See You at the Finish Line (Run, Love, Repeat #1)

14. Paige

ALMOST TWO YEARS LATER

“Are you sure you want to leave me and literally the cutest baby to have ever graced the planet?” Leah asks as I carry the last box out to my Jeep. It’s heavy, and I have to place it carefully so my mug collection won’t break.

“I guess you’re right, I’ll stay,” I tell her, slamming the trunk closed.

“Really?”

Motherhood has stolen her brain cells. I hear that happens, but I didn’t expect it to happen to my sister, an intelligent woman in STEM—my sister with a PhD.

“No, loser, I am not staying.” I reach out and take my nephew from her arms. “Though if anyone could make me stay it would be this little bug.” I nuzzle his nose with mine. “I’ll make you a deal. If he says ‘Auntie Paige’ right now, I’ll unpack and stay.”

My sister actually leans in to her two-month-old baby and whispers, “Say ‘Auntie Paige,’ Levi. Auntie Paige is abandoning us unless you say her name!” She uses her sing-song baby voice. I know she’s joking ... mostly.

We both stare at the baby in my arms, and it really does take everything in me to give him one last kiss and hand him back. With a long drive ahead, I don’t want to start with blurry eyes from tears I won’t let spill over.

I pull my sister and nephew into the biggest hug I can manage in our awkward configuration, squeezing them tight. When I let go, tears stream down Leah’s face. I’m doomed.

“Mom would be proud,” she whispers to me.

“Ugh, why’d you have to go and say that?” Tears spring back to my own eyes.

“Because you know she’ll haunt us if we don’t talk about her in every conversation we have.”

“True.” I nod in agreement. “Bye, Mom!” I yell into Leah’s house. The urn of our mother’s ashes is displayed on her fireplace next to Dad’s.

She thinks it’s creepy, but it was our compromise. I wanted to make the ashes into an hourglass to use on game night. When I saw it online, she tried to tell me it was a joke, but I thought it was a great idea. This was the alternative she could live with.

Plus, after our trip to Turkey with the urn, it has more meaning. I could tell our mom loved the hot air balloon ride. I can still feel her presence sometimes when the wind blows against my face.

I sigh, climbing into the front of my Jeep, sliding my water bottle into one cupholder and my coffee in the other before reaching back to place my green smoothie in the back seat holder. Q whines in her crate. She hates long drives. Guilt washes over me as I watch my sister wave goodbye in the rearview mirror with a little bundle of white and green tucked into her arms.

My sister is a single mother and I’m abandoning her. Our mom died last year, and here I am, her only family, leaving her. But I can’t be here. I will not survive if I stay in Utah for another minute.

Leah was the one who forced me to look at jobs out of state and who practically kicked me out of our house. But I still feel guilty as they grow smaller and smaller in the distance, knowing she’ll wait until she can’t see my car before she heads back inside.

Over the past year my life completely fell apart, starting with the sudden passing of our mom. She went to the doctor because of a headache, and a month later she was gone. Her cancer had been there for years before they found it on the CT scan.

The tests confirmed it was malignant. Leah and I had moved to Salt Lake, but Mom refused to come and live with us so she could be closer to her treatment centre. She started chemo, but ultimately consented to a surgery without telling me or Leah. She didn’t make it off the table.

My sister and Ian split for good after she found out she was pregnant. They never did end up getting married. It was no surprise that Ian, not even able to fully commit to a wedding date, bolted when the two pink lines appeared on the pregnancy test. He didn’t fight for her or his child.

When Levi was born, Ian showed up at the hospital. I was all but ready to kick his ass to the curb, but Leah said she called him .

They got into a huge fight because Leah wanted to have full custody but still wanted Ian in Levi's life. He wanted nothing to do with being a father. He signed away his parental rights before the ink on the birth certificate was even dry.

A few months later I got fired from my job. I took a leave of absence after my mom’s death and when I wanted to extend it, they granted the request. Permanently.

Leah insisted I sue, so I did and lost in court after spending half my savings on legal fees. The silver lining was Utah taking over the Arizona NHL team, and with a brand-new staff, I was able to secure a job with their massage team.

It’s been a shitshow, though—the people were rude and unwelcoming. I did not feel at home there.

The only positive things I had going for me were my sister and Q. Blessed Q became overly attached to me. But being in Utah, surrounded by memories of my failures, memories of my mom, I haven’t been able to escape my demons. I can’t breathe.

My panic attacks became worse and worse until Leah all but forced me to think about moving.

That’s when a posting came in from Vancouver: a rare opening with their NHL team, the Whales, as a massage therapist. I was hesitant at first. I’d have to not only leave Utah but leave the U.S.? I filled out the application just to appease Leah, who had been six months pregnant and hormonal at the time.

I figured I wouldn’t get the job since they’d have to sponsor my visa. Surely there were other more qualified candidates who were Canadian. Though it was easy enough to transfer from one team to another—having already had experience working with the NHL was a big selling point in my favour.

Spoiler alert: I got the job ... sort of. My jaw dropped when I got the email requesting a video interview. And then another one. I was offered a spot contingent on a three-month probationary period. I’ll have to mesh well with the other therapists, staff, and team.

My therapist thought it was a good idea—good for my depression and PTSD. A change of scenery could be what my body and mind need to heal. Plus, I think I’ve exhausted all dating prospects in the entire state. I’ve either run them off with my crazy or because they wanted to convert me.

Sorry God, I’m mad at you right now. Dating has been abysmal. No one has been able to reach this unobtainable bar I’ve set. I’m no longer willing to settle, and I absolutely do not acknowledge why.

Even though I don’t like the direction my thoughts have gone in as I pull into the gas station, I can’t help myself. Getting out of the Jeep, I begin pumping gas. While I have a minute, I pull out my phone and scroll down through to the messages from almost two years ago.

Stalker

Friday 5:45 a.m.

Here are your photos, stalker

*Attachment 6 photos *

Wednesday 8:30 p.m.

Hey Adam, I hope you’re doing okay. I just want to say again how sorry I am. I know you’re probably pissed as hell at Caleb and maybe at me too. I’d love to see you, maybe go out for a drink if you’re still in town. Let me know.

And that was it. No reply, no acknowledgement.

After a double text with no response, I never got up the nerve to call him. He clearly didn’t want anything to do with me, and I couldn’t exactly blame him. It stung, to be sure, because I thought we had something special. But essentially it was a small blip in my life, so I hold that race close to my heart and try not to be bitter about it.

However, now that I know he’s out there somewhere and men like him exist, I’m not willing to settle.

No one ever measures up, and I’m left chasing that rare connection I found on a dusty desert trail. Or what I thought I’d found. Maybe it was just the race adrenaline, and after we were disqualified, he realized that we had fun, but we couldn’t be anything more.

That happens sometimes with a runner’s high—it skews reality. I could have blown the whole thing out of proportion. It probably meant more to me than to him anyway. I have a tendency to throw myself all-in without thinking of the consequences. Kind of like moving to Vancouver .

The justifications and explanations swirl in my head, none of them sticking.

Did I take the job in Vancouver hoping I’d run into him? No, definitely not. But I have gone to bed thinking up scenarios where I casually run into him.

Sometimes I’m in my running gear and he sees me on a trail. But that would require me to actually run. So I could be out at a nightclub—like I haven’t gone to bed at 9:00 p.m. every night for the last year—and he sees me dancing with some friends. Maybe he gets jealous of a guy dancing too close to me.

Or my favourite: I’m getting married, and he somehow hears of it, rushing over to my house like the stalker he is to stop me the morning of my wedding. I don’t go with him, of course—I’m in love with my pretend fiancé and would never do that to him. But a woman can dream, can’t she?

Blasting my music louder than my thoughts, I jam out to the best hits of my teenage years, dreaming of the angst that felt so big at the time. When problems were solved by a hug from my mom and my sister letting me borrow her clothes. I stop only a few times on the fifteen-hour drive to use the bathroom and sleep.

The next day on the road I crank up the volume and listen to an audiobook of my favourite spicy romance, making sure my windows are rolled up tight in case I stop next to a van full of kids.

My thoughts drift back to Adam as the hockey romance pours out of the speakers. I don’t know why the male protagonist reminds me of him. Most likely because he’s an idiot. An idiot with an insanely disproportionate cock that he knows how to use .

I sigh as the book plays the delicious part where the couple’s screaming match turns into the most epic sex scene. I do not think of Adam and our kiss in the desert.

“It’s been two years,” I mutter to myself. “Get over it.”

But I can’t get over it. It may have been two years ago, but I still wake up in the middle of the night swearing I can feel his lips on mine.

If I’m not careful, I’ll be the one stalking him.

“Oh my god, what if I actually run into him? Is he going to think I’m stalking him?” I’m fully talking to myself now and worry about my sanity for the fifth time today.

Even if I’m only in Vancouver for three months, it’s a big city. The chances of running into him are slim.

There’s no way I’m seeing Adam Ashford ever again.