Falling for Mr. Wrong (10 page)

Chapter Eleven

The smell of the climbing gym assaulted her as she walked through the door. It was a combination of sweat and feet, with an overlay of patchouli and cloves. It might have been disgusting, if it wasn’t so comfortably familiar.

“Hey Kels, long time no see.” The skinny, tattooed twentysomething behind the counter waved as Kelsey entered the climbing gym with Hope, Matt, Julia, and Luke close at her heels. It was Monday morning, and they’d arrived at the Slippery Rock just a few minutes after it opened. Kelsey preferred coming to the gym in the morning. They played the music a little softer, the mats were a little cleaner, and there was no waiting for the most popular climbs.

Matt’s eyes widened appreciatively. “See,” he whispered to Luke. “I told you.”

“She’s not famous,” Luke hissed back.

Kelsey rolled her eyes at the familiar harping between the boys. She stuck out her tongue at the man who had spoken to her. “I was here yesterday afternoon, Tank.”

“I know. It’s been”—he consulted his watch—“almost twenty hours. You’re getting lazy.”

She snorted as she handed him three pieces of paper. “Some waivers for you to file.”

Tank’s earring-filled eyebrows drew together. “For who?” He pretended not to notice the kids who were now crowding the glass-topped counter, which held an array of climbing gear, including chalk bags, harnesses, and slender, black-soled shoes.

Kelsey leaned over to give him a friendly whack on the shoulder. “Tank, pay attention. Our climbers today are Matt, Julia, and Luke. They’re going to tear up the walls.”

Tank gave the kids a mock salute. “Nice to meet you guys.” He glanced over the waivers, and then back at Kelsey. “You adopt some kids while I wasn’t looking?”

Julia grabbed the edge of the counter and stood on her tiptoes. “No, silly, she’s our
babysitter
. At least for today. Tomorrow Hope is coming but Kelsey said she’s still going to visit us because we are the best kids ever. Our dad’s at work. Is your name really Tank?”

He smiled. “I don’t know if you’re the best kids ever, but you are pretty lucky, because Kelsey’s the best climber I’ve ever seen, and she doesn’t usually bring kids here. So you must be special. And no, my name’s really Ernie. But don’t tell anyone, okay? I think Tank sounds better.”

Matt elbowed Luke. “See? Famous,” he mouthed the last silently.

Luke scowled and crossed his arms over his chest. “Whatever.”

Tank caught the tension between the two. He leaned forward on the glass countertop. “Did you know Kelsey’s climbed all of the fourteeners in Colorado?” he whispered, with a conspiratorial sidelong look.

Luke frowned. “What’s a fourteener?”

Tank put a hand over his heart. “You don’t know what a fourteener is? Where are you from?”

“We’re from New York,” Luke said sullenly. “As if you couldn’t tell.”

“We moved here because our mom got a new job,” Julia explained.

“I see.” Tank rubbed his chin. “Well, then you should know that a fourteener is a mountain that’s over fourteen thousand feet. There are only eighty-eight in America, and fifty-three of them are in Colorado. And your old babysitter has climbed all of them.”

“Spare me,” Kelsey said, glaring at Tank. She could just imagine what the kids would say when they saw Ross that night.

Not that she was thinking about Ross. Because she wasn’t. She’d stopped thinking about him days ago, when it became clear that “can I call you sometime?” was Ross-speak for “Thanks for the hot sex, but we probably shouldn’t see each other again.”

She’d considered not bringing the kids climbing today. Separating herself from the Bencher family was probably the best idea. Seeing them again was just prolonging the inevitable.

But then Matt had called to ask what they should wear, and if his dad should buy something special, and Kelsey could hear Julia in the background yelling in a funny, singsong voice, “Kel-
sey
, we
miss
you.”

And she was undone.

When was the last time anyone—other than Marie—had missed her when she left? When had she ever been the object of such undeserved, unrestrained affection?

“Can you get the kids some shoes, Tank? We’ll just boulder today.”

He nodded. “Of course. Sizes?”

While Tank and the kids exchanged shoes, Kelsey looked around. The gym was enormous, with one side dedicated to long, roped climbs, and the other to shorter climbs that could be done without a harness or ropes. One corner had climbs especially designed for kids, with the hand and footholds closer together, and shorter drops from the top.

A group of climbers waved to Kelsey as they walked in. She’d been coming here for years, sometimes twice a day when she was training for a big expedition, and had taught a variety of classes as well, filling in wherever they needed her when she was between trips. Besides the climbing walls, the gym had a workout area with a few pieces of cardio equipment, weights, and pull-up bars. In the evenings, it became a hangout out for a group of regulars. Kelsey had tried to bring Marie once, but her friend been overwhelmed by the bare-chested, muscley men and athletic women who sipped wheat-grass shakes between pull-ups. An hour later, she’d pulled Kelsey out of the place and made her promise never to bring her back.

Some things, she’d proclaimed, did not go together. Marie and climbing walls were two of them.

Kelsey had laughed her off but didn’t waste time protesting. Though she enjoyed Tank and the people she’d met at the gym, she’d never gotten particularly close to any of them. For them, climbing was a sport, a way to blow off steam or meet people. If they felt like knocking off halfway through a workout, they would. If they lost their nerve on dicey overhang, they jumped off. Kelsey didn’t have that luxury.

After getting their shoes settled and finding an empty cubby for their things, she led the kids over to the easiest climbing wall. She gave them a brief lesson on climbing—little things, really, about leaning into the wall, using their legs, and moving slowly from hold to hold—and then a much longer lecture about safety. When she was finally done, she surveyed her audience.

“You guys ready to give it a try?” she asked.

When they left the counter, Matt and Julia had been bouncing with excitement. Luke, as usual, had been glowering. Yet somehow, during her talk, everything had changed. Julia’s eyes had grown round as saucers, and Matt, whom Kelsey had expected to jump right up on the wall, hung back.

“Can we, um, watch for a little while first?” Matt asked.

“If you want,” Kelsey said. She pointed to a line of tape on the floor about four feet from the wall. “You can’t go past that line without me, okay? I don’t want you getting underneath any of the other climbers.”

Matt and Julia nodded solemnly, and then Julia elbowed Matt. “Let’s watch him,” she said, pointing to a man inching his way up a simulated crack between two walls.

“We’ll be back in a few,” Matt told Kelsey, his chest puffed out in an attempt to look unconcerned. Kelsey hid a smile. While she wanted Matt to enjoy his day of climbing, she wasn’t sure it was an entirely bad thing for him to have a moment of doubt before he jumped in.

She waited until the two were out of earshot before she turned to Luke. After a morning of negative comments, she suspected she knew what he’d say. Still, she asked, “How about you? Do you want to give it a try?”

He shrugged. “Sure.”

Kelsey raised her eyebrows in surprise. Of the three kids, she’d never imagined Luke would approach the wall first. “Great,” she breathed, trying to sound enthusiastic, rather than shocked.

He stepped forward with his usual air of disinterest, but something had changed. He rose experimentally on his toes, stretched up his arms a few times, and bit his lip in concentration. That was when Kelsey got her first inkling of hope. The
idea
of climbing was very different from the experience of it. She’d seen more than a few cocky men turned to nervous wrecks by the prospect of actually getting on the wall, and she’d seen people who claimed to be completely uncoordinated and unathletic shine on their first trip up.

Luke wore a faded white T-shirt that did nothing to hide his skinny arms and torso, and baggy shorts that ended somewhere around his knees. His mix of bravado and vulnerability caught Kelsey, as it often did when she wasn’t being completely annoyed by him, with an uncanny emotional force. He stopped and stared up at the wall, his eyes narrowed. Just as Kelsey was about to ask if he was okay, he reached up and pulled himself to the first set of holds. And then, when he placed his arms above his head and moved higher, something remarkable happened.

Luke Bencher started to smile.

It was an unexpected, fragile thing, that smile. It twisted the corners of his mouth in a way that suggested he wasn’t entirely comfortable making the gesture, but couldn’t quite help himself. Apart from a few times when Ross had made him laugh, she wasn’t sure she could recall seeing his face move in precisely that way before. The beauty of it staggered her.

He moved with surprising grace, easily making it to the top of the wall with a few quick moves, and then coming back down without a moment of hesitation. Kelsey’s mouth dropped open. She forced herself to look unsurprised. “Hey,” she said casually, “that looked good. Why don’t you try that one?” She pointed at another spot, about ten feet away.

Luke barely looked at her before moving into position. This climb was harder, and he had to stop and think a few times, shifting his feet and feeling above his head for the right hold. But again he moved confidently, never looking down or showing any hint of fear, the same unexpected quirk to his lips. Kelsey positioned herself to the side so she could see his face. His eyes were intense but clear. Sparkling.

He got to the top, climbed down, and then moved a few feet away, to try another route. This time, he got stuck halfway, paused, and reached out for a hold above his head. His fingers slipped and he fell several feet, landing on his bottom on the mound of soft mats.

Kelsey hurried over to his side, but he simply stood up as if nothing had happened, brushed off his backside, and approached the same climb. She had just opened her mouth to ask him if he was okay when an unexpected voice came from behind her.

“Nice work, son. This time, try moving your feet before you go for that hold. Might make a difference.”

Kelsey tensed. The bubble that had formed around them popped. Without looking, Luke gave a quick nod and started back up the wall. The man who had spoken came to stand next to her. He was a few inches taller than she was, with sandy brown hair cut short. The skin around his eyes was a shade lighter than the rest of his face, as if he’d spent a lot of time in the sun wearing goggles, or wide-lensed sunglasses. Deep wrinkles radiated from the corners of his dark-brown eyes.

“Hi, Dad.”

Please be in a good mood. Please…

She should have known he would be here. Though he usually came in the afternoon, he was spending more hours now, in the final push before they left for Nepal.

“Is this one of those kids you were babysitting?” He didn’t sound mad. When she darted a quick look, she saw that he was holding a disposable coffee cup, which was a good sign. When he was in one of his really bad moods he refused to talk to anyone, including baristas.

Still, he couldn’t be happy to find her here with the kids. He’d complained enough when he heard she was taking care of them last week. With only a few weeks to go, he wasn’t happy with anything that took her attention from her training.

“Yes,” she said lightly. “His name’s Luke.”

“How long has he been climbing?” he asked.

“First time.”

He grunted with apparent approval of Luke’s native climbing ability. “That’s good,” he called to the boy. “Reach up with the left hand…the left hand… No, your
other
left.” He rolled his eyes when Luke paused to switch hands. “He’s as bad with right and left as you were.”

“Thanks, Dad.” Kelsey felt some of the tension ease from her shoulders. She allowed herself a tiny smile. “Since you were my teacher, though, don’t you only have yourself to blame?”

“Suppose you’re right about that one.” He took a sip of coffee, wincing as Luke tried for a handhold and missed, tumbling to the mat in a tangle of knees and elbows. “Just pick yourself up and start again,” he advised the boy. “Nothing wrong with falling.”

Luke paused for a moment before he rolled to his feet. “Thanks,” he said, before bouncing back onto the first level of the climb.

Her father nodded, and Kelsey closed her eyes with relief. At fifty-eight, Mick Hanson was in the kind of shape twenty-year-olds emulated. His torso was corded with muscles sculpted from wire and grit, and his resting pulse rate was so low he set off heart rate monitors on the rare occasions he visited the doctor. He scoffed at Kelsey’s marathons, preferring the hundred-mile ultramarathons he did once or twice a year. But the deep lines around his mouth and bleak set to his eyes revealed that the years had not always been kind. Extreme fitness was no substitute for the optimism of youth.

When he was in a good mood, he could be an incredible teacher. Kelsey knew that from years of personal experience. When things didn’t go his way, on the other hand, he could be moody and downright mean.