Page 35 of When the Smoke Clears

I grab my keys and head out into the night.

First stop: the inn. I ask Betty, the gray-haired woman at the front desk, if Isla’s come back in. Her gentle, shaking head tells me everything I already know.

My next stop is The Rusty Nail. The parking lot is a ghost town.

From there, I drive to Gabe’s apartment building. That’s when I see it: a lone white Mini Cooper parked at the curb, California plates stamped with the Golden Gate Bridge.

At least she’s safe, I tell myself. That’s all that matters. If only I could believe it.

I drive home on autopilot and end up on my porch with a bottle of bourbon and a head full of noise.

As the hours drag on, the tightness in my chest refuses to ease. By 3 AM, a prickling sensation creeps through my limbs. I stare at the ceiling, convinced I’m on the brink of a heart attack—at twenty-nine, no less. Fantastic.

The night becomes a slow-motion loop of worst-case scenarios. Every time I close my eyes, her name rises in my throat.

Isla.

It slips out, again and again, until my dignity feels like something I left at the bar along with my good sense.

Isla is in trouble, and instinct should tell her to come to me. I’m the sheriff. But I didn’t greet her with warmth when she came back; I met her with walls. And now she’s on the other side of them.

Just like I asked for.

The amber liquid catches the moonlight as I try to drown the gnawing frustration I’ve lived with since Isla reappeared in town. I swirl the glass until the ice ticks against the sides like a clock timing nothing. The bourbon warms my throat, but it can’t thaw the place in my chest she’s managed to unlock.

The anxiety comes roaring back once the bourbon wears off, and by the time the sun rises, a lingering headache settles behind my eyes.

I’m doing my best to keep my mind occupied until I hear from Gabe, but my body feels like a live wire desperate for grounding.

I’m not the first man to have his heart shattered by his first love. A decade should be enough time to let go of something you can’t change. And yet, here I am.

Seeing her, touching her, has ripped open wounds I thought were long since scarred over. My mind is a runaway train, tearing through questions and arriving at none of the answers. I’m not the kind of man who can live under the weight of mystery anymore.

The need to move hits hard and fast. I push up from the chair, bare feet on the porch boards that still smell faintly of pine. Within minutes, I’m dressed and grabbing my keys, ready to drive to the gym.

It’s a modest setup; a converted warehouse with exposed beams and a faint smell of iron and rubber, run by a burly guy named Jim, ironically.

At this hour, only a handful of regulars are scattered across the space. I nod at them as I walk in, the quiet, unspoken camaraderie settling over us.

I hit the treadmill hard, not to run but to outrun the pressure building in my chest. The music in my headphones is loud enough to hurt—exactly what I need.

Each footfall slams the frustration deeper into the floor until it starts to splinter into something I can breathe through.

When that’s not enough, I move to the weights. Heavy ones. The kind that forces silence in my mind. Metal meets skin, muscles burning and trembling with the effort. Pain makes sense. Pain I can control.

I lift until my arms shake, until the noise in my head finally dulls to something manageable. Only then do I feel steady enough to exist again.

It doesn’t last long.

On the drive home, I call my father, which is the last thing I want to do, but he left his cell phone at Dalton’s the other night. He was obviously too distracted by acting like a dick to remember it.

I grabbed it, planning to drop it by his office yesterday before everything went sideways.

His voice comes through clipped and impatient. “Luke.”

“Hey, Dad. You left your cell phone at D’s. I grabbed it for you.”

“I’ve been looking for that,” he grumbles.