Ten minutes later she was parked at the far north end of the harbor, where the rocky beaches were accessible only by a long, steep, rocky trail. Rock climbers loved this area because they could rock climb with the ocean at their back, the Olympic Mountains at their front. It was a stunning locale, shown off tonight by a full moon and a sky littered with stars like diamonds on black velvet. Gorgeous, and deadly dangerous, especially at night.
And Troy had come out here alone to…what? Swim? Her heart had been pounding the entire drive over here as she debated with herself whether to call Tanner. Or the police.
Promise me.
That had held her back, the soft and rather desperate tone of a teenager who knew he was in over his head and needed her help.
He’d told her to walk on the beach for about a hundred yards and then turn to the cliffs.
Using her Maglite even though she didn’t need it with the moon casting a shocking amount of light, she made her way, counting paces, and then turned to the cliffs.
And gasped.
Lit by the moon and a gazillion stars was a lone lanky figure halfway up the cliff. The figure waved to her. And then her phone rang.
“Oh my God,” she said to him before he could speak.
“I’m okay,” he said. “Just…stuck.”
“Stuck,” she repeated numbly. Shielding her eyes from the moon’s glow, she tried desperately to get a better view. He appeared to be sitting on a ledge of some sort, though she couldn’t for the life of her understand how he’d gotten up there. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
She drew a deep breath. “Okay, good. Now what the hell?”
“I drew something in the sand for someone and left them a note to come see, but then I wasn’t sure if it looked right so I climbed up here to check. And now I’m stuck.”
“Stuck,” she repeated.
“As in I can’t get down.”
She took another deep breath. “You free-climbed up the rocks sixty feet to see if your picture was any good…” She whirled around and stared at the rocky sand, and realized she was indeed standing in the middle of a…heart. “Aw.”
“No,” he said. “No aw. It’s not straight.”
“Where is she?” Callie asked.
“I texted her and told her not to come, that I couldn’t get out of work.”
“So you lied,” she said. “Because…?”
“The heart’s crooked.”
Being a teenager had been the most difficult time of her life. Stood to reason that Troy was feeling the same. “And now you’re stuck,” she said.
He sighed.
“I’ll call your dad. He’ll know what to do—”
“No!” he said urgently. “You can’t call him. I’m supposed to be working on a research paper for English. I sneaked out.”
She stared up at him.
“I know,” he said. “You can yell at me later.”
“Troy, I have no climbing skills. I can create a website and I can worry a lot. Those are my two skills.”
“You have more skills than that,” he said. “You make my dad happy. That’s a real talent.”
“Let’s call him,” she said softly.
“I’ll get in trouble.”
“But you’ll be alive.”
No answer.
“Troy. It’ll be okay.”
“We’re finally sorta getting along,” Troy said. “What if he sends me back to my mom’s?”
There was such naked pain in the question that it stabbed right through Callie’s heart. “Oh, honey, don’t you get it yet? He’d never do that. He’d never walk away from you. He’s not like that.” Even as she said the words, she realized she really believed them.
Tanner didn’t walk away.
Not from his son.
And not from her…
She could trust him, she knew this to her very soul. Which of course made him more dangerous than ever because she could fall. She could really fall for him, and he would catch her. “Let me call him,” she said quietly into the phone. “He’ll know what to do.”
Troy didn’t say anything, and she could feel his fear and hesitation through the phone. “Trust me,” she said. “I’m going to disconnect. Hang tight—literally. I’m not going to move from this spot and I’ll call you right back.” She hit END, then sucked in a breath and called Tanner.
He arrived in three minutes, in navy running pants with a white stripe down the outline of each long leg, a skin-tight long-sleeved dry-fit tee and a backward baseball cap as he jogged across the beach toward her. “You okay?” he asked immediately, reaching for her.