Page 48 of Holly's Grizzly

I’m going to call her.

Not now, when she could be driving and all I’d do is distract her and put her in danger, but tomorrow.

I’ll call her first thing tomorrow morning.

It’s nowhere near what I’d like to do, but I don’t think convincing Vic to come back, pick me up, and drive me all the way to Seattle after her would be the right move here.

So I’ll settle for my second best idea. I’ll call her tomorrow and tell her I don’t want this to be over.

Not to guilt her, not to pressure her if she wants to leave these few days we shared right here and forget about them. But just to let her know that if she wants me, I’m hers.

I’ll come to Seattle every damn weekend if I have to, or as often as she wants me there. Hell, if it means the difference between having her and spending the rest of my life regretting losing her, I’ll pick up and move. I can get over my hangups about living in a city if it means having her in my life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

For once in my life, I don’t want to wait. I want everything to happen now, right now, and the fact that I can’t just jump in my truck and go after her makes my gut twist with dread. Maybe tomorrow will be too late. Maybe each mile stretching between us will just give her more time to make up her mind and put all of this in her rearview.

There’s nothing I can do about that now, though, no way to fix the colossal mistake I made tonight by letting her leave without telling her how I feel. So I pick up the ax and grab another log, resolve growing firmer and firmer in my chest with each exhausted beat of my heart.

19

Holly

All the way back to the trailhead, the lump in my gut grows heavier, the gnawing feeling of wrongness, the sinking suspicion I might have just made the biggest mistake of my life.

“You alright?” Vic asks after a few minutes of weighted silence, obviously not oblivious to how miserable I must look.

“Yeah,” I croak, then clear my throat to chase away the thickness there. “Yeah. I’m alright.”

He nods, though the look of concern doesn’t totally leave his eyes as he turns them back to the winding road in front of us.

A pang of guilt lodges itself right alongside that lump in my throat.

It’s not Vic’s fault I’m such a mess. It’s not his fault that Irving and I couldn’t have gotten our shit together and talked about everything before he so helpfully offered to bring me down the mountain.

So I try again. “Have you and Irving been friends for a long time?”

Vic glances over, a smile spreading on his lips. “Yeah. Ever since he moved up here a decade or so ago. He was a bit skeptical at first, and he took some wearing down, but I sold him on me eventually.”

I have to laugh a little at that. “Maybe you’ve lightened him up. He didn’t seem all that hard for me to convince.”

“Well, I can think of a reason or two you might have had an easier time,” Vic says, and a bit of color climbs my cheeks. “But he’s always been a big softie at heart.”

“Yeah,” I murmur as I peer out the window at the passing forest, trying to ignore the stinging at the backs of my eyes.

“Not always the best at communicating though, or making it clear how he’s feeling.”

The comment is too pointed to be entirely innocent, and when I glance over, Vic’s brow is furrowed, the corners of his lips turned down in thought.

“I hope… I hope the two of you can stay in touch. Seems like you might have had a good thing going, even if you only knew him for a couple of days.” He catches me looking, and his smile returns, a little rueful this time. “Sorry. I’m not being a very subtle wingman, am I?”

“No, you’re not,” I say with another laugh, but before I’m able to press him for any more information, we’re rounding one last bend in the road, and the trailhead parking area appears ahead.

It’s empty except for my Outback, and as we pull up, Vic reaches for his door’s handle.

“Let’s make sure everything starts up alright.”

He follows me over, grabbing my pack before I can reach for it, and carrying it for me. The back hatch pops open with a flick of the button on the fob, and when I slide in the driver's side to start it up, the ignition turns over immediately.

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