Soul Searching: A Sweetwater Peak Novel

by Lyla Sage

For those who aren’t sure what they’re searching for. You’ll know it when you find it.

For the past three years, it had been covered by a tarp in a storage unit in Meadowlark—about two hours south of Sweetwater Peak—which I got to by hitching a ride with a nice couple who were on my flight from Portland to Jackson. They were going to some guest ranch in the area for a week.

I’ve never loved my family more than when I wasn’t living in the same town as them. Boundaries worked a hell of a lot better when there were thousands of miles between us.

“Collins Cartwright,” she said. “Fuckup extraordinaire and indiscriminate pepper-sprayer.”

Sweetwater Peak is a town built on chipped paint and cigarette butts and things that go bump in the night. It’s also fluffy white clouds and saltwater taffy and mountain breezes.

I was a stranger to feeling bad for a man—men in general, honestly. Especially for something I did to them. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about it.

It wasn’t creepy to stare at her if she was lurking outside my shop like a weirdo. I didn’t get a chance to look at her last night, but now I know she probably would’ve blinded me either way. I don’t know which one I would’ve preferred.

Part of me was realistic enough to realize that judging her based on her appearance, or worrying about what it would be like to live with her just because I thought she was pretty, was fairly lizard-brained. I refused to let the lizard brain win.

She opened the passenger door, but I reached over her shoulder and pushed it shut before grabbing the handle myself and pulling the door open.

“I’d rather get thrown off a cliff than live to be a hundred, and if it’s all your fault because of your insistence on the damn hugs, I’m bringing you with me.”

“Takes one to know one, Brady.” Collins looked up at me. “But it sounds like we could both use a little soul searching.”