I’m not a giggler. Or a flirt. I’ve never doodled a boyfriend’s name in any of my notebooks, not even Gabe’s. I don’t twirl my hair around my finger and bat my eyelashes. Sure, Gabe can turn my insides into hot caramel, but that started only after we’d been dating awhile. I’m not the sort of girl who has ever, in her entire life, gone all mushy-mushy at the mere sight of anything male.
But this guy? Hair as shiny and black as the feathers of a raven. Skin licked by the sun. And a body sculpted by sheer strength. The width of his chest, the curve of his biceps beneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt, the smooth tapering of his hips … he smiles at me, and I recoil. Not from him, but from the way my entire body is responding to him.
What is wrong with you? I ask myself. In response, I instantly start to make excuses: Everybody notices the opposite sex, no matter how involved they are with someone else. Human nature.
My stomach lurches a little when I notice that his T-shirt has Lake of the Woods embroidered above the pocket. But I tell myself he’s probably just somebody who helps with luggage. And then we’ll go on our separate ways. Never to see each other again. Thank God.
“Nice to meet you, Chelsea,” he says, the pitch of his voice deliciously low—like the dark filling of a chocolate truffle candy. He smiles at me with this look … like we’re only at the beginning. Like the game clock has only just kicked into gear and four full quarters of action lie ahead.
“Clint’s going to work with you over vacation,” Dad says.
“What do you mean, work?” I ask.
“He runs a boot camp here at the resort,” Dad says. “I set it up for you yesterday. Your own personal trainer.”
I actually start to feel a warmth break out under my rib cage. And just as I begin to realize that the warmth is actually hope—hope that Dad might actually be doing something thoughtful, that he might be giving me something I’d enjoy, like we were still the old friends we used to be before the accident—he says, “We spent a lot of money on this graduation gift of yours. I didn’t want you to have to waste it sitting on a cabin porch.”
As if I’m the kind of person who always wastes the opportunities that come my way. Like I’m someone who has good things land in my lap all the time, and I’m not gentle enough or thoughtful enough or careful enough to protect those things. He says it as if I squandered basketball, even. The warmth of hope instantly turns to the burn of anger.
Dad accepts the keys that Earl jingles. “Cabin number four,” he mumbles, staring at the key chain.
It’s my fault. I get it—I wasted everything. I screwed up college, even. Destroyed any hope for a full-ride scholarship. And it’s obvious that Dad’s never going to forgive me. In that moment, my hip is an open wound he’s just emptied an entire salt shaker into.
Clint smiles at me, saying, “You’d never know you got hurt.”
That just goes to prove, right there, how little this guy really knows.
Clint
body checking
One of these days, I’m going to come out with you,” Kenzie promises. At first I think “one of these days” means “today,” but instead of climbing aboard, she stays on the dock and picks up a fistful of fishing poles.
“Don’t know why you haven’t yet,” I say, in the same tone I’d use talking to Greg or Todd. Friendly, open. Not like I have to have her out with us. Not like I’m pining. Or foaming at the mouth, like Todd. Sure, you can come out with us. But the world won’t end if you don’t.
I lean over the edge of the boat to accept the poles, then carry them beneath the cover that shades the passengers’ seats on the Lake of the Woods launch—one of the twenty-five-foot motorboats that Greg, Todd, and I use to take out ten or so vacationers at a time. We could fit in as many as fifteen, but Earl likes to keep the groups a little smaller than that. And it’s such a great gig, none of us would ever think about testing Earl’s rules.
“Sure do bring a lot with you,” Kenzie observes as I motion for her to hand me my boxes of tackle, too. I learned on day one