Page 24 of Fool Me (Timberline Peak #1)

CHAPTER

FIFTEEN

ATLAS

The plan had been for Harlow and I to ride together on Sunday morning for our date, but an early morning emergency surgery had us changing our plans.

The patient, a lab belonging to a younger couple—their first baby—was clipped by a car in almost the same spot, with nearly identical injuries to my first pet, Bob.

Years can’t erase that feeling of fear that sixteen-year-old me felt when I hit the stray cat, or the hours of stomach-churning dread while I waited to hear if he would make it.

Each time I treat an animal hit by a vehicle, it’s there, in the back of my mind, the reason I do this, along with the cranky cat who helped shape my life along with Ray.

But this was the first time I’ve been responsible for the care of a pet who was struck by a car in Timberline Peak.

Losing a patient is never easy, it’s why depression and suicide rates in my field are staggering.

Just like Ray was open with me as a mentor, I’m open with my small staff about my struggles with compassion fatigue and generalized anxiety disorder.

They know I take duloxetine and stick to a strict workout routine, and I encourage them to find something that works for them and to come to me when things get too heavy.

Today was heavy for me. The patient came out of the procedure and will be fine, but there were minutes when I wasn’t sure that would be the case.

In the moment, the pressure of life and death is manageable.

I focus on the work—control the controllable.

But after today especially, the mental toll has me crashing.

My body aches with exhaustion, and my mind is on auto-pilot as I drive to the trailhead. I know that meeting up with Harlowe to climb and working my body, taking that control back, is what I need. It’s better with where my head is at than going home and being alone.

I pull into the crowded gravel lot to find Harlowe and Echo getting the gear ready in the back of Phantom. Her smile as I park feels warmer than the summer air blowing through my open windows and it jolts me out of the fog.

She doesn’t wait for me to turn off the truck when I stop in the spot behind her, hopping down from the back of her SUV and standing at my door, arms resting on the window.

“Are you sure you’re up for this? We can do this another time.

” Her hand dangles inside my door and I want to thread my fingers through hers, but I don’t.

There’s no one here, and there’s no reason for me to touch her.

After the dangerous line we walked last time we were together, and her quick retreat, I don’t want to push things.

“This is exactly what I need.” Time with her is exactly what I need.

There’s no one else in Timberline Peak I consider a friend. Well, there’s Denver, but I haven’t seen him in ten years, and one measly text exchange doesn’t make up for how I dropped him in the wake of everything that happened with Canyon.

“Okay,” she says, reaching for my handle and opening the door from the inside.

She steps back, swinging the door open, and I unbuckle to turn in my seat so I’m facing her.

“I’ve got everything ready; my dad’s harness should fit you.

Do you need a crash course, or do you remember how everything works? ”

“There was a climbing gym near my place in Houston, but it’s not the same as sport climbing outdoors. You’re the expert here.” I try to infuse some teasing into the words, but my voice comes out a dry, tired croak.

Harlowe’s lips pull down at the corners and then she’s right there, stepping into my space, her hips slotting into the gap between my legs and her palms falling to the tops of my knees. “At the risk of overstepping, you look like you need a hug.”

“Please.” I widen my leg so she can step closer and the second her arms are around me, I dip my head, burying my face in her neck and inhaling her. “Today was hard,” I whisper the words into her skin.

“What can I do?’

“You’re doing it.” I loosen my hold on her and take the first full breath since I stepped out of surgery. “Being with you, doing something other than sitting with my thoughts, is what I need most.”

“What I’m hearing is you giving me permission to yap the entire hike in.”

A snort of laughter takes me by surprise. “Bad day or good day, I could listen to you either way.”

“When you regret encouraging this later, I won’t even say I told you so,” she sings and I appreciate the effort she’s making to keep things light.

I shut my door and follow her to the back of the Scout. She takes one backpack and hands me the other.

“Can you?” she asks, holding out her can of bear spray. There’s no reason she couldn’t do it on her own and I’d guess it’s just a way to occupy me, which makes me want to hug her again.

She steps closer and I slide the red bottle in the netting on the strap. She tilts her chin up, giving me a serious look. “If you change your mind and want to head back, just let me know.”

“I promise, I will, but I’m okay—feel better already, in fact. The hug helped.” Masking is fucking real and it’s a hard habit to break. While I do feel better than I did on the drive here, I’m far from out of the woods.

“As much as I hope that’s true, you don’t need to lie to cover for the hard days. Lord knows I’ve been there, and if you ever need someone to just be with you through the muddy parts that leave you feeling stuck and heavy, I’m here.” Harlowe sees right through my attempts to minimize it.

There’s a stigma when it comes to mental health—people don’t talk about it like they should. I used to be the same way.

“My sophomore year of college was hell. For the first time in my life, I was truly alone. I’d lost the two people I was closest to because they fucked me over. I was in the thick of it, only leaving my dorm for class, barely scraping by in my classes, sleeping twelve-plus hours a day.”

Normally, people just want you to be happy, and your mental health struggle makes them uncomfortable. They want you to be fine so fucking bad that they’ll overcompensate by trying to force you to feel better.

Harlowe addressing it head-on instead of just trying to cheer me up is refreshing.

“Thanks for the distraction, and for the offer to rot with me. Mental health is a fucking drag, but brushing it under the rug to make myself more palatable has never helped.”

“All that happens when you ignore it is an ugly festering.” She bends, clipping on Echo’s leash.

“Ding, ding, ding,” I say, the dog leading the way as we start down the trail, side by side. “I was in deep for almost six months before someone realized how serious it was and forced me to face it.”

“Who was it?” She lifts her chin toward me, watching me as we walk.

“Ray—Dr. McMullins. He’d been calling for weeks about an internship he wanted me to consider.

I brushed off call after call, for weeks.

When I finally answered, I spoke in grunts and half-sentences.

With a sigh, he’d asked if I was talking to anyone.

My smart ass retorted that I was talking to him at the moment. ”

“Ah, I can relate. I get mean when my anxiety is bad.”

“Mine mostly manifests as physical pain and fatigue. It took a long time to find something that didn’t cause me to feel numb and affect my capabilities at work.

But that one snarky remark was the opening he needed to get me to listen to him.

He told me about how he’d struggled with depression, how certain times in his life have been worse than others, and how he worked with a therapist and psychiatrist to find a regimen that worked for him.

Then he helped me find resources on campus so I could talk to someone. ”

“For me it was Dad. My parents are divorced, and they picked the worst possible time to split up—during my awkward teen years.”

A family appears at the bend in the trail and Harlowe scoots closer, making room for them and taking my hand. There’s a lull in the conversation as they pass.

“There’s not a single cell in my body that buys that you were ever awkward.”

She shrugs. “I was a string bean—long and lean until I was almost eighteen.” She glances down at her chest. “I looked like a boy until these sprouted at the end of junior year.”

My eyes follow hers to the valley of cleavage peeking out at the top of her sports bra. If I don’t pull my eyes away, I’m going to end up going face first into a rock, or she’s gonna slap me. Either way, I need to stop looking.

When I do, I find her wearing an amused look, complete with a lopsided smile that shows off one shallow dimple.

I grimace. “Sorry, that was rude of me.”

“Consider it fake boyfriend perks. You get to ogle me and I won’t knee you in the balls.”

“So generous, and on top of the climbing lessons.”

“Refresher—not lessons. It’s like riding a bike,” she reassures me.

“Somehow, that feels like a gross overstatement. I might remember belay on, belay off, but I’m pretty sure that muscle memory is long gone.”

This time it’s her turn to ogle, and it comes at the perfect time.

A group of guys wearing Teton County Search and Rescue shirts appear on the trail in front of us.

And, with her hand still clasped in mine, and her eyes raking over my body, we look every bit the new, happy couple we’re supposed to be.

To the three men approaching, it’s imperceptible, but I notice the new stiffness in her posture as soon as she steps closer.

“Corbin,” the blond in the middle greets us, his eyes flicking to me and dropping to our joined hands. “Seems Canyon was mistaken about at least one thing.”

“And what’s that, Blake?” Harlowe asks.

To her credit, she pulls off looking confident and unbothered. The steel grip she has on me is the only tell that she’s teetering on the edge of losing her cool.

It’s the one with the burly beard next to him that smirks, saying, “Just bragging about how, now that he’s back, he’s going to snag Travis’s job and you.”