“You’re the best, Toni.”
“Nah, I’m pretty sure you are. You’ve been down there doing everything. Are you okay?”
“It’s been good.” And it had been, he realized. Spending time with his father had shifted something inside him. That shadow he’d always lived under, that of a father he revered, of the threat of disappointing him, didn’t feel the same anymore. It had shifted and he saw things differently. He felt strong now, ready for the future, ready to stake his claim. “But I’m ready to go home. Even if I wasn’t worried about Lulu, I’d be ready.”
“You don’t have to worry. She’s Ms. Popular around here. I swear she has more friends than I do. She’s teaching classes, dancing in The Nutcracker, dancing burlesque, she’s busy all the time.”
Watching Lulu dance with the Harbor Hotties would be worth a trip back to Lost Harbor all by itself. Actually, just seeing her smile again would be worth it. The fact was, he hadn’t so much as flirted with a woman since he’d been in Chile, but he didn’t want to act too possessive when he was thousands of miles away. They’d never tried to define their relationship.
But he was ready for that to change. He was ready for anything and everything with Lulu.
“Thanks, Toni. Do me a favor, though. Text me if you see Lulu, okay? Like, if you get visual confirmation that she’s fine and that asshole doesn’t have her.”
“Will do, boo.”
He took a moment with his travel app to book a ticket, then went to tell his mother the news. She took it well enough, thanks to the fact that Toni was coming in his place, and that Bash would be joining them for Christmas. His parents knew Bash well, since he and Bash had been best friends as kids. But they hadn’t seen him in years, and certainly not since Toni and Bash had gotten together a few months ago.
With something like that to look forward to, she accepted his departure with only a minimum of tears.
His father didn’t cry at all. Tristan took a taxi to the rehab center to say goodbye, and found him at the parallel bars, working on his balance. He told him his flight was leaving in a few hours, and apologized for the last-minute departure.
“Emergency in Lost Harbor?” his father asked.
“Maybe.”
He honestly didn’t know what he was going to find when he got there. Hopefully, just a quiet winter scene with nothing more exciting than an amateur production of Nutcracker.
“Then they need you. You’ve done enough here. I’m grateful, Tristan. I’m proud of you.”
His chest tightened. Good God, he was thirty-two years old. Why should it mean so much to have his father say he was proud of him? And yet, it did. Whether or not he deserved it. But he would, he vowed. One way or another, he would deserve that faith from his father.
“There’s a woman,” he began. “I haven’t mentioned her, but I think she might be in danger.”
His father paused, resting his bulging forearms on the parallel bars. Amazing how much muscle he still had after all this time in the hospital. “You love her?” he asked.
“I don’t know about all that. Maybe.” Then, finally, “Yes. I think I do. But I only spent a few days with her before—”
His father waved that off. “Got to trust yourself.”
“But…”
“I know. Julie, the divorce. The accident. You learn from it, and you move forward. Trust yourself. I do.” A quiet vote of confidence.
Over the parallel bars, Tristan shared a long embrace with his father. Neither of them said any more, but it was all there in the hug. He’d always looked up to his father and put him on a pedestal, but this embrace felt different from all the others. It felt almost like a hug between equals. Mutual respect. Mutual appreciation. Gratitude. Love.
He drew back, one hand still on his father’s shoulder. “I’ll keep checking in on you. Don’t slack on the exercises or Toni will crack the whip.”
To the sound of his father’s chuckle, he strode out of the clinic to the taxicab waiting to take him to the Santiago International Airport, where LATAM Airlines would take him home to Alaska.
Thirty
Lulu woke up in the dark. She blinked, blinked again. Still dark. Opened her mouth to say something. Couldn’t. There was something in her mouth. She tried to scream, to move her hands to her face, but couldn’t do either of those things.
Hands wouldn’t move. Feet wouldn’t move. She was tied up, she realized. And blindfolded. And something was over her mouth.
What the fuck?
Her heart was beating a mile a minute and fear rang in her ears. Her thoughts moved sluggishly and her brain felt filled with fuzz. She focused on her breath, which was a technique she used to control occasional stage fright. If she was breathing, she was alive. That was good. A breath in, a breath out. Even. Count the seconds. Make the breath longer. Breathe out, same count. Okay, now she could think a little better.
That taste in her mouth. It wasn’t just the cloth. There was an icky residue of something chemical too. She’d been drugged. Someone had drugged her. What was the last thing she’d drunk?
She’d bought a cappuccino with a shot of hazelnut syrup at Gretel’s Café. The scene came back to her. She’d chatted with the adorable blond sprite Gretel about how she’d challenged herself to survive an entire winter in Alaska, even though she used to be a carefree party girl. Lulu had never been a party girl, but she related to the girl’s whimsical lighthearted spirit.
“Honestly, the hardest part, aside from learning how to chop wood and use an outhouse, was resisting the next door neighbor, Zander. I failed at that completely. No regrets on that, though.”
After that fun conversation, Lulu had walked with her takeaway cup of hazelnut cappuccino to the high school auditorium, where the dress rehearsal for The Nutcracker was taking place. But she hadn’t had a chance to take even a sip of her drink, because she kept running into people along the way.
Ruthie Malone cornered her to talk about the Lost Harbor Truth Commission, which was looking into the group of bank robbers who had founded the town. Apparently one of the renegades was from England, and the journal he’d left behind included some Britishisms that Ruthie wanted to run by her.
After that, Trixie Tran waved her over to join a quick convo about the flyer for the next Harbor Hotties show. Trixie was one of the lead dancers, and in fact the one who’d roped her into it. They performed a mostly family-friendly version of burlesque—no exposed naughty bits, just some fun teasing dance routines.
The flyer was adorable—it featured a photo of one of Lulu’s high kicks, with a photo-shopped salmon dangling from her big toe.
“That’s one of the best uses of my high kicks I’ve seen.” Lulu had laughed, and nearly taken a sip of her drink at that point. But a boy had skateboarded past her. Dylan Boone, the son of the fire chief. He’d jostled her elbow and then stopped to apologize. He mentioned that the teen rec center was throwing a holiday fundraiser. She and Trixie both bought tickets on the spot.
When had she finally drunk her hazelnut cappuccino? Not until she was backstage, doing her stretching exercises. In fact, that was the last thing she remembered. She’d had one leg up on a desk to stretch her hamstring. She’d positioned her phone to take a selfie of herself to send to Tristan. But as soon as she opened a text box to send it, a sudden dizziness had struck her. She’d staggered out of the stretch and plopped onto the floor. Then nausea had seized her by the throat.