassed by the functionality of it. I’d hiked, swam, camped, and would soon kayak in this getup.
“Okay, well . . .” He moved his hand to the back of his neck and glanced at the trees to my left. “Whatever you’re most comfortable wearing is fine.”
But I’d already started to slip my tank over my head and unbutton my shorts. After sliding each leg out of the stiff denim, I tossed the shorts next to a mossy tree stump and secured my hands on my hips. “I’m ready when you are.”
“Uh . . . okay, sure.” His throat bobbed before he gripped the front of the kayak. “Why don’t you get in over here and take the front seat. I’ll push us out.”
“You sure you don’t need my help?”
“Positive.” A quick but definitive answer.
Inside the oval cutout of the kayak were two low-back seats, both stationed to point forward. Each spot supplied a compact well for leg room, a little too compact for Davis’s legs. In order to accommodate his height, he’d have to stretch his legs into the grooves on either side of my seat. And that thought, the thought of him sitting so close to me for the duration of our water adventure, sent a tingle up the back of my neck.
I stepped into the vessel.
Davis held the sides of the kayak firm as I secured my seat. “Ready?”
A flurry of nervous energy spiked my adrenaline. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said with a hard push. “’Cause it’s too late now.”
In a matter of seconds, we careened into the lake. Davis settled in behind me, his legs brushing against the outside of my thighs while we floated in the middle of the most breathtaking setting I’d ever visited in person. Between the intoxicating air and the sounds of the water below and the birds above . . . I was on sensory overload, unable to stop gawking.
“You comfortable?” he asked.
An uncontainable swell of joy coursed through me. I raised my hands over my head and my laugh echoed off the cliffs on either side of us.
I felt the vibration of his chuckle through my seat back. “I’ll take that as a yes.”
The sight was like a travel advertisement—no, it was better than that. The trees. The snow-dusted mountains to the west. The near-placid water. Again, a strange sense of knowing assaulted me, the hairs on the back of my neck rising. I’ve been here before, my soul seemed to say.
“This is my favorite spot on earth. Right here,” Davis said, paddling behind me.
“I can absolutely see why. It’s gorgeous.”
We pushed forward again, and the front of the kayak sliced the water like a blade. I twisted back to see Davis’s paddle slipping in and out of the lake with practiced ease, steering us left and then right.
“Oh, uh,” I said with a sudden jolt. “I think I’m going to need a lesson. I have no clue how to do that.”
“It’s easy. Just grip the handles like I am here, and then dip the blade in the water at an angle. Like this. My seat provides direction and power; your seat provides the speed. Go ahead, set the pace, and I’ll follow.”
I checked behind me again, memorizing his grip and then maneuvering my own paddle into the water the way he showed me. But in my first attempt to propel us forward, I figured out rowing wasn’t nearly as easy as Davis made it appear. My efforts were far from compatible with his. By stroke ten, every minuscule fiber of muscle in my shoulders felt as if it had been struck by a match.
Where his paddle cut in and out of the water with a fluid finesse, the tip of my blades never left the surface without the stutter-drag-skip combination that would soon become my signature move. Once, on a less-than-pathetic upswing, I lost my grip altogether. But thankfully, Davis caught the slip and popped my paddle out of the water.
“I’m afraid you’ve chosen a terrible partner. I’m embarrassingly horrible at this.” My self-deprecating laugh was snatched away by the wind.
“It just takes practice.”
But when I turned to see his smile, set against a backdrop that felt so tangible, so alive . . . it finally hit me. “This is my sketch.”
“What?” he asked, shifting forward. “I didn’t hear you.”
I pulled my paddle inside the kayak and tried to turn around. To no avail. The kayak rocked hard to the left, and then to the right.
“Careful there,” Davis warned. “Do you need something back here?”
Yes, you! I scooted my backside farther down into the seat until my feet were crammed into the point at the kayak’s front. Dipping my head until the nape of my neck rested firmly against the hard plastic of my seat back, perfectly pillowed by the bulk of my life jacket, I strained to catch sight of his face. It didn’t matter if he was upside down. I just needed to see him to confirm my suspicion was correct.
His lips quirked. “Now that position does not look the least bit comfortable.”
“This lake—this exact spot in the water, it’s what I sketched for you that night, isn’t it? The memory you described to me. Of you and your father fishing.”
Letting us go adrift, he, too, tucked his paddle inside, the handle resting on his lap as he smiled down at me. “Yes, it is. We came here together often.”
This lake had not only been a special place for him and his father but also had become a special place for him and his son, too. A tradition he’d passed on. A tradition he’d invited me into as well, once from memory, and now in reality.
I fought to drain the emotion stacking up in my throat. “I knew I’d been here before. Your memory stuck like a picture in my imagination.”
Davis angled his face over mine, a look of undisguised pleasure brightening his eyes. “And what else lives in your imagination?”
I wiggled my cramped toes while a tingling numbness casted my ankles and calves. If I were required to swim in this state, I’d drown from lack of usable limbs. “That’s a rather broad question to ask an artist.”
As if unsatisfied with my ambiguity, he lowered his face closer to mine, the nearness of his lips and the warmth of his breath doing nothing for my clarity of thought.
“What’s next for you, Calla Lilly Quinn?”
I forced a swallow, working to neutralize the power he held over me by the use of my given name. “I’m still researching my options.” A slight mistruth considering I hadn’t reached out to any of my contacts. Hadn’t even consulted a map in weeks. The tugs of intuition I’d relied on to guide my past pursuits and plans had been second to everything else this summer. Especially Davis.
The inky black of his pupils grew deeper as his gaze roamed my face. “Then allow me to throw one more option into the mix.” He brushed his lips over the arches of my eyebrows. My eyelids slid closed on their own volition. “Stay in Lenox.”
My abdomen clenched tight. “Davis, you know I—”
He covered my objection with a kiss, one that revived all circulation to the lower half of my body.
The second he came up for breath, I pushed the words out. “I don’t live in Lenox.”
“You don’t live anywhere.”
I tried to push up, but he’d already hooked his hands through the shoulders of my life jacket, his thumbs working my neck in rhythmic circles.
“Your family lives here,” he said.
“Yes.” I hesitated, the tingling sensation left on my lips a distraction. “But—”
“And once you establish yourself as a local artist, I have no doubt your contracts will multiply. Your mural at the bakery will act like a billboard advertisement. Not only in our small town, but think of what you could do in Redmond and Bend. You’ve already got one contract in the works—at Shep’s. And I know there will be others.”
I reached up and touched the hinge of his jaw, drawing a line with my finger from his ear to the base of his chin. He trapped my hand in his and kissed my knuckles.
“And you’ll have me. And Brandon.”
I blinked up at him, a cascade of want rushing through me. He wasn’t the first man to ever suggest I stay in town and localize my art . . . but he was the only man I hadn’t wanted to dismiss with my next breath. Especially not after the way he’d held me this morning.
This conversation needed to be face-to-face, and not the upside-down kind. I broke his grip on my shoulders and pushed against my seat back, working to pivot without rocking our floating vessel too violently.
But my three-point turn halted when my life jacket buckle caught on the edge of the kayak midrotation, throwing me off balance.
“Careful, Callie, you’re going to—”
With a riotous rock to the right, we plummeted into the water, the kayak tilting upright the instant we were out. Stunned and sputtering, we came up for air. Davis reached me first: one hand wrapped around the tether of the kayak; the other locked on my life vest.
“You okay?” He inspected me as if I were precious cargo. “How’s your head?”
“Fiiiine.” My teeth chattered. “I’m okay. Wh-what about you?”
With a single tug, he pulled me toward him, our life jackets bumping at the chest, my limbs freezing but weightless.
“You’re sure?” he asked again.
“Yes, I’m sure.”
His relief was audible.
I glanced to our right. “What about the kayak? Do you think we lost anything?”
He wouldn’t take his eyes off me. “Nothing of importance.”
In the shadow of the kayak, we treaded water, the initial shock of cold wearing off as Davis gingerly touched my face, pushing the soppy hair away from my eyes and then trailing a finger over my trembling lips.
“Pretty sure we can consider that an epic failure on my part,” I said. “I warned you, though. I’m not a good partner.”
His expression remained as unreadable as his thoughts. Reaching a hand to the back of my head, he brought our foreheads together, his lips only an inch away from mine. His warm, wintergreen breath tickled my nose as he spoke. “Everything worthwhile in life takes practice, Callie. Everything.”
By the way he said it, I knew we were no longer talking about kayaking. We’d made a full and complete revolution. All the way back to Clem’s front porch.
And perhaps farther still.
“It’s not that I . . .” My voice quivered, only not from the cold this time. “It’s not that I don’t want this. I do.”
It’s that I can’t have it. Not without hurting you.
“I know that, Callie,” he said with such conviction that my legs nearly stopped treading. “But what I don’t understand is what’s stopping you? You have a thousand more reasons to stay than leave.”
Tiny water droplets plinked from his eyelashes onto his cheeks, and my heart compressed at the sight. At his willingness to take on such a liability, knowing full well that he had been on the painful end of a relationship too many times.
“I’m not long-term material, Davis. It’s not in my genetics.” Maybe I had hit my head entering the water, maybe the damage had caused just one of my father’s many statements to leak out of my mouth, but there it was. For the taking.
“That’s nonsense.”
“It’s not.” I shook my head. “Clem and my mom, they’re the same. The ever-maternal, bread-making, scrapbook-saving traditionalists. And I’m . . . I’m just like him. My father.”
“You can’t possibly believe that.”
“It’s true. We are the same in so many ways. And I could never do to you what he did to us.”
“Commitment is about choice, Callie. It has nothing to do with personality or genetics or cowardly fathers.” His eyes became fierce, as if somehow he was able to generate his own heat source despite the melted glacier we floated in. “Look at me.”
“I am,” I said through chattering teeth.
“Good. Because I want you to see me when I say this to you. And I want you to save it to memory so that every time that lie pops up in your head, you can combat it.” He stared into my eyes. “I didn’t fall in love with a maternal, bread-making, scrapbook-saving traditionalist. I fell in love with you. You. Calla Lilly Quinn. A woman named after a flower called Fire Dancer. You, the ever-whimsical, have-an-inside-picnic-on-a-Sunday-afternoon, mural-painting, dog-saving, teenage-boy-whispering you. No one else. I love you, Callie. I love you.”
My entire body shook uncontrollably—from my head all the way down to my numb toes—and yet I knew it wasn’t hypothermia. No, this diagnosis was far more lethal. An emotional response I’d always managed to avoid before it could drive me off the cliff of no return.
Until I met Davis.
And now that he’d jumped, all I wanted to do was take the leap with him.
I crushed his freezing face to mine and kissed his mouth until our shivers forced us back to shore.