Page 13 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
Even for the Appalachian foothills, though, it was spectacular. The rock jutted out over a craggy cliff, maybe a hundred feet high, and to both the east and the west, there was a deep, heavily wooded ravine. The evergreens were as scraggly as ever, but the leafy trees were ablaze in an explosion of reds and yellows. The song of a waterfall cresting a ledge a hundred feet above them drowned out any woodland sounds, but they were close enough Laurin could touch it if he stretched out on the side of the rock they sat on.
He wouldn’t do that now, but ten years ago, when he was young and dumb and thought himself invincible? Yeah, he would have balanced on that slippery ledge and slapped at that water just to prove he could.
“We don’t have anything like this near me.” Zara opened the backpack Laurin had toted up here and pulled out their lunch goodies, laying out a service for three. They had paninis stored in a foil bag to keep them warm, a selection of fresh fruit and potato chips, and both juice and water. Nothing too exciting, but perfect for an excursion.
“You have some great spots up your way. My club had an exhibition in New York City. We stayed an extra week, had ourselves a right party at a lake house in the Catskills.”
Zara scoffed at him. “The Catskills? That’s upstate New York. Before this trip, the farthest I’ve been is Coney Island.”
“Never even left Long Island?” Laurin was shocked. He’d traveled around the world, been to every continent except Antarctica. He couldn’t imagine spending an entire life on a couple city blocks.
But Zara only shrugged him off. “Honestly, I never needed to. What don’t we have in New York?”
Laurin gestured to the view surrounding them, and she nodded in acquiescence. “How old are you, Zara?”
“Twenty-two,” she said.
She was an adult but had a lot of living left, then. She was pretty with her dark, flawless complexion, wide, brown eyes, and plump lips permanently shaped into a playful pout. Laurin was sure there was a line of boys waiting outside the door of her apartment in NYC, but she was a fighter, too. She’d already made it clear to Laurin that she wanted to win this challenge, but more importantly, she wanted to leave an impression. She would be back, she swore on it. She would be famous, she would build an empire, and her YouTube channel was only the first step.
And this was her first time outside of the city. Incredible.
“Manon’s your age. She has nearly as many passport stamps as I have.”
“Manon?”
“My baby sister,” Laurin clarified. “Well, not a baby anymore, of course. But ten years between us. I was already doing the practice every day, games twice a week thing when she was born, and then I was off to France and then Spain by the time she started school. She was practically an adult before Icould come back and get to know her.” She was making mistakes then, too, big ones. Mistakes that changed Laurin’s life far more drastically than they did hers, but he didn’t want to give Zara or anyone else here a reason to look down on her. “She’s amazing,” he said, and he truly thought she was despite everything. “She splits her time between London and New York, and she loves camping. If you want, I’ll hook you two up; she can show you the ropes.”
Zara took a bite of her panini as she scanned the world around them, chewing thoughtfully but crinkling her nose. “I don’t think I could spend all day and all night out in the woods like this.”
Laurin rolled his eyes but kept a good-natured smile. “A hike, then? A day trip? Oh—”
He was cut off by rustling in the woods behind him and looked back in time to see Harper crash through the low brush on the opposite side from where the trail led from. The messy bun she’d tied her gray hair up in was more lopsided now, and there were burrs stuck to the wide, bell-shaped cuffs of her muslin shirt. The leggings she’d paired with it made for a quirky hiking outfit, but she had sturdy boots and a walking stick that had been hand-carved and well-used over the years.
“Did you get lost?” Zara asked with a gasp.
Harper wiped sweat from her brow before chugging water from the canteen at her hip. Despite the cool weather, her journey had worked her into a deep flush. “Reunited a lost baby bird with its mama,” she said.
She snagged her sandwich and sat down, and Laurin did the same. As he ate, his gaze traveled to the lake below them and the solitary kayak that was traveling along the water’s edge. It wastoo far away to the see the kayaker’s face, but the pale rose-gold hair pulled back into a severe ponytail was surely Candace’s.
Who had claimed that morning that she wasn’t very outdoorsy and planned to read all day. So she liked nature, after all, just not people in general, or maybe Laurin specifically.
But her lie had been spoken politely, practically apologetically, and that was another baby step.
Candace wasn’t dumb. She was fully aware that Laurin was trying to force her to socialize. She loved hiking, in fact, and although her chunk of New Jersey didn’t have much in the way of mountains, they had plenty of parks to visit and the beach trails weren’t too far away. College had put her even closer to the mountains, so while her classmates headed to Philly to party, she headed in the opposite direction to hunt waterfalls.
Until she’d gotten married and Ryan had put a stop to all that. She couldn’t even be mad about it, though. There were so many other red flags, like his constant prodding about her trust fund and his utter disinterest in her baking beyond the money that came in from it, that the camping ban? Not even worth mentioning.
Candace resisted Laurin’s hike on the first day and the board games that night. She turned him down on kayaking on the second day, although she suspected he might have somehow found out that’s what she’d been doing while he was hiking. At dinner in the mess hall that night, Laurin trapped her byrearranging the tables so one could sit all the contestants and saying, “I saved you a seat,” while everyone was watching.
She sighed and sat there, planning on keeping her head down and her mouth closed except to eat.
He wouldn’t stop talking to her, though, barraging her with questions about her life. She admitted to two siblings, an economics degree from Villanova, and the divorce. Anyone who watched the show would know all that. She was already separated during her first season, but there had been some rough patches as the legal side of it took its toll on her, and she’d had a couple breakdowns and confessionals over it.
“What about hobbies?” Laurin asked then, quick to change the subject when she deliberately rammed the conversation into an uncomfortable territory. “Do you sew much? That angel you made looked like it took a lot of skill.”
She shrugged, wishing the conversation wasn’t preventing her from eating the chicken sandwich on her plate. It looked messy, the sort of thing that, once picked up, needed to be eaten in its entirety instead of set back down and picked up again repeatedly. She wanted to eat and leave but couldn’t if she was answering his interrogation. “Not really a lot of skill,” she admitted. “I’ve done something like that before, but full-size. That was much more difficult.”
“So then you do a lot of sewing in your free time?”
