Jake laughs and shakes his head, running his hand through his hair. I track the movement, swallowing as I remember what the sight of it used to do to me back then.
He’s kept all the charming boyishness but added something else. Something a lot more alluring to me now that I’m twenty-three.
“Nah,” he says, “the one about his hand.”
Oh. Jake’s read my dad’sbook. The famous memoir about his time as a heart surgeon before an injury took him out of commission. Arguably, the thing that my parents are best-known for.
It was a global sensation when I was a kid. Jake and I had talked about it as teenagers, about how my parents’ love story was out there for everyone to read. While deeply logical, my dad also managed to romanticize his days as a heart surgeon, drawing on all the metaphors you’d imagine while keeping them from being overly cliche.
It’s been years since I picked it up, but I know there are parts I could recite by heart.
“What did you think?”
“I think it’s inspiring,” Jake says and shrugs, glancing up at the sky, which is mottled with clouds, “that he could lose somethingthat seemed to mean so much to him, and move on like that without completely shutting down.”
“Well, he still does research. And he runs the free clinic.”
“Yeah, but—” Jake stops, pauses to think for a second, rubbing his hand over his beard. I force myself not to think about how badly I want to reach out and touch him there, feel every place where he has changed in my absence. “I guess I felt like I understood what he was saying about surgery. That’s how I’ve always felt about hockey — that rush. The feeling that you’re fulfilling your purpose. It was pretty cool that he managed a trauma like that without losing himself.”
I bite my tongue to keep from saying something about how smart he is, remembering how self-deprecating he used to be in high school. How he’d talk about hockey being his only thing, despite the fact that he’s actually really insightful.
As we float along the lake, we talk like we used to. About life, about Wildfern Ridge. Jake tells me about Los Angeles. I tell him about the drama at Fern Days last year. He tells me about the time he met the president. I tell him about wanting to find a new place eventually, about outgrowing my little apartment.
He gives me a strange look at that, as though he’s wondering how one person can need more space than an apartment, but he doesn’t say anything.
“You’re in the one over the café?” he asks, and I gulp, nodding, thinking about the meaning that apartment holds for us. It’s not like I can lie to him. If he’s in Wildfern Ridge, he might see my car around town.
If he’s around, he’s going to find out about the triplets eventually.
“I’m renovating my dad’s place,” Jake offers, and I go still, glancing over at him. Throughout the night, he’s carefully avoided talking about his dad.
Back when we were kids, he never liked to talk about him, either. When he did, I could tell things were worse than he ever said.
“Really?” I ask, laughing. “You always talked about construction stuff, but I never got to see it.”
“You want to?”
Something hangs between us, and I recognize it from before. That tension, that promise of something to come. I swallow, knowing I should ignore it. Knowing that the last time I reached out and touched it, everything went really, really wrong.
I know I can’t keep the triplets a secret for much longer, and I have no idea how Jake is going to feel when he finds out.
But I can’t turn down more time with him. And I can’t turn down the chance to see his house — the place he grew up in. It feels like that place might hold pieces of him I’ve never been able to see before.
“Yeah,” I finally say, nodding and wrapping my arms around my knees, leaning in toward him. “Yeah, I would.”
CHAPTER 18
JAKE
The morning after being at the lake with Lara, I wake up early and go to the hardware store, stocking up on everything I’m going to need for the project. The idea is that I won’t have to go back and forth a million times, but I know realistically that it doesn’t matter how much I get now, there’s going to be something I realize I still need later.
“JakeBradson,” the hardware store owner says, his gray mustache bobbing up and down as he speaks. “Didn’t think I was going to see you back here again!”
“Surprised you remember me,” I joke, and he points over his shoulder to my high school hockey poster, which I don’t remember signing for this shop.
“Got it in a fundraiser,” he says, leaning in and dropping his voice conspiratorially. “Been following your career, son, and I just have to say, Labowski deserved it.”
I blink, realizing I’ve been so caught up in Wildfern Ridge — and Lara — that I almost completely forgot about Labowski.Laughing, I shrug and pick up my stuff from the counter, refusing his offer to help me carry it to the car.
