Page 14

CASE

“Hey.”

“Hi. It’s Case,” I reply.

She laughs. “Funny that. My phone said it was you.”

“There is that.”

“Sorry,” she snickers. “I couldn’t resist. I promise I’ll behave now.”

“Please don’t on my account.”

“Duly noted,” she replies. “I have permission to be a brat then?”

A chuckle escapes. “I’m not sure about that. ”

“Spoilsport.”

“Why can I imagine you pokin’ your tongue out at me after sayin’ that.”

“Because I was,” she adds without any hesitation. This woman…

“How’s your Mom today?” I ask. “Those flowers still sittin’ pretty on the dinin’ table.”

A sweet sigh fills my ears. “She’s doin’ OK. She has physical therapy on Tuesday afternoons so she’s always tired after that. I went to pick her up after leavin’ the diner and had Mack’s meatloaf for supper.”

Birdie’s advice from earlier springs to mind. “She gives so much that sometimes she forgets she deserves to be taken care of as well.”

“I was wonderin’ where you rushed off to.”

“Yeah. Duty called and all that,” she says. “But she’s good. Currently sittin’ in her chair catchin’ up on her soaps she missed. Usually, I’d be sittin’ there watchin’ them with her but someone made me a better offer.”

“Did they? Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Oh, you know. He’s a little mysterious, but also so ridiculously hot, I just couldn’t resist when he asked if he could call.” I can tell by her tone that she’s probably smiling as stupidly as I am right now.

I swing the hanging chair and sway back and forth, feeling like a teenager with a crush who’s kicking their feet. “Hot, you say? Just how hot are we talkin’ here,”

“I don’t know. How hot is Sutton.”

A startled laugh escapes me. “Damn, you almost had me.”

“I aim to please, curious.” She sounds proud of herself for getting one over me.

“I swear I haven’t smiled as much in my life as I have this week,” I say without thinking.

“Well that’s a damn shame. That smile had the power to make me forget all my troubles. It turned you from a random stranger eatin’ pie to a handsome, kind man who put me at ease and turned what was a bad day into a night that…was not.”

“You tellin’ me it was my smile that reeled you in? Good to know,” I say. “It was your eyes, for me. I was gone for those big brown eyes of yours. You batted your lashes and I was yours.”

“You still gone, Case?” she whispers.

“Maybe even more so, beautiful.” And I think I always will be. I hear her breath catch before the line falls quiet. “So, this ridiculously handsome man you had plans with, does he have anythin’ else goin’ for him?”

“You scopin’ out the competition, curious?”

“Just livin’ up to my name. I’ve got a beautiful stranger to impress.”

“Hmm,” she hums. “Well, I’m hopin’ to get to know him a lot better. So far, all signs are lookin’ good. Mom got along ‘ splendidly ’ with him by all accounts.”

“He liked your mom too. That’s the rumor, anyway,” I reply.

“Oh, did he? That’s great. Because she won’t stop talkin’ about him. It’s all Case this and Case that. If I didn’t like the man, I’d be sick of his name by now.”

I look out over the dark valley to where the dimly lit town sits and where Isla is right now.

“Beautiful, keep this up and I’m goin’ to get an ego,” I tell her. “And believe me, I haven’t had one of those since I was fifteen and thought I was ten foot tall and bulletproof.”

“What happened to it?” she asks curiously. “Because I honestly can’t imagine you being a cocky teenager who thought he was God’s gift.”

“It vanished the day Will and Sutton tag-teamed me. One distracted me while the other pantsed me in the middle of the grandstand durin’ the high school football game. When Cap— our dad—asked them why they did it, they said I was gettin’ too big for my boots and needed a ‘come to Jesus’ moment.”

She giggles, then snorts, and by the time she starts cackling, I’m laughing with her. “It obviously worked.”

“It knocked me down a peg or two, that’s for sure. But I’m not complainin’ about hearin’ you say good things about me.”

“You mean strokin’ your ego?”

“That too.” She giggles. “I forgot how good of a storyteller you are. That’s one of the things that stuck with me once I got home, how you’d get so animated and expressive.”

“Really? It wasn’t my kind eyes, sexy smile, my rugged good looks? Or that I was a perfect gentleman that night?”

Her voice drops to a warm whisper. “There was that too, don’t you worry.” She sighs happily. “Anyway, how did the rest of the weddin’ talk go?”

“I've realized that we’ve got nothin’ to worry about. Those nuptials have been planned for a long time now. All that’s left to do is figure out the logistics,” I explain. “Maybe you could ask your handsome man to be your date? He is the best man, or so I’ve heard.”

“He is? Then that would make total sense, wouldn’t it? Convenient too. I’ll have to think about that,” she replies, playing along just like I knew she would.

“The answer’s yes. No need to ask.”

“That’s good. Especially since there’s no one else I’d want to go with. Seems I can’t get this man off my mind of late.”

Now I’m the one smiling so big my face aches. “The feelin’s mutual, believe me.”

“I still can’t believe you’re you. Is that weird? It’s weird, right?” I honestly could listen to her talk all damn night. I might get frozen to Sutton’s porch swing, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

My brows furrow. “What do you mean?”

“I know you’re you, I just can’t believe you live here and we never ran into each other. Timber Falls is big for a small town, but everyone still knows everyone— and their business.”

“Might’ve helped if we’d shared our names instead of stickin’ to nicknames.” Would’ve made it a lot easier to track her down once I left too.

“I mean… curious still fits you now.”

“And you’ll always be my beautiful stranger to me,” I add.

“It’s just… I don’t know,” she says, as if thinking out loud.

She does it a lot and it’s one of my favorite things about her—these unfiltered, raw, honest moments.

“Isn’t it funny how you’ve been here for months and that night, when the world was feelin' heavy on my shoulders again, there you were.”

“I’m startin’ to think we were always meant to see each other again. There are just too many signs sayin’ otherwise for it not to be true.”

“Like the mountain’s call that Birdie believes in?” She asks, making me freeze. I think my heart even stops beating for a moment. “You know about that?”

“Well yeah . Birdie tried to get me to read them years ago but I’ve never got around to it.

She’s told me about them though, and I don’t know about a whole concept of a mountain pickin’ soulmates out of thin air and bringin’ couples together.

That would never happen in real life, even if my best friend believes in it.

” She laughs. “Life is never that perfect. Look at Mom. She had everythin’ goin’ for her—an amazin’ business, friends, perfect health.

She was livin’ the empty nester life and lovin’ it.

And now…” Her voice drifts off and I can feel her pain like a fist to my chest.

“Now she’s livin’ with a chronic illness none of y’all could predict, and therefore couldn’t prepare for?”

“Yeah,” she replies. “You get it, right?”

“I do, beautiful. But what you forget is that she also has a wonderful, selfless daughter who was willin’ to uproot her entire life and move back home to care for her. Believe me, even with her illness, I bet—no, I know —she still thinks she’s blessed.”

“Case…” her voice cracks, but it’s also soft and sweet, the sound wrapping around me like a cocoon. It’s exactly what I want to be for Isla too.

“It’s OK to be sad, beautiful. I’m sad for you and your mom. I’m sad when I think about Gramps bein’ up the mountain on this ranch all by himself, him knowin’ he was sick and not wantin’ to be a bother. Then him passin’ with only the mayor and Birdie knowin’.

“What else?” she asks, her voice soft and low.

“I know about how your Mom feels—in a way—because of my Seasonal Affective Disorder.”

“I remember you tellin’ me about that.”

“It’s much better now. Better managed and under control. I can still get low for no reason sometimes. Just the weather changin’—not even winter, either. Sometimes it’s just the changin’ seasons. When the dark cloud lifts, I feel ungrateful for not bein’ happy enough with everythin’ I have in life.”

“You know it doesn’t work like that.”

“Yeah. Not sayin’ my thoughts always make sense all the time,” I joke. “Like when I woke up in Anchorage that mornin’ and found you’d gone, I was disappointed that I let you go and missed my chance. That’s all I could think about while Gramps’s will was read.”

“Case… I had no idea.”

“How could you?” I reply. “Anyway, then we found out we’d have to move here to get our inheritance and I was relieved.”

“Because the decision was effectively made for you?” she says softly, proving once again that she understands me.

“Yes and no. We all agreed to move to the ranch, I had a choice there. But in doin’ so, it made it easier to leave my life back in Cali and admit that I wasn’t happy there.”

Isla stays silent for a good while and I wonder if I’ve said too much.

“How do you think someone gets over that? The guilt of feelin’ bad about the situation you find yourself in when it’s just part of life ,” she asks. “Wonderin’ if is this what the universe had planned all along, but not likin’ the hand you’ve been dealt. Does that make sense?”

“More than you know, beautiful.” And right now, there has never been another person—other than my twin for obvious reasons—that I’ve felt closer to than her.

“I swear, sometimes it feels like I’ve known you my whole life, not just a few days, over half a year apart. That’s strange, right?” I ask.

“And yet you say the mountain’s Call can’t be real?” I tease, my heart flipping when she snorts in response.

“OK, I guess it could be within the realms of possibility—but only in Aster’s books. Like, c’mon, a tree falling on the road and the heroine is saved by a big, rough, and gruff mountain man who just happens to be her writin’ muse and her soulmate. Yeah right.”

I laugh because little does she know, that did happen. I should know, I’ve met Aster and Gray personally. “But no, I don’t think it’s strange. How can I when I feel the exact same way.”

A small gasp sounds in my ear. “You do?”

“Yeah, beautiful. There’s a reason we met that night in Anchorage. I truly believe that.”

A comfortable silence stretches out between us again. “You think there’s a reason the universe brought us back together again?” She asks.

Follow your heart, follow your feelings.

“Honestly? Yeah, I do.”

“Case?”

“Yeah, beautiful?”

“I know we said we’d already had our first date. But I’d really like to go on another first date with you,” she tells me and right then, I feel like the king of the mountain.

“Like a Timber Falls first date?”.

“A Timber Falls first date. I like the sound of that. But I have to warn you, my schedule’s pretty busy with work, Mom, and her appointments, the house, the restaurant?—”

“Isla, I know . And just so you know, I’m not goin’ anywhere.

I’ve got a Christmas tree farm, a house to renovate, a ranch to get up and runnin’, projects I still consult on back in Silicon Valley, and don’t forget a Houdini donkey to wrangle.

” I have to stop to suck in a breath because saying all of that out loud makes it sound like a lot when it doesn’t feel all that heavy when I’m doin’ it in God’s country.

“What I don’t mind is fittin’ all of that around you when it means I get to have a Timber Falls first date with the most beautiful woman in town. OK?”

She sighs and I’d hazard a guess that I said the right thing because it almost sounds like a swoon. “Damn, you’re good.”

“Nope. Just honest. Blame my weekly therapist appointments. You can thank him for me bein’ upfront and honest about everythin’.”

“Believe me, I’m not complainin’. It’s refreshin’. Noteworthy, even,” she says.

“I’ll have to write that on my tombstone when I’m old and gray. Here lies Cayson Cooper. Son, brother, city boy turned Alaskan rancher and once described as ‘noteworthy’.”

“Can we have our date before that happens?” she says playfully.

“Name the time and date and I’ll be there ready to date the hell out of you, beautiful.”

“Damn, Case. You sure know how to make a girl feel special.”

“Good. My plan for you to fall hopelessly in love with me is workin’ then?” She laughs at that, and the sound is so free and easy I can’t help but grin. “All you have to do is let me know when you’ve got an afternoon or evenin’ free, and it’s a done deal.”

“Just like that, curious?”

The lightest, easiest laugh escapes me, and it feels as natural as breathing. Just like it was the night I first laid eyes on her. “Yes, beautiful. Just like that.”