Recent rain had left the air smelling sweet and heady with hints of pine and earth and water. The soft duff trails on the forest floor were dry, however, protected by the heavy canopy of cedar, hemlock and various other conifers. Katelyn, panting slightly, slowed to a walk and pressed a hand to her ribcage to ward off a stitch. “That’s enough for me today.”
Brian slowed immediately, falling into step with her.
“No, no, you don’t have to stop. I’ll walk back.”
“Not a chance. Being with you is the highlight of my day.” He shook his head. “I mean . . . well, no, that is what I mean. I’m really glad we’re going to keep running together even though we’re back to work.”
Katelyn’s cheeks were warm from more than just the workout. She actually believed he meant his words. “Ditto.”
“Ditto?” he repeated, then laughed. “How heartwarming.”
She smiled and tugged at his long-sleeve T-shirt—the closest thing to physical contact with him she’d allow herself now, the most touch she could trust herself with. “You know what I mean.”
Brian’s eyes crinkled. “Yep, I do.”
They walked on in easy silence. “So how are things with your mom?” she asked eventually. “And the first days back at work with your dad?”
He shrugged. “Surprisingly good. I took your advice.”
“I gave you advice?”
“Words of wisdom, actually.”
Katelyn laughed hard. “Okay, now I know you’re teasing.”
Brian grinned too. “No, seriously. I used your ‘I’m a kid, your relationship is not my job’ line with both my parents at different times. It worked like a charm.”
“You know, I always wonder about that . . . Does stating that kind of truth change the person who hears it or does recognizing it and putting it out there just somehow change us?”
“Good question, but I have no idea.” Brian shrugged. “Maybe it doesn’t matter which?”
“Yeah, it probably doesn’t.”
They were comfortably silent for a breath or two, then Brian asked, “How was the kids’ weekend?”
“Fine, I guess. Dropping them off and picking them up was a simpler process than usual, but because I’m a freak, that has me more on edge than if there’d been a small blow up.”
“You think it’s just a calm before a storm.”
She nodded. “I was, I am, a bit worried about fallout from the Spring Fling.”
Brian’s stride lengthened, though consciously or unconsciously she wasn’t sure. “Makes sense you’d feel that way.”
They were almost back at River’s Sigh. The newest cabins at the back of the property, in various states of construction and renovation, were still out of sight, but Katelyn knew they were there, just beyond the next curve in the trail. Brian stopped walking abruptly, as if he too realized their run was coming to an end and he, like her, wanted to extend it.
“Tell me the truth?” he asked.
“Of course. About what?”
“Are you going to get back together with Steve? Go back to him?”
It was so far from whatever she’d expected, it took a moment for her to register what he was asking. When she finally answered, her voice was so shrill she didn’t sound like herself. “How can you even ask that? It’s like the one thing, the only thing, I do know. I’m not going back to Steve. Ever. Ever.”
Brian raised his eyebrows, but nodded. Then he plunked down on a huge fallen log near the edge of the trail. He held his water bottle out to Katelyn. She took the bottle, but didn’t drink from it.
Instead, she sat down beside him, straddling the log so she could watch his face while they talked. “Sorry if I sounded mad. I wasn’t—just . . . shocked.”
Brian took his water back and chugged it, squinting into the unseen distance. She nudged his forearm softly and tried to ignore the fact that she was counting how many times she’d touched him today. He started at the gentle pressure, looked down at her hand, then into her face. It was a rare moment: for once she had absolutely no clue what he was thinking.
“It’s just . . . I don’t know. Lots of women repeatedly leave their husbands, abusive or not, only to end up going back, not seeing their decision through. It’s sort of a classic move actually.”
Katelyn warred against the indignation surging through her. She was not “lots of women,” but she suspected this wasn’t really about her. Or she hoped it wasn’t. “Um, I’m not sure what you’re getting at, but trust me, if I was ever going back to Steve, it would’ve been in the early days when it was so hard. Not now when I’m so close . . . when I know I can make it. Know I can be free.”
“That’s what I thought, or maybe hoped is a better word, but I see it all the time at work. Women—and men—leaving the courthouse hand in hand with the same loser that minutes earlier received a restraining order from the judge. And my mom’s no different. I thought I didn’t want to represent her in the divorce because I didn’t want to be stuck in the center between my parents, but now I don’t know. Maybe it was really because I knew she’d backpedal again, that no matter how serious she’d seemed or how public she’d made her last decision to leave him, it was too good to be true.”
It was quite a speech and it made Katelyn wonder all the more about the real Brian Archer. She was so used to this thoughtful, quiet, puzzling side of him that she almost couldn’t reconcile it with side of him she’d known all those years ago and that Callum and Jo still seemed to identify with: Brian as a playboy, Brian as a shallow, womanizing boy-man.
“I know how it must look, or I can imagine, when you see the same case, different face, time after time . . . and I don’t know tons about your parents or their marriage or whatever, but all I can say is despite whatever similarities you might see, I’m not them. If you can’t separate me and my life and my decisions from case studies and what you see at work or in your family of origin, we’re going to have a problem.”
He didn’t respond right away, which made her tight with anxious, irritated energy. She sprang to her feet and started walking again.
Brian caught up with her in one leap. “Case studies and family of origin. You sound like a textbook.”
She kept moving. “Well, I’ve read enough stupid books on how to do this that I could probably write one.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder, and she faltered and came to a standstill. “I’m sorry if my question hurt you. I wasn’t trying to say you would go back to him, or that I thought you were any kind of specific person. I just . . . I just needed to know.”
All Katelyn could feel was the heat of Brian’s hand, the strength of it, on her shoulder. It was a weight that somehow lightened all the things she carried around with her. Suddenly she wanted, more than anything, to repeat herself, to stress her words.
She wanted Brian to truly, deeply, positively know that she wasn’t going back to Steve, not just because he was a friend who cared, but because whether she liked it or not, her feelings for Brian were growing, were changing . . . or maybe they weren’t, maybe they’d always been romantic. Either way, she couldn’t just ignore them anymore.
It was on the tip of her tongue to ask Brian why he needed to know she wasn’t going to back to Steve, what the answer meant to him, and she opened her mouth to speak. Then closed it again. She knew full well why he wanted to know.
The only true question, or the only one worth pursuing, was what, if anything, she could do to slam this door? She had to protect them both from a complication they absolutely didn’t need.
She shifted uneasily. “We . . . I . . . should get going.” Before the words were fully out of her mouth, she shifted into a dead run. And this time she didn’t make it a silly game. She pumped her arms and legs like her life depended on it. If the change in her demeanor struck Brian as odd, he didn’t say it. He just followed her lead, keeping close, but maintaining a distance as if he was not only running with her, he was also guarding her back.