But soon, that luck would eventually dry up and I really didn’t want to be the cause of that.
I may be avoiding him like the damn plague currently, however, that didn’t mean I wished him ill will.
“Everything okay?” I asked.
There was an agonizingly long pause on the other end of the walkie that had me up and out of my chair and already shoving my shoes back on my feet.
“Yeah, you got a visitor.”
I stared down at the walkie.
Who the hell would be coming all the way out here to visit me?
We were in our busy season, which my siblings knew to steer clear of unless they wanted to get roped into some off-hours volunteer work.
Same with my parents.
That left only one person...
Smiling, I held the walkie up to my mouth again. “Did he just come in?”
“No, he’s been chatting with Lindsay for twenty minutes. I just happened to walk by and spot them. Better come quick before he gets talked into heading up to the adventure courses.”
In the background of the call, right before Talos’s line cut, my granddad’s distinct laugh filtered through the speaker, warming my heart instantly.
“I’ll be right down.”
Tossing the walkie back onto the receiver, I grabbed my keys and headed out into the afternoon sunlight. My granddad didn’t make it up here as often as we both liked nowadays but I was always excited to see him, nonetheless.
Along with the rest of the staff on property.
He was a beloved figure among us all, startingAustin Adventuresfrom the ground up and building it into the incredible destination spot that it currently was. All I did was maintain it and keep a little extra money flowing in from some of the young students that came through here on field trips—and now my youth group.
Everything else was all him.
I was damn proud to be a part of his bloodline and even more so when he’d passed the torch to me a few years back once he thought I was good and ready. The first two years had been nerve-wracking as fuck, even with him at my side on a part-time basis. By year three, though, I had gotten into the swing of things. And now year five, I was finally feeling comfortable with calling the shots and not consulting with him first about it.
He had full faith in me, which meant I needed to as well.
Taking the back route to the registration office, I quickly arrived with Talos still there chatting with Lindsay and Lydia, both of whom were leaning against the desk under the fan blowing overhead.
My granddad was sitting on the rolling stool behind the desk, elbow deep in the registration book with a cord phone tucked between his ear and shoulder while his pen quickly flitted over the page in front of him.
The sight had me shaking my head instantly. “You’re already putting him to work?”
Lindsay’s head whipped around to the sound of my voice. “I swear, he volunteered.”
“Took the phone right out of her hand and everything,” Lydia corroborated.
I didn’t doubt any of it for a second.
That was the one thing my granddad absolutely hated about his retirement. He missed the daily grind and operations of this place. While in its hay day, he loved to claim he hated paper pushing and preferred getting off the property and heading out to explore with our tour groups, in reality, though, he loved it all. The behind the scenes, the on-field work.
All of it.
There wasn’t a single thing that man wouldn’t volunteer to do given the opportunity.
Turning my attention toward Talos, I said, “Thought you were supposed to be with a group today?”
