Twice Shy by Sarah Hogle (ebook offline reader .TXT) 📕

I’m already smiling when I answer. “Hey, you.”

“Hello there.”

His friendly rumble warms me all over, sparking instant happiness. It’s the closest thing we get to real magic in this universe.

“Tell me all about your day,” he says, instantly making me feel at ease, at home. He might as well be next to me in the flesh. “I want to know everything.”

“A red squirrel took a chip right out of my hand. I honestly don’t think I’ll ever be the same—he ate the chip right out of it. Right out of my hand. It’s the highlight of my life.”

“I’m incredibly jealous. What are you doing now?”

“Walking. I’m at Dores Beach, not far from the inn.”

A smile lifts his voice. “Take me there?”

I canvass the trees, the emerald mountains smeared with drizzling rain. The shoreline, cut up into jutting angles. “You are walking along a stripe of pale rocks that the tide can’t reach. The water is a pretty navy blue, little waves crashing onto shore with white froth. We’re holding hands. It’s all quite peaceful.”

“I’m happy to be here with you,” he says.

“Watch your step. Driftwood.”

“Ahh, good catch. But please do zip up your jacket. It’s getting chilly.”

“Do you feel that mist on your face? The sky’s darkening. We’ll have to leave soon, but not yet. Not until the water is full of moonlight, because what if Nessie’s nocturnal?”

“Exactly.” He pauses. “If I’m quiet from time to time, it’s because I’m smiling too big to talk.”

I press one hand to my chest, holding very, very still, because if I don’t I’m going to go flying away into the clouds. The phone is my only grounding weight, his voice my tether to earth.

“Come on, now, you’re falling behind,” he tells me, and I pick up the pace again.

“I’m coming, I’m coming.”

“Please do remember what I said about zipping up that jacket. Don’t want to catch a cold out here—especially since your hair’s damp.”

I zip my jacket and remove my glasses to wipe off the gathering mist. “You hear that bird? Caw-caw!”

He laughs. Then halts. “Don’t tell me your shoes are untied again.”

“They’re not.”

“They certainly are.” He sighs. “What am I going to do with you?”

I look down, playing along, and what do you know—they certainly are. So I begin to lower and lace them up, but he interrupts.

“Let me.”

I slide my glasses back onto my face, and that’s when another memory steps out of my head and into my surroundings. It’s a remarkably lifelike memory, sparing none of the details: an old jacket with plaid lining; golden hair ruffling in the wind, one eye squinting against an oncoming downpour.

Rain is the perfect weather condition for a love story, so naturally, it must be raining at the conclusion of it. There could be no other way.

The man treading closer, all of his features sharpening into focus, is so clear, so present, so real. He stops a few feet away, hands in pockets, forehead furrowed in thought. My breath circulates in my lungs like a sealed potion, unable to escape. Painful.

When he finally speaks, his tone isn’t quite sad but contemplative. “I’m so sorry I’m late.”

The world glows bright and wonderful. Not a dream. Not a trick. He’s here.

“You’re right on time.”

He kneels before me, lacing my shoe. Everything falls quiet, quiet, quiet. The rain is soundless, the volume of the breaking waves dialing all the way down until it clicks off. Color fades away, and there is nothing, nobody in the world, but us.

Wesley removes something from his pocket, then hands it to me.

A note.

Maybell Parrish loves me.

“I read that note ten thousand times on the flight over,” he confesses, standing up. The paper is already worn out, ink smeared sideways with a thumbprint. I am going to fill his pockets with more reminders. I’ll put them in his boots and his wallet, all over the house, the grounds. I’m going to bury treasure.

“I’m so proud of you,” I whisper, reaching up to capture either side of his face in my hands.

Wesley lines up the edge of his flattened hand against my forehead, shielding my eyes from rain. “I’m a little proud of me, too, to be honest.”

“Good. Bask in it. You deserve to.”

“I didn’t know if I would be able to do it alone. I didn’t think I would. And I had a middle seat on the plane.” He shudders, then begins to smile in an automatic mirroring of mine. “I buckled myself in, held on to this note like a lifeline, and soon enough I was up in the air and everything was out of my control. No chance to escape.”

“You are the bravest person I know, Wesley,” I tell him solemnly.

“This is what you and I do. We take turns being brave.” The glint in his eyes dulls somewhat. “I can say no to a lot of things, but not to special experiences with you. I’ve decided that’s the line I’m drawing for myself.”

“When we go home, you won’t have to talk to anyone but me for six months straight if you don’t want to,” I tell him. “When guests start arriving, I’ll tell them you’re a ghost of a logger who died in the nineteenth century and that’s why you don’t ever seem to see or hear them when they speak to you. You’ve been groundskeeping at Falling Stars since it was first built.”

“We’ll tell them another powerful ghost named Violet put a spell over the house that matchmakes all of the single guests with each other.” His grin turns wry. “Asking you to paint a mural, when I’m the one who paints. Asking me to make donuts when, between the two of us, you’re the one with the baking skills.”

“I think I’m beginning to see her last scheme. What interesting dying wishes for a person to leave behind.”

He shakes his head, trying to be long-suffering, but without the heart to be. “She told me more times than I can