Page 55 of Head Over Heels

In camping, Liv takes the lead. She outright fesses up to being a camping beginner and asks for help choosing a backpack. While she’s trying on packs, she chitters away about how she needs a really good place to go on her first camping trip, and was hoping they might have some suggestions.

Climbing into the car, I am thoroughly demoralized, but Liv says—from the backseat, where she’s buckling Katie into her car seat—“That was great!”

“It wasawful,” I say darkly.

“Itwasawful,” she admits, “but that’sgreatfor Mike’s. And for you. Chase, don’t yousee? You guys have so much going for you, and you don’t even see it. You have so much knowledge and expertise! You can bring so many people into the store with that. You can do workshops and maybe even some short ‘learning trips.’ You can have pamphlets to hand out with advice about equipment and where to go. You can put coupons and discounts in some of those pamphlets, so when people pick them up, they’ll want to come back into the store to make use of the coupons and discounts. And you can put way more stuff up on Facebook than you have now! Tips and tricks and places to go, and sandwich shops to buy from…Chase, this isgoodnews. I swear it!”

Hope cautiously bubbles in my chest.

“That’s a lot of work,” I say carefully, as she comes around the front of the car and gets into the passenger seat.

“Itis,but it’s work youlove.Sharing your knowledge.”

She’s right. There’s nothing I love more than helping people figure out their equipment, their trips—

“And I’ll help you. Leaflet and pamphlet designs, social media templates and ideas. We can get a ton done before I leave.”

The hope bubble pops. Abruptly. Because this, all of it—the stakeout, Liv’s great ideas, the way Liv’s calm soothed me in Big Win, and most of allLiv herselfand the way she makes me feel—it’s temporary. I had somehow allowed myself to forget that.

But now…

I look over at her. She’s lit up with excitement about her ideas, her plan. Her hair is straight today, smooth and so glossy it gleams like the penny it echoes. Her cheeks are pink, her eyes sparkle, and—

I don’t want it to be temporary. I want her to stay. I want to convince her that whatever Denver offers, she’ll be happier here. Taking care of Katie. Helping me make Mike’s a success.

Being with me.

“Chase?”

I’ve been staring at her, and I know what I’m feeling is in my eyes. She’s caught me at it, and for a moment, I see it there in her eyes, mirrored.

Maybe this won’t be a hard sell, after all.

Then it’s gone—that longing in her eyes—and I’m not sure if I imagined it or not.

Chapter 29

Liv

“Okay. So for the fishing locations—there’s a master list, right, and then there’s a single sheet for each of the locations with directions, sandwich shop, supplies, and so on. Do you want me to do that the same way for the camping ones?”

“Yeah.”

He’s sprawled on the floor on his stomach like a little kid, writing furiously on a piece of paper. Every time he fills a sheet, he hands it to me and I enter it into the growing collection of handouts and tip sheets and other materials we’ve created. The living room looks like it was hit by a blizzard of 8.5x11 sheets.

His handwriting is borderline illegible and his spelling is atrocious—I completely understand now how he was a near-disaster in school as a kid. But he thinks fast and even if 90 percent of the population might not be able to make any sense of his shorthand, we’re somehow perfectly in tune tonight, him dashing stuff down as fast as it comes to him and me translating it into more readable form.

It’s fun, too, working with him like this. I’ve been away from marketing too long, away from the pleasures of working on a team, the way two minds combined add up to more than the sum of their parts. It’ll be good to get to Denver, where this will be my daily routine.

It’ll be good to get to Denver.

If I tell myself that enough times, I’ll believe it, for sure.

Chase makes a humming noise that draws my gaze. A lock of hair has fallen over his forehead and there are lines of concentration etched deep. He scribbles, rests the end of his pencil against his lips, scribbles again. Smiles, so that the lines vanish from his brow. Something expands and contracts in my chest, generous and then sharp.

He looks up, then, and catches my eye, and time freezes. He sets the pencil aside, crawls across the floor to where I’m sitting on the couch, takes the laptop off my lap, and sets it down on the coffee table.

“All work and no play…” he says, his voice rough. He kneels up between my legs and I twine my arms around his neck. I can smell his skin, so clean and specific it makes my mouth water and my fingers curl. It takes forever for his mouth to meet mine.

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