Page 70 of One Wild Chance

I set the figurine back in the drawer and pull up my email. There’s a message with the subject line NHL Assistant Coaching Position. My stomach flips over until I read the first line:

We regret to inform you that the position has been filled…

I don’t even finish the email before I close the laptop and head to the barn.

Earl finds me on my way out and tells me a stallion kicked through a board in his stall. That horse isn’t the only one who wants to kick something right now. I grab some tools, spending the next two hours in the barn repairing something I am not remotely qualified for, which feels like a lot of things in my life right now. By the time I get back to the house, Ada Mae left a note saying there are cold sandwiches in the fridge.

For a minute, I stand in the kitchen, wondering what I’m supposed to do. I’m so used to noise that the silence feels suffocating. When my brothers were here, we slipped back into our usual roles—Wyatt blaring a ’90s country playlist while Grady complained about it. Rhett on his phone while ESPN played around the clock. Now the house feels full of too many memories and not enough people.

I grab sandwiches from the fridge, put on my swim trunks, and head toward the pond. With its muddy brown water and thick weeds around the edge, the pond is mostly an unimpressive watering hole. But to my brothers and me, it holds some of the best memories of our childhood. We spent half our summers out here jumping off the rope swing after we finished our chores each afternoon.

I set my sandwiches on the bank, strip off my shirt, and look at the murky pond.

It’s just the frogs and me out here, so I take off my trunks too, because why not? There’s nobody for at least a quarter mile in any direction, so it doesn’t matter if I skinny-dip. Then I grab the rope swing, pull it back for a running start, and let go. I whoop, sailing through the air before cannonballing into the water.

The water is cold enough to send a shock through me, which is exactly what a Kentucky pond should feel like after a day like this. And boy, has it been a day.

I break through the surface and take a deep breath, feeling better than I have in a long time. Shifting to my back, I watch lazy clouds overhead as I float across the water. Somewhere in the trees, the sound of a twig snaps.

I freeze, looking at my clothes on the bank and the distance between me and my swim trunks. So close, yet so far away.

Summer comes through the trees just then, a towel slung over her shoulder and a long T-shirt reaching mid-thigh. She sees me and stops dead.

“Jaxon.” Her eyes widen. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.”

“Summer…heeeeeeeyyyy.” I drift casually toward the deepest part of the pond, where the water sits at collarbone height and the mud-colored liquid handles everything below that. Thank God for Kentucky pond water.

“Hey?” She blinks. “Are you swimming?”

“What else would I be doing?” I say, trying to cover the embarrassing fact that I’m buck naked.

She shifts the towel on her shoulder. “You know, I’ll just leave then…”

Her eyes travel slowly to the bank, where my shirt and swim trunks are sitting in an incriminating pile about six feet from the water’s edge.

Her brow pulls into a frown. “Uh…Jaxon?” Her voice squeaks an octave higher. “Tell me you’re wearing something right now.”

“Well…” I say, my voice cracking. “That is a complicated question.”

Her eyes close. “You have got to be kidding me.”

I put my hands up. “In my defense, I didn’t think anyone would show up. This pond is on private property.”

“Yes, I know,” she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Which is why I wasn’t thinking that you would be skinny-dipping!”

“That’s a reasonable assumption.” I look at the bank where my trunks are sitting next to my sandwiches. “Well, if you throw me my shorts, I’ll be decent in thirty seconds.”

She opens one eye, stares at the shorts, then gets a look on her face that tells me she’s up to no good. “You know, I’m just thinking,” she says, bending to pick them up, then holding them at arm’s length.

“Please don’t think too long.”

“These are such nice shorts.” She tilts her head. “Be a shame if something happened to them. Then again, maybe you deserve it for not telling me right away that you didn’t have any clothes on.”

“What was I supposed to say? Hello, maybe you should leave, I’m naked?”

“It might have been nice to have known that upfront.”

“I cooperated for your photo shoot. Even offered to take a picture shirtless,” I remind her. “The least you can do is return a man’s swim trunks.”