Page 53 of Over & Out (Redbeard Cove #3)

Chris

THREE AND A HALF YEARS LATER

It took me six months to look at the trust account. Another six months before I gave up arguing with Hopper about keeping the million dollars inside. He told me if I didn’t want it, I could donate it.

“ You donate it! It’s your money!”

“I already did,” he said.

I folded my arms. “So I’m a charity now?”

“For loving me? Obviously. You’re a saint.”

The thing is, even though he makes self-deprecating jokes, he’s still doing so much better than he was. He believes in himself. He makes his own decisions about his future and his career. Mabel had him in a chokehold that trickled through his whole business.

Still, he doesn’t hate her.

We visited his mom’s plot together last year, in Ontario.

It was the sticky peak of summer, but the flowers on her grave were fresh, the water topped up.

Peonies—her favorite. We knew Mabel moved back home after she was let go from Hopper’s team, and it wasn’t likely to be his dad, so it made sense it was her.

While Hopper doesn’t harbor anger toward Mabel, I do, but I don’t keep it stoked.

I see how she thought she was helping. But don’t we all?

Hopper’s dad certainly did when he dragged his kid out of school to go on those auditions.

He thought he was a saint. Mabel made Hopper feel like he was a bad guy, like the things he did required concealment.

She’s a big reason he carried so much shame around.

But he’s been going to his therapist regularly—a new one he found himself. I have too. We’ve both come a long way in processing our various traumas, and we do it side by side.

Hopper still hasn’t read the whole letter his dad wrote. He had me skim it and fill him in on the pertinent bits.

“It says he’s sorry and that he’s making it official that you don’t need to pay him any more money.

” That’s what I told him as a summary. Really, it was a bit of a rambling mess, still full of defensive statements, like, I was trying to help you .

But he did admit to some of his mistakes.

The drinking. The womanizing. And most importantly, keeping him separated from his mom for those most vital first few years of his fame.

The money part was the most surprising to me.

When Hopper told me how much he was sending him, I was stunned he’d want to turn that tap off.

But under his bitterness, Hopper said, his father is a simple man.

He lives in a simple brick house on a dirt road.

He drives a basic sedan. Eats white bread and drinks black coffee. Doesn’t drink, last time we heard.

“It’s the only thing I like to think we have in common,” Hopper says. “The cars are fun, but all I need is you.”

That interview and the Iggies were three and a half years ago now, and so much has changed since then.

This year, on the red carpet, the interviewer greeted me with a hug and congratulating us on our wedding, which was a simple but gorgeous affair here in Redbeard Cove.

Mac walked me down the aisle. Raph officiated.

We each had a bridesmaid and a groomsman: me Lana and Hopper Cal—Mac’s best friend—after Miles politely but emphatically refused.

Cal travels all over the place for work, but when I first introduced him to Hopper at our engagement party at our place—a beach house just down the road from Mac and Shelby’s—I was stunned to find out they already knew each other.

“This is the guy who told me about the dirt track,” Hopper said, incredulous.

All those years ago, in a random airport encounter in Vancouver.

When he was still my mystery Dirtface, and I was, in his words, his smart-ass dream girl.

Cal had no idea who he’d been talking to that night.

Or that he was the catalyst for us eventually ending up together.

“You’re welcome,” Cal said, and I’d given him a fake punch to the solar plexus, because that’s what our relationship is like.

Then he looked like he’d gotten a real punch when Mac’s sister walked in. Lost the ability to speak for a bit, anyway.

That was almost three years ago. Three years ago was also when I found this perfect piece of land halfway between Redbeard Cove and Swan River and bought it outright with Hopper’s trust money.

It’s been two years since we were married, since Hopper launched his foundation Kids on Set to provide counseling, support, friendship, and normalcy to kids in the entertainment industry, and since we broke ground on the clubhouse that now stands just beyond the trees lining the parking lot.

Before that, I ran everything out of a trailer in a field full of daffodils Hopper planted all over the track.

To me, it still all feels like a dream.

Today, as I get out of my pickup and drop the tailgate on the trailer, I take a deep breath of fresh spring air.

The sun is warm for April, the clouds having mercifully parted a few days ago after three months of solid rain.

It feels like a new dawn; like the start of something beautiful.

Which it is, because today’s a monumental day here at Ride Like a Girl , my school, club, and society for all things girls on wheels.

The road to this track is paved, along with the parking lot.

But I still let the brambles go wild all around, so sometimes it feels like that original dirt track on the other side of town.

The one Hopper and I still sneak off to sometimes for early morning riding sessions.

Now, the wildflowers I seeded last month are starting to bloom.

Soon the place will be in full color. Just like me.

I brush off the non-existent dust from my custom-made violet riding pants as I walk around the truck to plant my hands on my hips and take in my track.

My track. A place I could only have dreamed of all those years ago when Dad whooped for me as I made my first jump.

I got back on a bike with Hopper’s help, and after a visit to Dad’s little plot in the Swan River cemetery.

I told him I forgave him after all these years.

I understood his struggles. I saw, through Hopper’s dad, how bad it could have been, even though it was awful in its own way.

On the track, Hopper and I go slow. We go fast. We hurl insults at each other.

And usually, so long as we’re the only ones there, we don’t make it out of the parking lot before climbing all over each other.

Today’s a fresh day, though not only because a new cohort of students will be here in about an hour, but because I get to introduce them to my newest instructor.

She’s just moved here, and from the car in the lot with the Alberta plates, she’s here ahead of me.

We’ve been working together the whole past week, going over the lesson plans and schedules.

She’s a natural, even though this is the first time she’s officially teaching.

I’m so excited for the day, I almost miss the buzz of a bike, no, two bikes, as they come close to this side of the track.

I grin when I see the two bikes I know and love—and the two people I love even more riding them roar into view.

The first rider does a huge jump, and Hopper follows, landing a little hard.

I wince. He’s going to feel that tomorrow. He’s forty in a year, and he’s been grumbling more and more when Aziz comes over and accuses him of not stretching properly before his admittedly much shorter workouts.

When the first bike approaches where I stand, it skids to a halt. The rider jumps off, pulling their helmet from their head as they run over.

“Hey, Chris!” the rider exclaims.

My chest still squeezes every time I get to see Shay.

She looks incredible. Healthy; strong; her brown hair clean and loose and blowing in the wind.

She turned eighteen this winter and moved right back here to Redbeard Cove.

She’s still in contact with her aunt, but she moved in with her mom here after two years apart in Alberta.

They live in a cute apartment not far from my old bungalow now.

Her mom, who’s maintained her sobriety for the past two years, works at the grocery store.

Next year, Shay’s going to college in Swan River.

But right now, she’s here with me.

She throws her arms around me as if we weren’t together all last week. I’m here for it.

“Hey, honey,” I say, squeezing her tight. “You doing okay?”

She nods. “ So excited about today.”

“Me too. How was everything with your mom this weekend?”

“She’s great. We saw it.”

Shay told me she was going to take her mom to see Hopper’s latest film.

He’s the voice of a rabbit in an animated adventure.

He did that one for Jess and Mara—Adrian and Len’s toddler—who are obsessed with the cartoon.

He did the Duke movie last year for me. But the rest, he’s done for himself.

And the indie directors and producers he wants to see succeed.

“What did she think?” I ask.

“She laughed her face off,” Shay says, looking over her shoulder at Hopper, who’s bending down to inspect something on his bike over on the side of the track. “Her favorite will always be Mountain Man , though.”

I nod, a little band pressing tight around my heart. “Mine too. ”

Yes, I adored the latest Duke movie, but Mountain Man was what he was filming when we fell in love.

The one where, in the final scene, he gave me a Duke smile before anyone knew he was going to do another one of those films. In that scene, there’s a flash of the tattoo over his heart that Continuity missed editing out.

The tattoo, of course, says Over that I’d be monitored closely, but we can go ahead if that’s what we want.”

This morning, I had an appointment with a surgeon.

She wasn’t the first one I’ve talked to, but definitely the best. She told me she was confident I could have a well-monitored pregnancy, despite my extensive scarring.

Hopper’s told me a thousand times he wants kids with me no matter how we do it, and that he’d love to adopt.

I know we both want to make a baby together, though, if it’s possible.

And today, the doctor gave us the green light.

After reassuring Hopper over and over again that it’ll be safe and I want to try—and telling him I definitely want to adopt later too—he presses his lips to mine, then pulls away, blinking back tears. “My love,” he whispers.

Finally, he holds me at arm’s length. “When can we start?”

“She said anytime. ”

“Alrighty, then. Center’s closed!” he yells.

“Hopper!” I exclaim. “Center’s open!” I yell over my shoulder. I narrow my eyes at my husband. “Now we just sound unhinged.”

“Oh, you haven’t seen unhinged.” At that, Hopper hoists me over his shoulder.

I shriek and laugh, and yes, maybe cry a little too. Because some last, small part of me thought we’d never get to do this.

But now, all I feel are Hopper’s strong arms around me. All I see are daffodils, bright and yellow, below me. And all I think as my husband lowers me back to the ground with his expression thick with love for me is we made it. We really, truly made it.

Even though my feet are on the ground, I still feel like I’m flying.

Thank you for reading Over & Out.