Page 24 of The Followers

Whatever. He had nearly a foot on her in height. She waited for him to pass by, to run down the other side of the hill, but he didn’t. He stopped a few feet away, hands on hips, sucking in giant gulps of air.

“What are you doing, trying to kill me?” he wheezed.

“You didn’t have to keep up,” Liv managed between her own ragged breaths. “You were supposed to back off.”

“I didn’t want to let you win.”

“I didn’t want to let you win,” she said.

When her breathing calmed, she straightened, wiping sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand. The man stood upright, too, and she finally got a good look at the runner who had chased her up the hill.

Messy brown hair, laughter-creased eyes, scruffy almost-beard threaded with golden-red.

“Coffee shop guy,” she said.

He smiled, chocolate brown eyes crinkling around the edges. “Coffee shop girl.”

A few minutes later they were running together, taking it easy so they could talk without losing breath. His name was Jeremiah, he’d said, and he had lived in Durango his entire life. He ran upright, with excellent form and long strides. Liv would have admired it—from a strictly professional, anatomical point-of-view—if she hadn’t been so irritated. She scrambled to stay next to him, determined that this guy with legs up to her armpits would not know she found it difficult.

“Do you work with athletes?” he asked.

“Not exactly,” Liv said, surprised that he’d remembered she was a physical therapist. “The job I’m doing now is in a skilled nursing facility. An old folks’ home.”

“Do you like it?”

“It’s a job.”

“But if you’re going to devote your life to something, you should be passionate about it, right?”

“That’s a privileged perspective, you know?” Liv said, glancing over. “I’m the first person in my family to attend college, let alone graduate school. The fact that I can pay my bills and have health insurance seems like a good deal.”

“Fair enough.” He sent her a look that reminded her of the way he’d looked when she saw him at the coffee shop—as if a laugh lived right below the surface. She got the feeling that he liked the pushback. It gave her the confidence to ask him something, when she normally would have stayed quiet.

“What do you do?”

“I’m a CPA.”

She almost stopped running, imagining Jeremiah gripping a mechanical pencil, hunched over a page full of numbers. “An accountant? That’s the last thing I would’ve predicted. Are you—”

“A nerd?” he interrupted, laughing.

“I was going to ask if you’re passionate about it.”

“It’s a job.” He grinned, throwing her words back at her. “It pays the bills so I can do what I enjoy.”

“Which is...”

“Hike, fish, camp, rock climb, mountain bike, ski in the winter.”

He looked like the kind of guy who was always outside. Face a little sunburned, weathered around the forehead and eyes. Weathered in a nice way, Liv realized, and forced herself to pay attention to the road ahead.

He glanced over at her, and she felt self-conscious about the sweat on her face and neck, running into her sports bra.

“What do you do for fun?” he asked.

That always struck Liv as an odd question—as if everyone had the luxury of doing things just for the fun of it. “I’ve moved around so much the past few years, I haven’t settled into any specific hobbies.”

“Except running,” he said, nodding at her legs. She didn’t feel self-conscious about that—her legs were her best feature. But she wasn’t used to caring if guys noticed them.