Chapter Twenty-Six

Callum

 

I pulled up in front of the assembled guests, all decked out in their cold weather gear they had clearly bought right before coming to Reckless Falls.  Raising my voice, I called out for them to watch me as I guided them through a quick safety check. "And over here you'll see..."

"What did he say?" came the cry from the back.

"Can you speak up?"

"Can we take these out on the highway? It's not like there's anyone on the roads."

I took a deep breath and tried not to lose my shit. In the two weeks since Harper left, the tour business had fallen back. It was the natural ebb and flow of the seasons and people's vacation times, but knowing that didn't make it suck any less. I needed money, so I was willing to take on anything, even if it meant losing my sanity in the process.

And I was well on my way to that point today, with this tour in particular. It was part of a giant family reunion going on at the B&B, and I was about to start leading twenty-eight very ill-equipped people — who couldn't downhill ski or snowshoe or ice-climb or really anything close to fun or interesting — on the world's slowest snowmobile tour. And none of them seemed to be able to find the wherewithal to actually listen to what the fuck I was saying.

"When are we going to get going?" a high-pitched voice whined.  A little chubby kid who looked like he'd never set foot outside of his gaming room sneered up at me.

"We're gonna get going as soon as I finish the safety demonstration," I barked. "Which we can't do you if you keep putting your hands all over things."

The kid yanked his hand from the throttle like he'd been scalded and I heard an aggrieved gasp from the woman who was clearly his mother. I sighed and rolled my eyes heavenward and started running through my safety spiel in one long exhale. With my mouth on autopilot, I was free to let my mind wander, and it wandered back to where it had lived for two weeks now.

Harper.

I still couldn't get the sight of her leaving out of my head. The way she hadn't even looked back at us. She really did believe it was just a fling with any old guy. Guys.

"What the fuck?" I said out loud. I heard another gasp and suddenly I remembered the tour...and the safety lesson I had just finished...and then punctuated with a curse while I still had everyone's attention.

"Excuse me, what did you say?" snapped the kid's mother as she leaped from her snowmobile and floundered through the snow to clap her hands over her kid's ears.

"Ow mom! What the fuck?" the kid cried.

*****

I walked into the house and slammed the door on this stupid, stupid day. Another refunded tour. This was getting bad.

I took a deep breath, trying to collect myself...

And then stopped short, straightening up and sniffing again. "What the hell?" I asked the air.

I walked around from my mudroom into my too small kitchen. "What the fuck?" I asked Gray. "Are you...baking?"

Gray stood up and slammed the oven door closed. Without meeting my eye, he whirled in place and opened the refrigerator. "I do this when I'm freaking out," he explained, grabbing two eggs and cracking them into a bowl.

I watched him, completely taken aback. "You've been holding out on me," I said. "I could have been demanding fresh-baked goodies as rental payment this whole time."

"Well, no offense but I wasn't freaking out two months ago," Gray said. "I just started freaking out recently." He stood there with the bowl hugged to his chest, whisking the eggs in frantic, jerking motions. I recognized it because I think it was the same motion my heart was making.

"You're thinking about her, aren’t you?" I finally said.

Gray turned and looked me in the eye. Taking a deep breath, he lifted his chin, almost as if in an act of defiance. "Yeah," he said, nodding. "I'm thinking about her."

I closed my eyes and then opened them again. "Me too. Too much.

"All the fucking time."

"I fucked up a tour today," I confessed. "Another one."

"Because you were thinking about her?"

"Yup."

"What did you do?"

"Swore in front of a family reunion."

Gray chuckled and tapped the whisk against the bowl. "If I had a family reunion to swear in front of, I would have done the same thing," he sighed. "We shouldn't have let her leave." His whisking was starting to slow down.

I shook my head. "No."

He looked up at me. "We're idiots..."

I closed my eyes. "Yeah," I sighed. Then I opened them. "Should we...go get her?" I asked.

The sound of the bowl clanging into the sink was my answer, because he was already out the door.