by Donya Lynne
“If you were gonna leave, you’d have been gone by now, honey. Hope Falls is like that.”
“Like what?”
“Once it gets into your blood, it won’t let you go. Scott came here, and look at him. He stayed. Even after his accident when he could have moved back home, he stayed. Same as his brother. Same as his younger sister.” She pointed to herself. “Same as me. And you, too. Hope Falls is in you now.”
Lacey shook her head and picked at a chocolate chip cookie she’d snagged from the buffet table. “I’ve only been here a few weeks, Shirl.”
“You’ve been here going on two months, honey, and that’s plenty long enough for this place to get ahold of you.”
Two months? Lacey stared at the bite of cookie in her fingers and thought back. It had been the last week of September when she’d arrived in Hope Falls. Thanksgiving was less than two weeks away. Shirl was right. She’d been there almost two months. Where had the time gone?
Shirl giggled. “I see your brain making the connections, sugar. You’re one of us now, like it or not.” Her thin, overly plucked eyebrows rose high over her blue-shadowed eyes as she nodded as if she knew all, saw all, heard all. And for all Lacey knew, she did.
Which made her uneasy. Because the last thing she wanted was for Shirl to figure things out before she had the chance to tell Scott the truth. If Shirl got wind that she was Lacey Moon, there was no way she would be able to hold that snippet in, and she didn’t want Scott to hear the truth through the grapevine. He deserved better than that.
“Um…” She checked the clock. “I think I’m going to head out. I was thinking about seeing a movie, and—”
“Now, sugar, I didn’t mean to scare you off.” Shirl offered a warm, almost-apologetic-but-not-quite smile.
“You didn’t, I—”
“Oh, go on. You don’t need to be playing Bingo with all us old folks, anyway.” She gave Lacey a wink.
“You’re not old.” It was the truth. Shirl couldn’t have been much older than fifty, which was young by most standards.
“Aren’t you sweet.” Shirl tapped her arm with her fingertips. “Now run on. You have fun. And give Scott a kiss for me when you see him. Lord knows that’s as close as I’ll ever get to kissing that handsome boy.”
Lacey’s cheeks flamed. “I…um…I’m not—”
Shirl laughed. “Thought so.” She winked. “I knew you two would make a cute couple.” She turned and headed back toward the Bingo hall, and Lacey blindly made her way to the door, mortified that Shirl was aware of her relationship with Scott.
When she glanced over her shoulder, she saw Shirl pull her friends together in a tight circle. One gasped, her eyes popping open. Another beamed and clapped her hands.
Great. Let the gossip begin.
Lacey sighed. She had a feeling that no matter how much of an expert she became at putting up boundaries, Shirl would find a way right through them. That woman was like water. She could find a way through a brick wall, even if only through a hairline crack.
But Lacey could learn a lesson here. Or relearn it as the case may be. Hadn’t her coach tried to tell her countless times that sometimes things were simply out of her control.
“Sometimes people come along and start trouble, Lacey,” Trent had said. “Sometimes that’s not their intention, but sometimes it is. No matter the case, when that happens, there’s no sense worrying about it. You can’t control what other people do. You can’t control the world. The only thing you can control is you and how you react.”
Somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten that lesson.
She was still contemplating Trent’s words fifteen minutes later at Pappy’s counter, a pen poised over the first page of her new journal, when her phone rang.
She recoiled at the name on the screen.
“Doug?”
“Lacey, hey.”
She hadn’t talked to Doug since breaking up with him two months ago.
Two months. She still couldn’t believe it had been that long.
When he didn’t say anything further, she sighed. “What do you want, Doug?”
“Come on, don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“I miss you, Lace.”
She’d always hated when he called her that. The nickname sounded perverted coming from him. Like she was a pair of panties or something.
“Well, I don’t miss you.” She tucked her face behind her hand and kept her voice as quiet as she could. No sense giving the locals anything else to gossip about.
Doug exhaled heavily. “Lacey, come on. I want to make this right. I want to get back together. Can’t we work this out?”
“Why would you want to, Doug? You didn’t seem to want to work things out when you were screwing Ivanka or Iyanla or whatever her name was.”
“Ivanka. And that was nothing.”
“Really?” She scoffed. “I’ve seen the pictures, Doug, and it looked like it was definitely something, not nothing.”
“You’re making too much of this, Lace.”
“Am I? What about the other girls, Doug? What about all the rest? Am I making too much of those, too?”
“What do you mean?”
She shook her head, eyes shielded by her hand and fixed on the silver-speckled counter. “Give me some credit. I know there were others. And I’m sure there were some I never even knew about. For Christ’s sake, Doug, you’re so good at hiding your tracks that I didn’t even know about Ivanka until the end of summer, and that shit had gone on since the Olympics. We’re talking seven months, Doug. Seven!” She sucked in her breath, realizing she’d raised her voice. After a quick glance to the side, she gathered herself into an even tighter bundle and said, “You made a fool out of me, Doug. You were supposed to be my boyfriend, but you left me hanging when I needed you most. You ran off with your scags when I needed you.”
She realized in that moment that Doug had been a big part of her problems. He’d dragged her down with his philandering and lies. She’d known all along he was being unfaithful, but she’d just put up with it. She’d been delusional to think they could make things work.
“I’m sorry, Lace, but…I’m here now. I’m ready. Come on, give me another chance.”
“Another chance to what? What makes now so different, Doug?”
“Because I miss you, Lace.”
“Stop calling me Lace. I hate when you call me that.”
“It never seemed to bother you before.”
She huffed. “That’s because I never said anything.”
“That’s not my fault.”
“No, but I’m saying it now. Don’t call me Lace, anymore. I don’t like it. I never did.”
“Fine. Jesus, what’s gotten into you? Why are you all of a sudden just now getting this goddamn hair up your ass?”
“I could ask you the same question, Doug. And besides, I didn’t just now get this hair up my ass. It’s been two months. Two. You haven’t tried to contact me once this whole time. And now here you are, out of nowhere, wanting a second chance. And for the better part of the three years we were together, you didn’t seem interested in making such an effort to make our relationship work. So, yeah, Doug. Why now? Why do you all of a sudden want to work things out with me now?”
“I just…Jesus, Lace—sorry…Lacey. Give me a break.”
“No. Why now, Doug?”
Then it dawned on her. Ivanka had broken up with him. That was it, wasn’t it? She’d taken her leave, probably because he’d begun to cheat on her, too. Now, he was alone. And for a habitual cheater who got his rocks off by stepping out on his steady girl, the excitement was gone.
She nearly gasped as the pieces fell into place. She understood now why they called it a lightbulb moment, because for so long she’d been in the dark about why he couldn’t be faithful. Now she knew. She finally understood. Doug needed a girlfriend to skip out on so he could get off. For him, cheating was an aphrodisiac.
“Lacey…”
>
“Shut up. Just shut up, Doug.” She paused to let the realization sink in that she’d just been a means to an end for Doug. She lowered her voice to barely above a whisper. “Ivanka broke up with you, didn’t she?”
Silence.
“Thought so.” She disconnected without waiting for him to reply then straightened on her barstool…only to gasp when she glanced to her left to find a man who bore a striking resemblance to Scott taking a seat on the barstool two down from hers.
“You’re Mattie Moon.” He wasn’t asking.
“Umm…”
He extended his hand. “I’m Liam. Scott’s brother.”
Oh God. How much had he heard?
“Hi.” She shook his hand, her face and neck hot.
Her phone began ringing again. Doug’s name popped up on the caller ID. Without thinking, she answered.
“Quit calling me.”
“But, La—”
She hung up before he could say anything further then glanced back at Liam.
The way his eyes burned with suspicion made it clear he’d heard at least some of her previous conversation. Probably quite a bit.
“Here you go, Mattie.” Rosie placed her to-go bag on the counter.
“Thanks.” She hopped off the barstool and grabbed her bag as her phone started ringing again. She jammed it inside her purse without answering.
She didn’t want to look like she was trying to get away from Liam, but that’s exactly what she was doing as she hurried toward the exit.
“Off so soon?” Liam regarded her curiously.
“Yep.” She lifted her bag as if providing evidence. The sound of her phone jingling out an inappropriate tune for an ex-boyfriend from inside her purse might as well have been a siren. She had forgotten to change Doug’s ringtone from the sexy number she’d assigned him last year to something more fitting for a cheating bastard. She needed to fix that pronto. “Cold Hearted” by Paula Abdul would be a more apt ringtone for Doug now. “I’m heading back to my cabin.”
“Well, maybe we can talk another time then.”
“Sure. I’d like that.” Not. “Nice meeting you.”
“Yeah. Same here. Very…enlightening.” He chucked his chin. “Have a nice night.” He turned away and picked up his menu as if he didn’t already know what he wanted to order. If he ate there as often as Scott, he had the damn thing memorized. But one thing was clear. It was the end of their brief discussion.
She hurried out to her car. When she hazarded a glance back inside, Liam was watching her. As in…like a fucking hawk.
Chapter 13
You can’t control other people, Lacey. You can only control your reaction.
She’d been worrying all night about her encounter with Liam when her coach’s words reemerged in her head. She’d been writing her first journal entry, a detailed account about why she’d started this journey in the first place, as well as her conflicted feelings for Scott. And Doug’s antics, his stupid phone call, and the fact that Liam had overheard at least part of her conversation. Basically, she’d been writing stream of consciousness for over three hours, which meant she’d run the gamut of topics. Wherever her thoughts led her was what she wrote. She could imagine that the pages read as helter skelter as the thoughts had felt inside her head.
But purging them to the page had helped make some sense of the mess. In an odd way, journaling her thoughts was like holding a conversation with herself. She was the speaker and the sounding board, which allowed her to hear herself and make connections she’d overlooked.
Which brought her back to her coach’s words. She couldn’t control Liam. She couldn’t control what he’d heard. It was done, and dwelling on it would only tie her in knots. All she could control was how she reacted and what she did from this point forward.
She stopped writing to shake out the cramps in her hand and check the time. It was after eleven.
When had it grown so late?
She closed her journal and set it on her lap, laying her head back against the soft armrest of the couch. A crackling fire glowed from the fireplace, and what she called yoga music played through her Bluetooth speaker. She felt…peaceful. Zen. Quiet. Even the nagging voices that had plagued her mind for so long had shut up.
And how refreshing was that?
The only voice that remained was her coach’s, but in a good way. All the lessons he’d taught her were bubbling back to the surface, finally freed from the clutches of all the crap she’d just expelled from her brain.
Fight, Lacey. Always fight. Never give up, and if you fall, get right back up and keep going. It’s how we respond to adversity that defines us.
Trent’s words. Words she had forgotten until now.
Everyone falls, Lacey. It’s what you do after you fall that matters.
The message vibrated at the heart of her, deep down where her soul and will met.
How Lacey responded to what had happened to her at the Olympics would define her from this point forward. What she did in this moment was all that mattered. She could let the Olympics defeat her, or she could fight back. She could spit in the face of adversity and find a way back to happiness, where she took control of her life, or she could give up and quit.
But, by God, she wasn’t a quitter. Maybe she was down right now, and maybe she’d been overwhelmed by the chaos for a while, but she could feel her thoughts shifting into a better place.
What she needed were boundaries. Hadn’t Trent tried to tell her that years ago? How wise and insightful he’d been. But she’d been young and unable to decipher wisdom from hocus-pocus. And, unfortunately, shit had already begun to go critical by then, and Lacey hadn’t been able to see the forest for the trees even if Trent had taken her hand and led her through. So, Trent’s words, wise as they were, had floated in one ear and out the other, never actually catching hold on her consciousness and sinking in. But now, with distance, she was beginning to understand what Trent had been trying to tell her.
Boundaries are like fences, Lacey. They let people know how far you’re willing to let them go. They clarify where your space ends and their space begins. Not just physically, but emotionally, verbally, mentally, and professionally. And like fences, boundaries build strong, friendly alliances built on trust.
The tools to get out of the weeds had been there all along, but she had been too mangled within the cogs of the machine chewing her into pulp to catch her breath long enough to see them.
Problem was, she had been competing for so long, she didn’t know much else.
Maybe it was time to find a little balance. Then maybe she could decipher what was important from what wasn’t. Until now, others had spoken for her, which had prevented her from fully analyzing her own opinions to decide for herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t know what she wanted. She’d just never had much opportunity to figure that out and vocalize it. That was the hazard of starting training at such a young age. Nine years old isn’t old enough to have the kind of real-world knowledge necessary to know what you wanted and how best to get it, so she’d had to rely on adults with the experience to guide her and speak on her behalf. That reliance had turned into a fifteen-year-long bad habit. One she needed to break if she was going to take back her life from the machine.
If she decided to return to competition, she would do so on her terms, not theirs. And she would take a more active role in defining how things operated.
But what if she decided to retire? What then?
At one time, she had loved snowboarding. But for the last two years, she’d hated it. No wonder she’d fallen at the Olympics. She’d lost the spiritual connection with the snow and ice. They’d been at war with one another instead of allies.
So then, how did she reconnect with the snow and ice on a spiritual level, recapture their alliance, and yet still compete? Could the two endeavors even coexist with one another? If not, what did that mean for her future? If her snowboarding days were over, what did she want to do with her life?
And that was at the heart of this vision quest she’d gone on, because until she found herself, she couldn’t know where her heart lay.
She glanced over her shoulder to the front door. Maybe it was time to release her snowboards from their prison…and herself in the process. The only way to see if there was any hope that snowboarding was in her future was to reintroduce herself to her boards and the snow.
It was time. Tonight was the night.
Almost as if she were facing a rite of passage, she calmly strode to her bedroom, pulled out the khaki pants and patchwork jacket she’d worn at the last Olympics, and reverently stroked her fingers down the image of the American flag adorning the left sleeve. She was supposed to have won a gold medal with this uniform. Instead, she’d disgraced herself.
Well, no more. Her comeback started tonight. That was, if she eventually decided to make a comeback.
A few minutes later, changed and ready to go, she left the cabin, climbed behind the wheel of her Escape, and drove into the depths of the McCord Cabins property, toward a hill that was perfectly suited for a trial run. The trees were widely spaced, enough so that she could easily wind her way down without risking injury by running into one.
She parked along the side of the lane, pulled on her yellow goggles, which would brighten the terrain lit by the full moon, and fastened her helmet strap under her chin. With a glance toward the snowy incline, she opened the back hatch and tugged the board she used for freestyling from under the heavy quilt she’d wrapped it in.
After shutting the hatch, she faced the hill.
Cold, muffled silence welcomed her, and she smiled as a restless breeze teased the tops of the fir trees. It was almost as if the snow knew she was coming and stirred restlessly, impatiently, beckoning her to hurry.
“Okay, okay. I’m coming,” she muttered, starting the long march up the hill.
Her feet sank into at least six inches of pristine snow with each step, and soon she was breathing hard, her leg bitching. For all the rehab and long walks—and even a few jogs—she’d taken, she hadn’t hoofed it up such a steep incline since before her fall. But no way was she turning back.