“Yeah. You listen and offer encouraging solutions. You’re willing to take advice. You try new things, like dipping hot dogs in cheese, and you practice respect and consideration. I would say that’s a great job at friendship. As to the other, well, I understand feeling insulated here, though I think Olivia’s whole adulting thing was supposed to resemble the real, not-so-safe world. The world, whether here or back in LA, always has the potential to smack a person upside their head. You’re not necessarily safer one place over the other.”

Chase thought about that. “Well, in some ways coming here has felt, well, maybe not like a smack upside my head, but it’s felt real. And let’s face it, I failed at a lot of things.”

“But you didn’t stop trying. You learned.”

She had indeed learned some useful things that would help her be a better person. Something about his noticing made her feel so . . . so proud. When was the last time she’d been proud of herself? She couldn’t remember. “I did. If I’m honest, I thought Olivia’s whole Square One was stupid, but I have learned things that have made me a better person while at the same time coming to terms with things I avoided too long. I’m not there yet in regard to emotional healing. Maybe that’s why I’m afraid. I . . . I . . .” She couldn’t say what she wanted to say. Chase couldn’t be that vulnerable yet. The words I’m falling for you were on the tip of her tongue, but she wasn’t going to let them escape. That would make her more vulnerable than she’d been waking up naked next to a stranger two months ago.

Two months? Hard to believe she was the same person who’d snorted coke and slept with that random guy. She felt so different. So . . . absolutely changed.

Zeke took her sticky hand in both of his. “It’s okay. I think I know, because I feel the same way. I’m worried that you will make me fall in love with you and then decide that a regular guy like me isn’t worth the while.”

If he’d punched her in the stomach, she wouldn’t have felt it less. “I wouldn’t.”

“You could.”

His words weren’t wrong. How would Zeke fit into her world? He belonged here in the woods, stomping through the streams, paddling the creeks, being that Grizzly Adams mountain man. She couldn’t picture him walking down Rodeo Drive in the midst of all that excess, all that glittery slickness. It would be like tossing an emerald into a bin of rhinestones. You couldn’t take someone as authentic as Zeke and expect him to exist with people like her, people who had gone so long pretending, they believed their own bullshit.

But what if she had truly changed?