Second Chance Summer

by Jill Shalvis

  “Darling, it’s been ten years,” her mom said softly. “You’ve got to let it go. It’s okay to let it go.”

  “I have,” Lily said. Lied. “Totally and completely. One hundred percent.”

  “Do you mean one hundred percent minus one hundred percent?”

  Lily let out a low laugh. “Let’s talk about you, okay? What are you up to?”

  “Nice subject change. But because I’m in South Africa I’m going to allow it. Did you know they serve fried caterpillars and sheep heads here as a delicacy?”

  “Yummy.” Lily still wasn’t used to the changes in her mom. Once upon a time, Donna Danville had been born and raised right here in Cedar Ridge, Colorado. She’d married and had two kids and worked just about 24/7 at Mt. Rose, never leaving the only town she knew and loved.

  Until she’d lost half her family in the span of a single week from hell.

  Lily and her mom had had many talks over the years about how Donna wanted Lily to let go of the past enough to move on. Lily always assured her she had, telling her she had a full and happy life in San Diego.

  And most of the time Lily even believed her own lies.

  Until she’d come back to Cedar Ridge.

  Now she knew the truth. She hadn’t let go of the past at all. She’d buried it deep, let it take root, and had even secretly harbored it. “It’s good to talk to you, Mom.”

  “Oh, darling, so good.” Over the air came the telltale sniff and Lily’s heart dropped.

  “Mom, don’t cry.”

  “It’s just so lovely to hear you.” She paused. “I’ve sent you something that I had pulled out of storage, I hope it won’t upset you. But it should arrive today and I wanted to give you a little heads-up about it so you aren’t surprised.”

  “What is it?” Lily asked.

  “A framed pic of you and Ashley on the mountain. And her favorite scarf. I thought you might want them there in Cedar Ridge. One to keep you warm on the outside, the other to keep you warm inside. In your heart.”

  It took Lily a moment to answer because her throat clogged with emotion. She knew the scarf well, she’d been the one to give the baby-blue length of cashmere to Ashley on her seventeenth birthday—her last. “That’s sweet, Mom,” she finally managed, meaning it. “I’ll love them both, thank you.”

  “Just do me one favor,” her mom said. “Promise me now that you’re back home, you won’t leave there until you forgive yourself.”

  Lily closed her eyes. “Mom—”

  “Promise me, Lily Ann, or I swear to you, I’m on the next plane. I’ll get all up in your grill and everything.”

  Lily managed a laugh. “All up in my grill?”

  “Yes. That’s what all the kids are saying now, right?”

  Lily shook her head. “Fine, you win. But, Mom?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Stop streaming MTV.”

  Lily was smiling when she disconnected and still smiling when a candy bar got waved beneath her nose.

  Jonathan dropped it into her lap. “Nice to see you looking happy.”

  Lily picked up the candy bar and felt her mouth water. “A bribe?”

  “You know me so well.” Jonathan jerked his chin to the reception area. “Passing off another client to you.”

  “No problem.” She took a bite of the candy bar. “Omigod, so good. You know, at my old job these were considered the work of the devil and were banned. I’ve been making up for lost time so much my dress was tight this morning.”

  “Your old job sucked and so did your boss,” Jonathan said.

  True enough.

  “And Lily Pad?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You look like hot stuff in that dress.”

  She finished her candy bar and hit the reception area. Waiting there were Danielle and Chelsea, two sixteen-year-old BFFs. They wanted matching updos for a rec center teen summer dance, so she took one and Rosa took the other.

  “The dance sounds like fun,” Lily said to the girls after they’d each been washed. They were sitting side by side at the stations. “Are you going with anyone?”

  “It’s stag,” Chelsea said, the taller, more outspoken one of the two. “But I’m meeting someone there.”

  “Me too,” Danielle said smugly as Lily began to do her hair. The girl had a smile that revealed dimples and more than a little trouble.

  Over at Rosa’s station, Chelsea’s eyes narrowed in the mirror at Danielle. “Who? Who are you meeting there?”

  “I promised not to tell.”

  “Why?” Chelsea demanded. “I’m your BFF. You have to tell me. It’s in the manual.”

  “Can’t,” Danielle said. “Trevor doesn’t want me to tell anyone so no one gets jealous.” She slapped her hand over her own mouth at the inadvertent slip.

  Chelsea pushed Rosa’s hands out of her hair and stood up, hands on hips. “Trevor? You’re meeting Trevor? You?”

  Now Danielle’s eyes narrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean? You think I’m not good enough for him?”

  “Not even close,” Chelsea said. “And he’s my date tonight. So back off, heifer. And you might want to back off the cheeseburgers too. Just sayin’.”

  Danielle leapt to her feet as well. “Who’s going to make me, you skinny, skank cow?”

  That’s when they dove at each other and wrestled around on the floor, fighting like two cats.

  Rosa stood there gaping. Jonathan ran in from the private client room, skidded to a halt, and looked horrified. Then he pointed at Lily.

  Lily got the message. Deal with this. She pulled the handheld faucet from the hair-washing station and squirted both teens. Worked like a charm.

  When they were gone and the mess was cleaned up, Jonathan shook his head. “I should give you a raise for most creative use of a station.”

  “You should,” Lily agreed. Not that she’d hold her breath. Jonathan was so tight with his money he squeaked when he walked.

  Her next client was a huge, thirty-something lumberjack with a Wild-Man-of-Borneo beard. He requested a shave.

  Lily pulled out the clippers to trim the bushy beard but he stopped her.

  “My head,” he said.

  She looked at his beautiful thick, luscious mane of hair. “You sure?”

  He patted the top of his head. “Positive.”

  “But—”

  “My wife has cancer,” he said, and then he ran a hand over his face. “So yeah, I’m sure,” he said hoarsely. “All of it goes.”

  Afterward he tried to pay her, but Lily refused to accept any money from him.

  When he’d left, Jonathan came up to her, arms crossed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll pay for it out of my till.”

  He looked at her for a long beat. “You’re pretty damn amazing, you know that? And you won’t be paying out of your earnings. I’ve got it covered. Because for cancer, anything goes. Always.”

  It was six o’clock before Lily left the salon. It’d been a long day, made longer by the way she kept thinking about Aidan. This isn’t over, he’d said. And then there’d been the conversation with her mom.

  Forgive yourself.

  Promise me.

  Lily got into her car, but instead of going home, she parked in the empty clearing at the trailhead to the hiking trails. There she drew in a deep breath and looked at herself in the rearview mirror. “You’re okay,” she told herself.

  Her reflection didn’t look convinced.

  “You just need to feel Ashley,” she said, testing that theory out loud.

  It was the truth. She desperately needed to feel her sister. The first problem with that was that she was still in her work clothes, a sundress and cropped sweater with wedge sandals. Alone in her car with no one nearby, she first looked around for security cameras. Not seeing any, she quickly stripped down to her sports bra and spandex shorts, and then dug into the duffel bag in the backseat for a T-shirt and running shoes.

  She got to the exact sam
e spot she’d made it to on her first day back in town before stopping for a break. She sucked in some wind and checked her phone.

  No missed calls. And no texts from a certain firefighter …

  She sighed. Without water and supplies she knew better than to go much farther. She might be a little unbalanced and a lot messed up, but she wasn’t stupid.

  So she went another half mile and then sat on a rock, taking in the view. If she’d been geared up, she’d have had several choices from here—the rest of the hike—another two miles up a near vertical. Or free-climbing down to the river.

  She’d done both many times, a long, long time ago.

  But it was the cliff that drew her. She walked to the edge and looked down.

  A staggering three-hundred-sixty-degree vista of sharp, jagged mountain peaks and the blanket of green forestland that covered them, lined with rivers and tributaries, as far as the eye could see. This wasn’t the exact spot where Ashley had died. That was up about a mile farther. But the view was the same, and in fact from here she could see the face where Ashley had climbed and then fallen to her death.

  Lily stared across the chasm at it. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find. A neatly wrapped box of forgiveness? Her sister’s ghost?

  She got nothing as she looked at the heart-stopping drop-off from the cliff to the winding river far below, nothing at all but the silent dare.

  Climb me. …

  “Next time,” she told it.

  Chapter 17

  After two straight days on a fire out on Eagle Flats, Aidan staggered out of the station when his shift was over, blinking at the bright morning sun.

  He turned on his phone and found the usual myriad of messages, including one from a pissed-off Lenny who’d gone to court to fight his DUI to no avail. Aidan texted him back that his job would be waiting for him, no worries there. But Lenny texted back with a “whatever” and had Aidan shaking his head.

  He couldn’t give any energy to that right now.

  Someone honked, and he turned to see Gray waiting at the curb in one of the utility vehicles that belonged to the resort.

  Aidan ambled over to him, and Gray rolled down the window. “Kenna had to borrow your truck for a fucking interview, so I’m your ride.”

  “You need to figure out what she can do for the resort, man,” Aidan said. “And quick.”

  “Yeah. But when I ask what she wants to do, she just shrugs. I don’t have a lot of year-round positions open for a pissed-off-at-the-world twenty-four-year-old.”

  Yeah. Aidan knew this. He tossed his duffel bag in the back and slid into the shotgun position before laying his head back.

  “Coffee’s for you,” Gray said, nodding to the steaming to-go cup in the console.

  Aidan reached for it, sipped, and looked at Gray, eyes narrowed. “Sugar and milk?”

  “Isn’t that how you like it?”

  “Yeah, but since when do you care how I like it?”

  Gray didn’t answer, just pulled away from the curb. Shit. Aidan set the cup down. “What’s up?”

  “Who says something’s up?” Gray asked casually as he whipped a U-turn.

  “When you’re nice to me, something’s always up.”

  Gray blew out a breath, and Aidan’s bad feeling deepened. “Mom?”

  “No, she’s fine.”

  Aidan gave him an impatient go-ahead gesture.

  “It’s Dad,” Gray said. “He finally caught up with some of Hudson’s messages and called me back instead of him.”

  Aidan stared at his brother’s profile, totally and instantly pissed off for Hudson’s sake. “What the hell did he call you for?”

  “Because he’s an asshole who doesn’t want to acknowledge Hud and Jacob exist.”

  “What kind of bullshit is that?”

  “Hey, I agree, but it doesn’t change the fact that he called me. He wanted to tell me why he wasn’t coming back. Ever.”

  Aidan didn’t show his relief, but he was glad he was sitting down.

  “Don’t you want to know why?” Gray asked.

  “Don’t give a shit, as long as he stays away.”

  Gray slid him a look that had Aidan’s feeling going from bad to worse.

  “So you’re telling me you don’t care that you are the reason why he doesn’t want to come back or be a part of our lives?”

  Fuck. “Pull over.”

  “I’m—”

  “Pull the fuck over,” Aidan snapped.

  Gray yanked the truck to the side of the road. For as far as the eye could see there was the narrow two-lane road and trees. Miles and miles of trees. Aidan shoved out of the vehicle and started walking.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Gray yelled after him.

  Aidan kept moving.

  “Goddammit.” This was followed by the sounds of Gray’s running footsteps as he tried to keep up with Aidan.

  “You should’ve told me,” Gray said breathlessly. “Back when it happened.”

  Aidan shook his head and kept moving. No, he couldn’t have told Gray when it happened. And they weren’t going to talk about it now either.

  But Gray finally caught up with him and grabbed his arm, whipping him around. “He told me you caught him,” Gray said, his hair blowing away from his face in the breeze. His eyes went hard. “And he also told me what happened after that.”

  Aidan doubted that. “No. No way he’d tell you.”

  “You’d walked in on him and his admin going at it at the resort. You tried to run out, but he wouldn’t let you.” Gray’s voice was low and dangerously quiet now, the way it got when he was really seriously ticked off and trying to keep his shit together. “He said that he got so furious and pissed off that he beat the shit out of you and then drank himself into a stupor and passed out. When he woke up you were gone.”

  Aidan tipped his head back and stared at the sky. Azure blue. So bright it hurt. He kept staring at it.

  “He beat the shit out of you?” Gray asked, sounding raw and devastated.

  There was only one cloud, a white puffy cloud in the shape of an elephant, floating lazily across the sky.

  “Say something,” Gray begged.

  Aidan pointed to the sky. “You see the elephant, or is that just me?”

  Gray blew out a breath. “He went looking for you,” he said. “Found you at home with Mom. He figured you’d told her everything, but I know you better than that. You keep your shit bottled tight.”

  Aidan closed his eyes, guilt squeezing his airway so tight he couldn’t breathe.