“Well duh. My point is, you get offended easily. Just facts.”
“Kitty!” I shouted.
“Yeah?” she shouted back from the living room.
“Am I easily offended?”
“Yeah!”
“Shut up,” I groused to Ram. “That offends me.”
He laughed, stepping back. “There. How’s that feel?”
It was still heavy, but somehow the weight seemed easier to carry. I wiggled side to side, forward and back, hopping up and down—I was amazed to find that nothing jangled or jounced, which I’d been expecting.
“Really good,” I said. “Still heavy, but manageable.”
He nodded. “Good.” His eyes, blue as the Caribbean and the summer sky and sapphires, locked onto mine. “So, then. You ready to head out? Trail’s waiting, babe.”
I let out a breath, and then nodded. “I’m ready.” I laughed. “Or, as ready as I’ll ever be. Let’s go.” I shot him a snarky look. “And stop calling me babe.”
“Sure thing, darlin’.”
I huffed. “Don’t be annoying.”
He exited my room, and I followed; we stopped at the front door and I waved at Kitty and Juneau. They both had the day off together, a rarity, and so they were spending it bingeing on a true crime docuseries on Netflix.
Kitty was the first to jump up and hustle across the room to hug me. “Be safe, okay?”
“I will.” I jabbed a thumb in Ram’s direction. “Or at least, I’m counting on him to do that for me.”
“It’s a nice easy trail,” Ram said, his voice calm and reassuring. “Not quite a walk in the park, but it’s not like I’m taking her up to the Garden of the Gods or something.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“A park way up in the Rockies in Colorado. It can be pretty challenging.”
Juneau hugged me next. “Have fun.”
I laughed. “I’m probably going to die.”
Ram snorted. “It’s a little hike, ya’ll. Relax.”
Kitty laughed and patted him on the chest. “You don’t know Izzy.”
I stuck my tongue out at her. “You shut up.”
She kissed my cheek. “Love you!” she said in a cutesy sing-song.
Ram glanced at his wristwatch—a giant digital thing that looked like it was capable of summoning Optimus Prime. “Time to go. I’m gettin’ antsy.” He grabbed my arm and hauled me out the door. “I’ll have her back in three days, safe and sound.”
I called over my shoulder as he guided me to the stairs. “If I’m not back in three days, send in the National Guard!”
Ram just laughed, and then we began descending the stairs to the ground level. And that, my friends, was the first warning sign of the amount of trouble I’d talked myself into: just going down two flights of stairs wearing that backpack, I had sweat on my forehead and I was out of breath.
I refused to play into the “clueless city girl trying to be outdoorsy” trope, so I wiped the sweat off my forehead before Ram could see it, and forced myself to breathe slowly.
We got to his truck and I unclipped my backpack. Ram took it from me and easily swung it up one handed into the bed of his truck, climbing up onto the wheel and leaning in to strap it down. And ooooh baby, that man’s ass—come to mama. Tight as a drum, hard a rock, and round as a pair of cannonballs. I had to shove my hands in my pockets to keep from reaching out and grabbing it.
With my bag secured, he hopped down and turned to face me, a happy smile on his face. “Let’s get the fuck out here, yeah?”
I laughed at the eagerness radiating from every line, pore, and syllable. “You are really geeked about this, ain'tcha?”
He held open the passenger door, and I climbed up and in. “You have no idea.”
It was only after he circled the hood and slid behind the wheel that I realized every single time we’d approached his truck today, he’d opened my door, waiting until I was in and buckled, and closed it behind me. It was so natural and simple that I hadn’t even noticed.
I eyed him as he started the engine, put it in gear, and checked traffic before pulling out. It was kind of eye-opening, actually. Come to think of it, he opened every single door for me, always waiting until I’d gone through first.
He arched an eyebrow at me. “What?”
I shook my head. “Nothing.”
He turned on the radio, and an old Western song was playing—“Ghost Riders in the Sky” by Gene Autry.
My heart clenched, seized.
Ram glanced at me and moved to change it; my hand shot out and clamped down on his wrist to stop him.
“Leave it, please,” I whispered.
He frowned, slowly dropping his hand, and we listened to the song until it ended.
I was lost in thoughts and memories for a long time, as other old classic Western songs played.
“That one had some memory on it, huh?” Ram asked after a while.
I shrugged. “I suppose.”
He nudged the volume a little louder as a Johnny Cash song came on. “Didn’t take you for a country-western kinda girl.”
I shrugged again. “I’m not. My dad is. Or he used to be, at least.”
He eyed me sideways. “Used to be? He pass on?”
I shrugged a third time. “Yeah.”
Ram laughed. “Okay, so you don’t want to talk about it. Got it.”
I sighed. “Ram…”
He turned the volume up again. “It’s cool. No big deal. You don’t want to talk, I ain’t gonna push it.”
Somehow, though, I felt words bubbling up, explanations, stories—words long suppressed, pushed down, held in, even from Kitty and Juneau.
I stared out the window, looking at the big blue sky and watching as the rugged terrain replaced the pretty town. “I used to be super close to my dad. Mom and Dad and I were all close, but Daddy and I were…it was special. Weekends were our time together. He worked long, long days during the week as the head of neurology at the hospital, but on the weekends, he was all mine. He mowed the lawn every Saturday morning, and he would always wear this hat—” I touched the brim of the hat I was wearing, “and then we would ride bikes to get ice cream. Sometimes we’d go to the movie theater afterwards, or to the park. He took me to see movies a little girl probably shouldn’t have seen, but it was my special time with him. He had a slick little Mercedes convertible he drove to work, but on the weekends, he drove me around in this ancient old beat up pickup that had belonged to his grandfather. He always left it on the same station—I don’t think that radio station had changed in, oh, fifty years. It was a country and western station, and they played all those old songs, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, all those old classics, and Daddy would sing along as he drove me around. That song just…it reminded me of those weekends.”
Ram was quiet for a while. “That sounds…pretty special.”
I smiled at him. “It was.”
I waited, expecting him to push past it, but he didn’t. He seemed lost in his own thoughts or memories.
I wanted to know what he was thinking, but I didn’t want to seem too eager, or overly interested, so I elbowed him. “Hey, where’d you go?”
He shifted one shoulder, a bare hint of movement, his face impassive. “I can’t quite say I grew up without a parent because my dad was around but, for the most part, my brothers and I basically raised ourselves. Dad was a workaholic and an alcoholic. He spent all his money on booze, so he was either at work, at a bar, or passed out at home. My earliest memory of him is him sitting in a cracked plastic chair outside our trailer, a fifth of Jack in one hand, a can of Busch in the other—with a whole case of Busch on the ground nearby. I remember him sitting there drinking from one and then the other until he passed out, puke dribbling out of his mouth and down his shirt. So, your memory of driving around with your pop listening to Gene Autry? Kinda jealous.”
I blinked. “Wow. I…wow. That’s…I don’t even know what to say.”
&n
bsp; He forced a laugh. “Sorry, I guess I just shit all over your nice memory, huh?”
“Yeah, you did,” I said, laughing. “It’s okay, though. The rest of that story kind of shits on itself.”
“Oh? How so?”
I shook my head. “It’s the kind of thing we can talk about late at night, half asleep, when I can pretend I never told you.”
“That great, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said with a sarcastic bark of laughter. “Really, really awesome.”
We passed a good half an hour in silence, the road climbing higher into the mountains, the old classic western songs floating and wavering in the air between us, woven around the palpable tension between Ram and me. We finally pulled into a wide open dirt parking lot with a handful of cars parked here and there, and a short, fat-bodied shuttle bus idling off to one side, several mountain bikes secured to the rack on the front. An older man stood outside the folding doors, smoking a cigarette and talking on a cell phone; he was tall and lean, with a lank gray ponytail and an impressive Fu Manchu mustache, wearing dirty blue jeans and a red-and-gray-checkered flannel shirt.
Ram parked his truck in a corner of the lot, shut the engine down, and climbed out, locking the doors after I slid down from the cab. He unstrapped both of our backpacks and carried them over to the shuttle.
I frowned in confusion. “Wait, what? Why are we getting on a bus?”
Ram stepped up onto the bus and found seats for us behind a young hipster couple. The guy wore his greasy hair in a topknot, and the girl wore a tank top, stretching her arms over her head in a way that showed she wasn’t wearing a bra and had probably never shaved her armpits. I sat next to Ram, trying not to feel out of place; the others on the bus included a trio of college-aged guys wearing what seemed to my inexpert eyes to be very expensive gear and chatting in a language that may have been German, a pair of women about my age talking shit about their husbands, and a single middle-aged male looking morose and lonely.
The guy with the cigarette and Fu Manchu crushed the butt with his boot heel, ended his call, and climbed in behind the wheel. “All right, ya’ll. Looks like this is it for this trip. Tallyho!”
He closed the doors, put the bus in gear, and we trundled with a belch of diesel exhaust back onto the highway.
Ram leaned over to me, murmuring in a low tone. “We’ll leave the truck here and take this shuttle to the trailhead—that way, when we’re done, we can just hop in the truck and head home for a big ol’ fancy dinner.”
“Oh,” I said. “I guess that makes sense.”
We chatted about random things on the drive from the trail terminus to the trailhead, our low voices blending with the murmured conversations of the others around us. By the time we got to the trailhead, Ram was visibly antsy and agitated, his knees bouncing a mile a minute, his fingers restlessly plucking at his clothes and fiddling with his hat and adjusting his sunglasses. When we finally reached the trailhead parking lot and the bus grumbled to a stop, he let out an audible sigh.
“Fuckin’ finally,” he muttered under his breath. “Fuckin’ dying in this fuckin’ deathtrap.”
I laughed. “Deathtrap? This is actually a very nice bus, you know.”
He was the first off the bus, and I had to hop into motion quickly to keep up even though he had both of our packs in his hands, which he carried as if they weighed nothing.
Annoying butthead.
I trotted after him as he loped with his seventy-million-foot-long legs across the wide dirt parking lot toward the edge of the forest, where there were a few wooden benches, an information sign with brochures advertising various local attractions and services, and a map of the trail. Everyone else on the bus had unhooked mountain bikes from the front of the bus and had set out already, except for the one older guy, who had shouldered a huge pack, leaned forward with hunched shoulders, and marched onto the trail with a grim resolve on his face.
I caught up to Ram as he set our bags on a bench. “I hope you don’t plan on actually running the whole way,” I grumbled.
He smirked at me. “Oh, I didn’t mention that? We’re jogging the trail.”
“Not funny.”
He rolled his shoulders, the muscles straining against his T-shirt, which was white, emblazoned with an “International Finals Rodeo” logo, advertising a rodeo event in Oklahoma City some ten or so years ago. “Who’s kidding?”
I glared at him. “You said hike, not run.”
He tapped the brim of his hat. “The training for smokejumping makes this look like a tea party. We’d kit out in full gear with eighty-pound packs and be expected to run uphill through mountains at a six-minute mile pace.”
He had to be kidding. “Bullshit.”
He arched an eyebrow at me. “You really think so?” He raised his arms and flexed like a bodybuilder, and the way his muscles bulged and rippled left my eye twitching, my thighs quivering, and my pussy dripping. “You don’t get a body like this on a treadmill, sweetheart.”
“Arrogant prick,” I muttered.
He just laughed, clearly not taking me seriously anymore. “It’s not bullshit, though. We’d go on six-, eight-, ten-, and twelve-mile runs at a pace most pro runners would be jealous of, and we’d do it in the mountains in full gear.”
I shook my head. “That’s nuts. I hate running in just shorts and a sports bra on a flat road.”
He smirked, tightening and retying his laces. “Yeah, well, I don’t risk smacking myself in the face like you do.”
I whacked him across the chest with the back of my hand. “Shut up, pervert.” I eyed him. “You’re not really gonna make me run, are you?” I asked, unable to hide the unease in my voice.
His laugh was annoyingly chipper. “Relax, Izz. We’re gonna take this at a nice slow stroll.” He hefted his pack onto his back, buckled it in place and adjusted the straps, indicating my pack. “Strap up, buttercup. Time to hit the trail.”
I backed up against the pack, slid my arms into the straps and stood up, buckling the hip belt, adjusting the straps. I stared at the narrow opening in the forest, nerves rifling through me.
Not for the first time, I asked myself what I’d been thinking, why I’d been so stupid as to talk myself into this.
Could I do this? I’d never been hiking in my life. I’d never once slept in a tent, or even an RV for that matter—what was it they called that? Glamping? I exercise, sure, but in a heated and air-conditioned gym, with my special sweat towels and my podcasts.
That narrow sliver of shadow-wreathed darkness between tree trunks…that was a foreign world.
Ram nudged me, smiling. “Hey, you ready?”
I inhaled deeply, held it, and then let it out, glancing up at him. I nodded once, resolutely. “Yes. Let’s go.”
He grinned, and in the year-and-some I’d known him, I’d never seen him this visibly happy about anything. “All right, then.” He set out toward the opening in the forest, and I followed him, a few steps behind. He glanced at me over his shoulder. “Yo, Izz—this is gonna be fun. I promise.”
“I wish I could believe you,” I muttered, low enough he didn’t hear me.
If his eyes weren’t so dang pretty, if his beard wasn’t so endearingly shaggy, if his grin wasn’t so panty-meltingly sexy, if his body wasn’t so gorgeously perfect, I’d have turned around.
But, this was Ramsey Badd, and I was a sucker for hot men.
Yes, I was only doing this because of a sexy guy. Stupid, I know. Shallow, I know.
I didn’t even like him.
Problem: that little lie I’d been telling myself was beginning to wear thin, even in my own mind.
I entered the forest right behind Ram. It was dark and cool and quiet under the boughs of towering pines; the only sounds were the occasional chirp and warble of birds, and the sighing of the trees.
And the thunder of my own heart.
5
Ramsey
You’d think she was about to go in front of a firing squad, the
way she was walking gingerly behind me. Her steps were soft and short and hesitant as we entered the forest. I slowed my pace so she was beside me, and I watched her from the corner of my vision as we walked. Her head was on a swivel, looking up at the waving branches, trying to peer into the shade between the trees, looking down at the carpeting of pine needles on the hard packed dirt underfoot. She was totally rigid, gripping the shoulder straps of her backpack with white-knuckled fists, shoulders hunched, brows drawn down.
I let her walk, finding her comfort level, for about ten minutes, getting us well away from the trailhead, but I knew she was uneasy. I stopped abruptly and turned to stand facing her, forcing her to stop.
“Isadora, you need to listen to me for a second.”
She glared up at me, as if my very existence was an affront. “What?” she snapped.
I sighed, annoyed at her attitude. “This is my happy place, Izzy.” I gestured around me with a wide sweep of both arms. “Out here, on the trail—this is where I’m happiest. But you, sweetheart, you’re so tense you’re making me tense, and that’s seriously fucking with my mojo.”
She shrugged miserably. “I just…I don’t know what I’m doing.”
I laughed at that, throwing my head back. “You’re walking, Izzy. That’s it! Literally that’s the only thing to do, here—just walk.”
“I walk to work all the time,” she said, and then gestured at the forest around us. “This is different.”
“Yeah,” I said, letting sarcasm creep into my voice. “Out here, there are no expectations. No one is waiting at the other end for you to start working. No one is going to ask anything of you. This is the absolute nadir of relaxation. Literally, the only thing for you to do is walk. Breathe in the fresh mountain air, listen to the birds sing overhead, feel the wind on your face, enjoy the beauty of one of the last truly wild places left on earth, and just…be.”
Izzy blinked at me. “Whoa, whoa, whoa.” She frowned so hard I was worried it’d give her a headache. “Did you…did you just use the word nadir in a sentence?”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, Izzy. I told you, I do actually read books, and I actually do know words besides ugh and oogah-oogah.”
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