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What was it that had her hiding at the White’s private resort?
Knowing I wasn’t getting answers tonight, I close my phone and flip the bedside lamp off.
Tomorrow morning will come soon enough.
I dreamt of her.
I’m not a guy who remembered his dreams, not since adolescence when wet dreams were the start of a guy’s sexual growth.
And no, I can’t recall exactly what I dreamt of, but I did wake with the absolute clarity that Tatum O’Malley was in my dreams.
Probably because my mind was fixated on her all day yesterday, and I went to sleep after scrolling through endless articles, pictures, and videos of her.
I almost felt like a knew the girl—if only I felt like I knew why she was hiding.
Soon. Soon, you will know. And you will pull her from it.
That was the plan, anyhow.
After a quick shower and throwing on my lazy-day attire of basketball shorts and a long-sleeved Monster Energy shirt, I grab my over-packed bag and head out to my truck, ready to get this show on the road.
It was still a little early, but I did the gentlemanly thing by not storming the White fortress last night. While that maybe earned me some points, what didn’t earn me points was ignoring the three messages Charleigh sent me between last night and this morning. Even now, after stopping for coffee and food—because who didn’t like coffee and croissants with chocolate drizzled over them?—with my phone ringing incessantly on the passenger seat beside me, I ignore Charleigh.
I’m driving.
No hands free, in this nine-year-old truck of mine.
She’d be more upset with me for answering my phone while driving.
Yep.
That’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
But Charleigh seems to have wonderful timing, and she calls again just as I pull my F250 into the White’s drive. After parking, and on the fourth ring, I open the call.
“You don’t give up, do you, Char?”
“Apparently I could say the same for you. I just talked to her. She said she hadn’t seen you yet. Please tell me you turned around. Tell me you’ll go to coffee with me.”
“I have a coffee date already,” I answer, my lips quirking as I look over to the white cups in my holders. The coffee shop was one of Charleigh’s favorites; a small mom-and-pop type place, where the wife handmade the pastries every day.
“Cade…” Charleigh’s voice was exasperated.
“Geez, Charleigh, it’s not that big of a deal!” I answer with a laugh. I reach for the pastry bag and secure it between my palm and two fingers, freeing my thumb and remaining fingers for a coffee cup. With my phone wedged between my shoulder and ear, I grab the second coffee and carefully climb down from the truck.
This bad boy was my pride and joy; the six-inch lift kit and stickers decorating the back window a montage of my pro-biking days. God, when Tim first saw it…
The biggest piece of advice I chose to not follow, was getting a respectable car.
This truck was me.
With my elbow, I close the door, careful to not jostle either coffee.
“She’s just…” Charleigh sighs heavily in the phone. “She won’t agree to it, Cade. You’re wasting your time.”
Rather than making my way down the stone pathway, I remain standing by the front-end of my truck. “Well then, I’m an hour closer to Vancouver, then. Silver lining, Charleigh.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I can picture my friend shaking her head. She knows I’m not backing down. “When are you heading up, then?”
