My eyebrows pinched together. “A mistake? It’s her dream job.”

Giles shrugged. “I only know what Mattie tells me. She seems convinced Frankie doesn’t really want this.”

“Well, that’s for Frankie to figure out,” I said, feeling defensive over her. She’d worked her ass off for this.

“That’s what I told her,” Giles insisted. “I don’t have siblings, so I don’t get their dynamic.”

I thought about my own dynamic with Nathan. How we’d never seen eye to eye growing up. And now, even though he was my total opposite, I tried to reserve any judgment for him and chalk it up to our differences. Just because the way he walked through life wasn’t like me, didn’t mean it was any better or worse. That had taken a couple of decades to figure out, but now that we both had come to that understanding, we were better off for it.

I placed my helmet back on my head and pulled the straps of my climbing gloves tighter. I positioned myself to try the climb again, wanting to escape this conversation with Giles.

His motive for telling me Mattie’s thoughts about Frankie probably came from a good place, but the thought was fucking with my head.

I placed one hand into the first crevice and hoisted myself up the rock face.

There was no way Frankie was making a mistake. She was so sure of herself—always. She wasn’t the type to get sucked into the small-town charm and end up staying for good. That wasn’t her. And it wasn’t me either, for that matter.

My body hugged the boulder as I swung my left foot up to propel myself a few feet higher.

If Frankie told me she wanted to stay, would that change things for me?

The thought nagged at me as I navigated a particularly challenging part of the rock face with very small handholds.

“Careful. That’s a hard line,” I heard Giles call from below me.

It wouldn’t change things for me. She was great, but I wasn’t ready to settle down. One girl, one job, one place? That wasn’t for me.

A loud crack sounded above me. I barely heard Giles yell, “Watch out!” before my gaze jerked up and a large rock came hurling at my head. It knocked my helmet clean off.

Shit. Had I not strapped that?

Another rock came barreling at me. I let go of the wall to fall back and try to avoid it but it still cracked me right on the side of the head. I barely had time to register the pain before my back hit the hard ground, only partially covered by the mat since I’d fallen so far backward.

“Shit, Oliver. Are you okay?”

I went to give Giles a thumbs-up, but black dots rimmed my vision and I couldn’t quite get the signal from my brain to my hand.

The last thing I saw was his face hovering over mine before everything went dark.

TWENTY-NINE