Chase wasn’t sure that Olivia wouldn’t be waiting back at the cabin with her car running, ready to flee from Neve and whatever else haunted her. Her empathetic radar had raised its antennae, making Chase almost certain that coming back to her old childhood home had set Olivia on a path she’d not reckoned. Therapist or no, Olivia had issues. Perhaps, if they’d not come to this place, Chase may have never seen the cracks. But those puppies were widening by the day. “I guess I wouldn’t mind going fishing again. Maybe this time you can catch a fish.”

Zeke snorted. “You catch one piddly trout and you’re taunting me now?”

His words were laced with laughter and were balm to her soul. She needed someone like Zeke.

He handed her one of the bags he carried, reaching up to brush something from her hair. Chase swayed toward him, her eyes on his lips, marveling at how the bottom one curved generously and how that bee-stung upper lip seemed to be asking to be pressed against hers. She lifted her gaze to his.

Hunger sat in those green depths.

“I really want to kiss you, Zeke,” she said, stepping back, “but I know I can’t do that right now. I’m too messed up for you.”

“No, you’re not,” he said, holding his ground.

“Yeah, I am, but I would really like to have a friend. I don’t have too many of those, to be honest.” She’d been vulnerable many times in her life, but she’d never felt quite so vulnerable as she did presently, standing in an unfamiliar world with a guy like none she’d ever known, asking him to be her friend.

Zeke’s mouth curved. “I think you can count me as one.”

She swallowed, not realizing how much those words meant to her. So many of her other “friends” had been so because they could name-drop, go clubbing with her, meet celebrities, use her credit card. Truth was, she wouldn’t mind being more than friends with Zeke. The old Chase would have stepped into that kiss. The old Chase would have straddled him on the rock before they ever made a cast. She wasn’t the old Chase anymore. “Thank you, Zeke.”

Starting back up the path, he looked back over his shoulder at her as she picked up her ugly boots and followed him. “But maybe when you get your shit together, we can revisit that kiss thing. I’m not opposed to kissing my friends. Well, some friends.”

His eyes were all twinkly, emerald, and flirty. He even winked at her before redirecting his attention to the path ahead.