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“I don’t, but you’re one of our best mentors, and I don’t know…” Hazel closes her eyes as a gust of wind appears, rustling her auburn hair, a color that always reminds me of a certain hockey player.
I flex the hands I didn’t realize I’d been fisting inside my pockets. “What don’t you know?”
Her eyes flutter open. Within them lies an intensity that wasn’t there before. “My gut tells me things are about to change for you.”
“For me?” She nods. “Don’t you mean for the couple?”
“Them, too.” She lets out an amused giggle.
“Hazel—”
The ringing of her phone cuts me off, and she takes it out of her pocket. “It’s my partner; I should take this.”
“But—”
She smiles and answers the phone. “Hey, baby! Yeah, it’s a full retreat!” Hazel winks at me before leaving, her long dress following behind her as she walks off toward her home on the other side of the property.
My eyes follow her form until it’s gone, and my stomach flips when I replay the conversation.
There was a time when I wouldn’t have believed in gut instincts or tarot cards or anything of the mystical variety. While my parents are progressive and open people, they’re also firm atheists, and I didn’t grow up with any sort of organized religion or exposure to new age or spiritual work.
It wasn’t until a career-ending knee injury my freshman year of college forced me off the ice and out of any chance of a professional hockey career that I went on a journey of self-discovery to figure out who Beck Anders was without hockey. Without him.
That led me to a healing retreat in New Mexico, where I did a lot of physical therapy on my body alongside personal work on my mind. Once I broke through the judgments I had around spirituality and healed in a way I didn’t think possible, I was hooked. I ended up staying on as an apprentice, training in somatic therapy, learning how to guide breath work sessions, and working one-on-one with clients under supervision before eventually finding tantric work and Reignite.
Through everything, I’ve come to appreciate the power of the mind and listening to your gut. A strength I realized I’d always had, even if I never recognized it. It’s one of the reasons I was good at hockey and found it easy to be friends with people I vibed with.
I sit back down on the lounge chair and look out at the desert oasis Hazel and her partner purchased: several acres of land with a small house and multiple bungalows. The surface of the kidney-shaped pool in front of me ripples as wind blows through again, rustling my shoulder-length brown hair I have tied in a half ponytail. I lift my gaze beyond the water, past one of the bungalows out to the desert, and find a Joshua tree, its twisted limbs atop its thick trunk reaching up to the sky in a whimsical manner.
I close my eyes when the wind brushes over my bearded cheeks and drop my focus into my body, feeling the sensations of the dry desert heat and the warm whoosh of air that smells of earth and sky.
Hazel’s declaration could have meant different things. Either things will change in the context of my work—that I’ll help the couple this time around and feel satisfied after they’ve gone home happier and more connected to each other—or this couple will change me somehow.
My eyes pop open at the idea. The people I work with will always impact me—not just because we spend a week together, but because I learn about them, their likes and dislikes, what’s preventing them from communicating or truly being intimate together. In some cases, I’m even intimate with them. Not through penetrative sex, but I participate by giving them instruction or helping them overcome blocks that are preventing them from pleasing their partners and themselves, often through touch.
But what if she means more?
The laugh of someone in the distance breaks me from my thoughts. The wind picks up, and I decide that there’s no use in figuring out what she meant. Even if Hazel has the best intuition of anyone I’ve ever met—to the point it’s frightening sometimes—she doesn’t know the future. Nobody does.
I’m choosing to go with the flow. What is meant for me will happen. I’m simply excited to meet my new couple and hopeful that things will go better for them than they did for Harley and Jude.
No, things will go better. I’ll make sure of it.
Chapter six
Quinn
“It’s not that hot,” I say as I step up next to Noah, stretching my arms over my head after the drive from the airport to the retreat.
He wipes his forehead, his pale, freckled skin flushed. “It’s”—he looks at his phone—“ninety degrees. It was fifty at the airport back home this morning.”
I hold off rolling my eyes, thanking the driver as he puts my suitcase next to me before looking back at my husband.
“It’s one week in the desert. And there’s a pool plus air conditioning in the bungalow.”
Noah doesn’t reply, his eyes shifting forward. I study his profile as he glares at the outside of the desert oasis we’re going to call home while we’re here.
While on the plane, I dug a little deeper. Reignite is held at a renovated bungalow resort, and a mid-century modern home painted a pale green and white is where we’ll check in. It’s unlike anywhere I’ve stayed before, but all the pictures online are beautiful, and Stevie assured me the bungalows are incredible.
