by Cara Colter
“You did?”
“Very much,” she said. “So can’t you try something you think you don’t like? Please?”
Oscar had never been able to resist her saying please like that. He guessed they were going zip-lining. He finished his burger and stretched out on the grass.
Despite the looming threat of an afternoon suspended on a flimsy wire two hundred feet above the ground, despite some mystery guy named James, Oscar was aware of feeling happy.
That she had enjoyed shopping. That they were together. That the discussion of the kiss seemed to be behind them.
She put her phone away—apparently, her choice for a suitable zip-lining experience was made—and finished every bite of her food. Then she stretched out beside him. Her shoulder was touching his, and her hair was tickling the side of his neck.
Some women didn’t need to wear a gorgeous dress to make a man so intensely aware of her that it felt as if his skin were tingling.
They stared up at the clouds drifting across a perfect sky. She tilted her head and looked at him. The grass was making her eyes look greener, and her lips seemed puffy.
“Penny for the thought,” she said.
Who is James? “We don’t have pennies in Canada anymore.”
Molly gave him a smack on the arm. “A nickel, then. Sheesh. Inflation.”
He couldn’t very well tell her that he was feeling stupidly jealous. And that even though the discussion of the kiss had gone quite badly, it seemed as if he had not learned one thing from it. Because he wanted to kiss her. To see if it could go differently this time.
And he wasn’t admitting that to her. Not even for a measly nickel. Probably not for a million dollars.
“I feel really alive,” Oscar hedged. It was not quite a lie. It was just not the full truth. “As if I can feel every blade of grass digging into my back, the sun on my face, the birds chattering. There’s a hum, like the energy is rising from the earth.”
“That doesn’t sound very scientific,” Molly teased him.
“I think it’s probably a well-documented phenomenon, how everybody feels before they die.”
She snorted. “You aren’t going to die zip-lining. Besides, I haven’t managed to kill you, yet. Truck?”
“Yeah?”
“Don’t let me go to sleep. It’ll wreck my whole jet-lag-avoidance program.”
“I don’t know. Sleep sounds like a great strategy for my whole zip-line-avoidance program.”
She laughed.
He loved that sound. His feeling of drowsy happiness intensified. So long since he had felt this way.
Since Ralphie had died.
No, a voice inside him said. Way before that.
Since he had woken up one morning and Molly was no longer a part of his world.
Her phone started ringing, again. It was an annoying sound like the buzzing of a bee. She pulled it out, a little too eagerly.
“Hello?”
No doubt about it. She sounded breathless with excitement. He opened his eyes to squint at her—he hoped she registered the disapproval—but she just lifted her shoulder apologetically, and then walked away.
So she could speak in private. Again.
Thank God he hadn’t confessed her lips were a temptation to him.
When she came back, she looked happy.
“Sorry, I have to cancel zip-lining this afternoon. Something has come up that I have to look after. Can I meet you back at your place in a couple of hours?”
Oscar digested that. She was abandoning him. She had been in the city less than forty-eight hours. She was going to go off on her own? Or was she meeting James?
“Can you take my dress home for me?”
Why did that feel like a relief? That whatever she was planning, she didn’t need the dress. Still, she was in a strange place. She didn’t know her way around Vancouver.
But Molly had been in strange places all over the world. She’d been in way more strange places than he had.
“What’s up?” he asked, trying to keep his voice casual, the very same tone he would use if one of his guy friends announced a change in plan.
“It’s something to do with work,” she said.
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. She was lying to him. The same as she had about the party she needed the dress for.
She’d always been the most horrible of liars. Why would she lie?
He was aware he felt worried. And protective.
But Molly wasn’t the eighteen-year-old girl she had been when she walked out of his life. She was an adult woman and feeling as if he knew her so deeply could be the greatest of illusions.
What if her ex had realized what he was losing, and had followed her around the world, and was begging her to come back?
Oscar tried to decipher the look on her face when she’d seen who was calling. Definitely pleased.
Another feeling overrode both the sense of being worried about her and the sense of wanting to protect her.
Anger. He was angry that Molly was here to see him and she was now dumping him to spend time with someone else.
He thought that over.
How could he possibly be mad that he wasn’t going zip-lining?
Logically, he knew that after the way he felt about choosing underwear for her, and watching her come into some dangerous new part of herself in those dresses, that anger was the best possible thing he could be feeling right now.
A protection, like armor.
But for once in his life, Oscar found absolutely no comfort in logic.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HOURS LATER, WHEN Molly let herself back into the apartment, it was quiet. Really quiet, as if Oscar weren’t there. But when she went down the hallway to her room, she saw his bedroom door was closed. It was silent but a light shone out from underneath it.
She paused outside it. Should she knock and tell him she was back?
She had a feeling he knew she was back and she was nervous about disturbing him. That was brand new.
Being nervous around Truck.
But she was hugging a little nugget of information to herself: he’d said he was besotted with her.
Mind you, that was a long time ago.
And all the same obstacles were in place, weren’t they? Still, that admission made her feel edgy, and excited and frightened.
Because she had also been besotted with him.
What did all this mean right now? It was all so new it made her nervous.
But his anger was also brand new. It had been very clear when she had left him in the park this afternoon that he had been angry.
Once she revealed to him the reason she had abandoned him today, it would make everything okay. She knew it would. For all the exciting things she had done in her life, this felt the most thrilling.
Doing something for him. Something great for him.
But, meanwhile, she had to digest this new thing: Truck, on the heels of admitting he’d once been besotted with her, was angry.
With her.
Of course, she had seen him angry with other people. Not often. He was a man extraordinarily slow to anger. But when Molly had seen him angry, it was usually around Ralphie. He had never been able to tolerate any kind of meanness toward Ralphie. Even curiosity, people staring at his brother, sometimes made him angry.
“I can understand little kids staring at him,” he’d told her once. “But their parents? I’d like to go over there and knock their heads together.”
That anger transformed him. It showed an innate power in him that he did not unveil very often. But when he did, he became a warrior, that man who was willing to lay down his life in the protection of those he cared about.
But this was a strange thing to have him angry with her. She had hoped to come back, and maybe try cooking together again.
A swim in the pool. Maybe they could discuss the besottedness a little more. Maybe, she could expand on not fitting into his world, and why she felt that way...
Instead, there was note saying the pizza was in the fridge for her.
Cold pizza. Alone. Again.
It was so much smarter than what had transpired between them last night. And yet, she felt robbed. Sad in a way she had rarely felt sad, that Truck was a breath away from her, and apparently they were not speaking.
There was also the secret to consider. If she spent time with him tonight, would she be able to keep all this bubbling excitement to herself, or would she spill the beans?
So cold pizza and an early night it was.
When Molly got up in the morning, she had a text from Oscar saying he’d gone to the office.
She felt a moment’s panic. Was he going to wreck everything? She sent him a text back.
I thought we were going to hang out together.
There was a long pause before he answered.
That’s what I thought, too.
Can you set aside the afternoon for me? It’s important.
Not if it involves zip-lining.
It doesn’t. I promise.
What does it involve?
It’s a secret.
It seemed like a long time dragged by before he answered.
Okay, I’ll be back by noon.
Molly set down her phone, nearly trembling with relief. Her eyes flew to the clock. Noon! So much still to do.
Oscar, always punctual, came through the door at a few minutes before noon. He stopped and stared at her.
“That’s the dress you chose?” he asked. He looked like he didn’t want to smile at her, but he did anyway.
Molly did a pirouette for him. The polka-dot ruffles swished around her.
“You know only you could wear a dress like that, with those boots, and somehow look as if you are setting a trend, not posing as a hillbilly, circa 1935.”
“You know me,” she said. “An on-trend kinda girl.”
“I’m not sure I do know you,” he said, and she could tell a bit of that anger was still there.
“Come on, we have to go.”
Shaking his head, he followed her out the door.
“We’re going to this address,” she said, showing him the address on her phone. She could feel the anticipation building.
“I don’t recognize that address.”
“Can you put it in your GPS?”
He complied and they wove away from downtown Vancouver and out into the suburbs. And then they left the suburbs behind.
Finally, they came to what appeared to be an empty lot behind a chain-link gate that hung open on its hinges.
“Look,” he said, impatiently, “you better start explaining. This is the kind of place shady deals go down.”
“Trust me.”
He looked insultingly uncertain about that. Then he squinted at the sign that hung crookedly from the fence. “Mad Mudder’s? Where are we? And why?”
“You’ll see,” she said. She’d found her way here yesterday and despite the look of the place, it was going to be perfect.
They pulled up to a small shed. A man came out. Thankfully, he looked crisp and professional in a matching khaki shirt and pressed slacks.
“Molly,” he said, “It’s nice to see you again.”
Oscar slid her a look out of the corner of his eye before taking the hand that was being extended to him.
“I’m Tracy Johnson.”
Then he stepped back and regarded her with a frown. “Did you bring something else to wear? I told you yesterday, it’s a pretty extreme experience.”
“Yesterday,” Oscar said, looking at her quizzically. “This is where you were yesterday? What exactly is this place?”
“You didn’t tell him?” Tracy asked.
“It’s a surprise,” she said.
“Oh. Well, welcome to Mad Mudder’s team-building experience.”
Oscar shot her a look. “This is in some way preferable to zip-lining?” he grumbled.
“Where’s everyone else?” Tracy asked.
“Everyone else?” Oscar asked, just as another vehicle came down the road and turned into the rutted driveway. It was a seven-passenger van. The windows were tinted.
Molly did not look at the van. She could not take her eyes off Oscar’s face as the side door slid opened. He shot her a quizzical look. She realized she was trembling with excitement.
“I didn’t do it right on Ralphie’s birthday,” she whispered. “I thought the actual day should be quieter. More reflective.”
The van stopped. The door slid open. And one by one, they came out. The three remaining members of Ralphie’s Special World Games relay swim team, and their coach, Mrs. Treadwell.
Oscar turned to her, understanding dawning in his face.
“What is this?” he whispered.
“Our celebration of life. For Ralphie.”
His eyes rested on her face, and what she saw there stopped her heart.
“It’s good to see James again,” he said quietly. “I heard you mention his name on the phone, but I never put two and two together. It’s so good to see them all. Fred. Kate. Mrs. Treadwell.”
But it felt as if the one he was really seeing was her, Molly, and what was in his gaze was enough to stop her heart. Unless she was mistaken, Oscar was still as besotted with her as he had ever been.
Or perhaps she just saw the pure love in his face. Not just for her, but for all of them.
But maybe, just maybe, there was a special place in his heart for her. For having, somehow, someway, gotten this just right. The way a best friend should.
He smiled at her, and the warmth of that smile felt as if it could carry her through frozen days and winter nights and storms of all kinds.
And then he was engulfed in the team. From her phone calls to set this up, Molly had found out that, like her, Oscar had kept in touch with the members of his brother’s old swim team. As per the rules, each participant was only allowed to compete twice in the Special World Games, so the team had not been together for a number of years.
The time gap only served to make the reunion more poignant for all of them, but Oscar was definitely the star of the show. His brother’s teammates were surrounding him, touching him, hugging him, calling his name. Molly knew they loved her, and she would get her turn, but he was first for them, the man who had been the big brother to them all for the years that Ralphie had been part of the Special World Games team.
Truck had often said to her one of Ralphie’s gifts to him was that how people interacted with Ralphie showed him who they really were.
This was also true of watching him with the old team. Watching him at the center of all that affection Molly could see, so clearly, who Oscar really was, and who he had always been.
Strong. Reliable. Decent.
It was a beautiful chaos. Hugs. Tears. Shouts. High fives and ruffled hair and secret handshakes. Oscar knew all the secret handshakes.
He was a man with such a good heart.
They turned from Oscar then and swarmed around her. She was engulfed in all that love, but it was Oscar’s smile that was at the center of a heart that felt filled to overflowing. It was a smile that put the stars out at night and drew the sun from the darkness in the morning.
“Ralphie,” Oscar said, turning to Molly, finally, his arms thrown over the shoulders of Ralphie’s friends, Fred and James, his eyes just ever so faintly misted, “would have loved that dress. Thank you for choosing it for him.”
Truck got it. He got it so completely, that it felt as if her heart were going to burst with happiness.
Finally, Tracy blew a whistle and held up his hand. “Okay, so you people have to divide up into two teams. And then you have to get t
hrough that obstacle course. You have to figure it out together. The first team through wins, and there is a very special prize for them. They get to throw the other team in the mud pit at the end.”
This announcement was met with roars of approval.
“How do we pick teams?” Mrs. Treadwell asked.
“That’s part of the exercise,” Tracy told them. “You have two minutes.”
“I want to be on Oscar’s team,” Fred shouted.
They were all jumping up and down with excitement. They all wanted to be on Truck’s team.
Molly saw something she had never seen on Oscar’s face before: panic. No matter how the teams were divided up, someone’s feelings were going to get hurt. He was the sun that they all wanted to rotate around. Including her.
“One minute,” Tracy called.
Mrs. Treadwell cleared her throat.
“I think it should be the four of us—me, Fred, James and Kate against Miss Bentwell and Mr. Clark. We haven’t trained together for some time, but we’ve already worked as a team. Frankly, I think we’ll kick some butt.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
THERE WAS PANDEMONIUM after the butt-kicking pronouncement. Mrs. Treadwell’s team solidified instantly, high-fiving, and calling happy jeers at their opponents.
But Molly felt something go very still in her. She and Truck as a team. Working together.
“Name your team,” Tracy called. “Thirty seconds.”
“Down Under,” Mrs. Treadwell called.
“Truck Stop,” Molly suggested.
Tracy provided coveralls: blue for Down Under and orange for Molly and Truck, but Molly refused hers.
“You’ll ruin that dress,” Truck told her, gamely putting on the coveralls.
“For a good cause!”
“You can’t wait to wreck that dress,” he guessed, laughing.
“You’re so right. And you’d better hope the sheriff doesn’t show up, because you look like an escaped convict,” she said. Then she flicked up the edge of the skirt. She had shorts on underneath. He threw back his head and laughed even harder, and right then she knew it was going to be wonderful to be a team.
