Darcy scoffed in faux outrage, sticking her thumbs through her imaginary belt loops and swiveling her hips. Teagan should be so lucky. He wouldn’t be.
“You’ve got the wrong idea,” Darcy said. “Teagan is not a horny mistake. I am not going to lay his pipe, even though Itotally could, and that would probably fix all his substance abuse issues, add five years to his life, and show him the very face of God. No. I’m helping him.Therapeutically.”
Kristin bit her lip as she poured the smoothie into a mason jar. She shook her head, face turning more serious.
“Don’t you think he should be doing, like, real therapy? Because it kind of looks like you’re just messing around in the woods all day.”
“We’ve got wilderness education and forest bathing right in the brochures!” Darcy insisted. “It is real therapy. And he goes to group.”
She didn’t see how it could be any less effective than watercolors or rock gardening. And Teagan was doing better every day. Sloane had said so too.
Kristin gave her a dour look until Darcy broke first and looked at her feet.
“I know, I know,” Darcy said. “I’m being careful with him, I swear.”
“You be careful with yourself too,” Kristin warned her. “These guys aren’t reliable, and I don’t want to be tellingyou I told you so when he goes back to Drunktown. You have the world’s worst taste in men, I swear to God.”
“What? I don’t need to be careful. I’m good at my job. Icouldbe good at this job, if the Goederts would give me half a break. I’m not planning a threesome with a guy in a long-term relationship with Johnnie Walker Blue. I’m a professional.”
“Okay, lady,” said Kristin, passing her the finished drink with a roll of her eyes. “You know best.”
Darcy let the note of sarcasm fly off her starboard bow and nodded conclusively. She took the smoothies and marched back down to the woodpile where she’d left Teagan, pleasantly anticipating several more hours on the trail before she had to get started on her long list of places that needed cleaning and repair.
nine
Sleep was the best amenity at the retreat. For the first time since college, Teagan slept eight hours a night. When he went to bed, his body ached from the effort of hauling sacks of pea gravel up the mountain, from cutting limbs, and from digging out roots, but the ache was pleasant. He was glad to fall asleep. He was glad to wake up the next day. He didn’t know whether it was the drugs, the labor, or the bolster of Darcy’s direct attention, but he felt better than he had in years.
Part of it was the sheer absence of the hours spent lying awake in bed, thinking about things he’d done wrong that day. He’d hated the empty, twitchy hours in the middle of the night, and now those hours were gone. He slept. This was real luxury: he went to sleep when he was tired, and when he woke up, there was daylight. Every day he reveled in the sybaritic pleasure of his cheek against the linen pillowcase and the contrast between the cool morning air and his warm blankets. It was so gentle an ascent into wakefulness that he couldn’t remember his dreams, which had previously been of the sort where he was accidentally naked in public or taking a test he had forgotten to study for.
But today he dreamed of falling. Hewasfalling. He fell off the bed and landed on the synthetic sheepskin rug of histent, as confused about where he was and what he was doing as in those banished bad dreams. It took several flailing, jumbled moments to realize that he’d fallen because Darcy had pulled the sheets off the bed with his body still tangled up in them.
She stood over him in the faint blue predawn light, looking at his unclothed form with frank appraisal and what he hoped was a small degree of approval.
“Not bad, Bear Bait,” she said, hands on her hips as she critically assessed the stomach that was still taut with panic at its abrupt descent. “Looking good, actually! We’ll have you back up to your fighting weight in no time.”
Teagan reflexively jerked the duvet off the bed and over his hips to cover himself, but his antidepressants had more or less eliminated the risk of untoward morning wood incidents. Nothing to see here. Please move along.
“Hi, Darcy,” he managed, choking back a sludge of embarrassment and surprise.
“Good morning,” she said with solid cheer. “You’re a heavy sleeper, huh?”
“Only recently.”
Darcy looked different today, and his rebooting brain slowly grasped for the details: her hair was down and blown straight so that it hung nearly all the way down her back. Instead of her customary T-shirt and cutoffs, she wore fitted jeans and a button-down black shirt. Carved silver hoop earrings dangled alongside the curve of her cheeks, the first jewelry he’d ever seen her wear.She’s so pretty, his barely conscious mind mumbled.
Darcy nodded in satisfaction. “That’s what honest work will do for you! Do you have any plans today?”
Darcy made his plans every day. Or rather, his planevery day wasHi, Darcy, and she told him what she wanted him to do. For two weeks, it had been a good program.
He wordlessly shook his head.
“Great. It’s my day off,” she said, face expectant.
“Oh,” he replied. “Did you... want to go do something?”
He barely dared to hope. It was not at all apparent to him that Darcy was organizing his days out of anything more than professional obligation or the usefulness of his manual labor. He didn’t mind.Use me, please.
“I do!” she said cheerfully. “Would you like to see a beaver?”
