“Here’s the plan. I’m gonna go through first, and then I’ll come back and help you through. I’ll take your camera and my backpack and put it on the other side.”
“I’m not going to give you my camera.” My voice was still a little breathy from all the non-kissing that was happening, but I still wasn’t giving him my camera.
He rolled his eyes, which should have pissed me off, but for some reason it only made me smile. “I promise I won’t get it wet. I’ll hold it above my head. It’ll be dry as a bone when it reaches the other side.”
“And what if you trip? What if you get bitten by a giant river monster and my camera falls to the floor of this godforsaken stream? Then what?”
“There is no river monster and I’m not going to trip. Come on, Evelyn. You’re going to have to learn to trust me eventually. This just speeds up the process.”
My head instinctively tilted to the side as I contemplated his words. I was going to have to learn to trust him eventually? This was a foregone conclusion, already? I’d only trusted a handful of people in my lifetime and for some reason, Nate assumed he was going to make the short list. I couldn’t figure out if I thought it was sweet that he wanted to gain my trust, or if I should be running in the opposite direction.
“If you drop my camera in the water, you have to replace it,” I said by way of relenting, my voice still full of air, obviously affected by our close proximity.
“Done,” he said confidently.
“It’s really expensive,” I threw back at him, only slightly annoyed by his confidence. Honestly, his cockiness was more arousing than annoying, but I knew it was imperative to the survival of my tough exterior to remain impassive to all his charms.
“I think I can handle it,” he replied, his voice dropping lower and tinted with a gravelly rumble. My mind immediately started thinking about everything he could handle, including me, and I felt my pulse in profoundly private places.
Since it was impossible for me to speak without saying, “Take me now,” I simply nodded in response. He smiled, all sexy and rugged, then released my hand and lifted my camera from around my neck. Before he could take it away from me fully, I grabbed it and opened the compartment that held the SD card and took it out. If he was going to ruin my camera, I wasn’t going to let him ruin all the pictures I’d taken. I kept my gaze on him as I slipped the card into my bra. His eyes widened and mouth dropped open.
“That was just cruel,” he groaned.
I gave him half a smile and lifted one shoulder in a shrug. He narrowed his eyes and gave another groan. Then proceeded to put my camera inside his backpack. Once it was all zipped up he turned back to me. “I’ll be right back.”
“Okay,” I managed. He stepped away from me, heading toward the narrow passage where brave hikers were up to their armpits in water. Some laughing, some cursing. I looked behind me and found a large rock to sit on while I watched him navigate the water. He held the backpack above his head and even from a distance, I could see his knuckles turning white from gripping it so tightly. Eventually he disappeared around a bend and I could no longer see him or his backpack, so my eyes wandered and I took in the beautiful imagery around me. I laughed to myself, wishing I had my camera to take some photos.
After a few minutes of sitting on the rock and watching people navigate the stream, going in and out of the gorge it created, I finally saw Nate return, his shirt completely wet. As he got closer, I noticed his neck was wet as well. But his hands, which were still up above his head, were dry.
“Your camera is safe and dry on the other side. I left it with a responsible-looking group of hoodlums spraying graffiti on the pine trees.”
“Shut up,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him, but still grinning, unable to stop my lips from turning up at his words. I immediately regretted saying that to him, afraid he’d find my retort offensive. I didn’t know him well enough to be telling him to shut up in a playful way – not everyone understood my sarcasm. Thankfully, his smile broadened at my words and, surprisingly, he only seemed to enjoy my sass.
“I’m kidding. It’s nestled safely at the trunk of a tree about ten yards away from the water. Come on, I’ll take you.” He held out his hand to me again, but that time, I didn’t try to talk myself out of the butterflies I was feeling. I felt them, and I acknowledged them for what they were – a budding attraction. A crush. Nate was a man I wanted to let lead me.
He walked me out into the freezing water until it was barely above my knees, but then stopped short and turned to face me.
“I’m gonna take you out until the water is about to your belly button,” he said, pressing a hand against my stomach, making my breath stop and my heart pound. “Then I’m gonna go under completely and you’re gonna get on my shoulders. Then I’ll walk through and you’ll stay mostly dry.”
“You are not,” I scoffed. “I can see the water came up to your neck. You can’t walk through there with me on your shoulders; you’ll drown.”
He laughed. “I’m not going to drown. Are you always this dramatic?” He lifted a hand to motion toward the gorge. “I might have slipped a little going through the first time and went under a little, but I kept your precious camera dry – I promise.”
My eyes went wide at his admission. He had fallen in the godforsaken river. But I reminded myself that my camera was fine, that he was only trying to help me.
“You think you can really carry me on your shoulders through there?”
He raised one eyebrow at me and pulled his chin back in surprise. “Are you serious? Shut up.”
I immediately laughed at his words, and then continued to laugh because it felt so good to do so. With one shut up from Nate, I’d lowered a wall I’d had built for years. Granted, it was still pretty much up and surrounding the most vulnerable part of me, but those few bricks that had just collapsed weighed a ton. I’d never felt this light before.
He tugged me farther into the water and I kept my yelps silent as the water encroached on the apex of my thighs, the icy water causing all kinds of nerves to fire haphazardly. True to his word, when the water had reached my belly button, he stopped and faced me.
“Okay, I’m gonna go under and you just hop onto my shoulders. When I stand up, hang on tight. If you fall in, this will be all for naught.”
It was my turn to raise an eyebrow at him. “Did you really just say all for naught?”
He only winked at me in response, then turned his back to me, and proceeded to dunk himself under the water.
“Oh, shit, he was serious,” I said to myself as I clamored to climb up onto his shoulders. I managed to get my legs over his shoulders, trying not to think about the jolt of electricity that shot up my spine when his hands wrapped around my thighs, holding me tightly. Once I was situated, he started to rise out of the water. As more of my body left the cold water, it became apparent his body was taking on more and more of my weight, and I started to feel badly for the poor guy.
When he was standing straight again, I heard him take in a deep breath trying to compensate for the oxygen he missed while underwater. I leaned forward a little, my hands plastered against his forehead. “Am I too heavy?” I asked, but before I could get the last word out, I lost my balance and started to fall forward. Instinctively, my feet wrapped around the back of Nate’s waist, and my hands gripped him below his chin, trying desperately not to fall in the mountain-cold water.
“Whoa, I got you,” he said, his hands gripping me tighter on my thighs, his big arms squeezing my legs, keeping me in place. “You all right?” I heard him ask, noticing the garbled sound of his voice. It was then I decided to loosen the death grip I had on his face.
“This was a dumb idea. Just put me down, I’ll swim through.”
“Evelyn, trust me. I’ve got you.”
“Okay,” I whispered, knowing he couldn’t hear me.
I felt him take the first step with me atop his shoulders and I felt my face pull back in excitement and fear. I hadn’t b
een on anyone’s shoulders since spring break in Cancun my senior year of college when Elliot, Liv, Devon, and I were playing drunken chicken during one of our late-night pool excursions. This was different. Nate’s body was unfamiliar and, any way you looked at it, my most private and sensitive areas were pressed against him. For someone who I didn’t really know that well, it was an unusually familiar situation to be in. But regardless of what my head was telling me about what was appropriate or inappropriate, I liked feeling Nate that close to me, with his strong arms snaked around my legs. It had never been this exciting on Elliot’s shoulders.
He walked through the canal created by the water and at its deepest, I saw the water ripple from his heavy breathing. He was scarily close to being underwater and I tried not to panic. Surely, my dry shirt wasn’t worth his dying. But then the water line started to lower, and more and more of his body was out of the water. When we’d made it through the deepest part and the water had receded to his waist again, he tapped my thigh with his large hand. Again, I ignored my body’s immediate response to the feeling of his hand and the primal sound it made against the wet skin of my leg.
“I’m gonna dunk down again so you can climb off, all right?”
I nodded, still gripping his forehead tightly.
“Evelyn? You good up there?”
“Sorry,” I said, realizing he couldn’t hear me nod my head. “I’m fine. Go ahead.” He slowly slipped down into the water, and when it was deep enough, I pushed off his shoulders and found my footing on the riverbed below. He stood up and even if I’d tried, I couldn’t have kept my eyes from watching the water cascade down his back, his arms lifting to run his hands through his wet hair. It was, possibly, the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in person.
He turned back to face me, eyes wide as cold water rushed down his face. A hand came down and brushed the water away, and then his eyes focused on me. His gaze darted from my eyes, to my shirt, then back up again.
“You’re dry,” he said with a smirk.
“Relatively,” I responded quickly, before I thought much about it. I realized what I’d implied, blushed, and then watched as his smirk grew into a smug grin. “Okay,” I groaned, embarrassed, “where’s my camera?”
Chapter Fourteen
Present Day
True to his word, my camera was safely deposited under a tree, dry as a bone. We continued our wade through the water, and when we came to our next obstacle, I couldn’t hold in my laughter.
“This is the weirdest hike I’ve ever been on,” I mumbled. Before us, blocking the stream was a naturally made stack of logs. A pile of downed trees had obviously fallen from the tops of the ravine and landed in the gorge. A legitimate logjam. I watched as people climbed over the wooden obstacle course. The image of the logs alone was breathtaking. It was a little amazing to think nature had made something so intricate and beautiful.
“Hey, I never said it was going to be boring. In fact,” he said, turning to look me in the eyes, “I can pretty much promise it’ll never be boring with me.”
“Noted,” I breathed. His smiled changed, grew a little warmer, but then his eyes swung back to the mound of logs.
“It doesn’t look difficult. See, children are climbing over it.” He pointed toward a group of teenagers climbing up the crazy log pile with gusto.
“I never said I wasn’t going to do it.”
“Well, all right then. Let’s see what you’ve got.” He winked at me and then started toward our next adventure.
Not one to ever back down from a challenge, I followed him. Approaching the naturally made ladder of sorts, I tried to think objectively about how best to get to the top. I placed my foot on one log, but then changed my mind and tried another tactic. Nothing felt natural. No step I took felt like the right way to tackle the problem.
“Lyn,” I heard Nate call out, and then I heard him say it again before I realized he was talking to me. I looked up and caught his gaze. “Sorry,” he said, his eyes smiling so brightly at me. “It just kind of slipped out. I know other people call you Evie, but Lyn seems to fit you so much better.”
I shook my head, breathlessly. “You can call me Lyn. That’s fine.” I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to use real words. He was right. Everyone did call me Evie and I’d never thought much about it. But thinking about Nate calling me something different, something he liked, something he had come up with, made every part of me ache in a delicious way. Even more, knowing he was the only one who would call me that made it even sweeter.
He smiled as his shoulders relaxed a little, looking as though they were sagging with relief. “Don’t overthink it, Lyn. Just go for it.”
It took me only a moment to realize he’d been talking about the log obstacle. He waved a hand at me, urging me to join him. He was easily ten feet up the giant log ladder. I let out a deep breath and decided to try it his way and just wing it.
Hand over foot, I slowly made my way up, log by log. Some were cramped tightly together, others were farther apart and caused me to take longer strides to make it up. I stole a glance at Nate after a few successful steps and was happy to see him smiling down at me. It took about ten minutes of climbing and strategizing on the fly until I reached the summit of the logs, and was happy to see Nate standing on the tallest log, looking a little like Captain Morgan with one leg propped up higher than the other, hands on his hips.
“You made it,” he said, a genuine smile spreading over his face. I couldn’t help but blush when he reached a hand out to me, helping me up the very last log, and then continued to hold it, threading his fingers through my own. I was closer to thirty than I’d like to admit, but I was holding a guy's hand and blushing about it.
“That was fun,” I managed, smiling up at him, hoping the blush of my cheeks could pass for a healthy glow from the climb.
“Wanna sit up here and have lunch?”
I shrugged. “Sure.” He gave my hand a gentle squeeze, and then released it as he pulled off his backpack. He walked toward the edge of the logs and I followed, understanding that he wanted to be out of the way of the rest of the hikers trying to make their way over the pile.
He straddled a log, sitting with his backpack in front of him and I copied his stance.
“So,” he said, unzipping his backpack and bringing out what I immediately recognized as Subway sandwiches. “I have turkey with American cheese, or roast beef with cheddar. Your choice. And if you don’t like either of those I might dive off this log mountain.”
“I’ll take turkey,” I said through laughter. He handed me a wrapped sandwich, then reached back into his bag and opened his palm toward me.
“Mayo? Mustard?” He had little packets of condiments in his hand, offering them to me.
“You think of everything, don’t you?” I asked, taking a little mayo packet from his hand, noticing the zing that shot through me when our skin touched, but trying not to react to it.
“Listen, I never hold back on a date. I’m here to impress. I had to ask the sandwich artist especially for the to-go packets.”
I laughed even harder as I imagined Nate, the masculine, imposing person he was physically, asking a teenage girl for mayo packets.
“I appreciate it. There’s nothing worse than a dry sandwich.”
“See? I knew you were perfect for me.” His tone was light and playful, but his words made my heart pound in my chest. Partly because it had been years since someone had said anything romantic to me, but more so, because I wanted the words to be true. I wanted to be perfect for someone. I’d spent the majority of my life feeling like the only person who was perfect for me, had already found his perfect match. “You took the mayo and I took the mustard. You’re the yin to my yang.”
I blushed even harder, made speechless by his almost childish yet adorable mushiness. It was quite ridiculous. I’d always told myself I didn’t need flowers and romance, but his condiment comparisons were enough to make my heart skip a beat.
“So, tell me ab
out your life.” He made the request just before he took the first bite of his sandwich, looking at me as if my answer was going to be the most interesting thing he’d ever hear. I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with his swallow and found myself mimicking him, swallowing down the need that grew in my belly with that one stupid yet ridiculously sexy movement on his neck.
“My life?” I finally asked, needing a little more clarification.
“Yeah. You know, what you do for fun, your hobbies, your likes, dislikes, murderous tendencies – anything interesting.”
“I have never murdered anyone,” I said through a laugh.
“See? That’s useful information. Continue.” He took another bite and I looked down at my own sandwich, refusing to watch the man eat a sandwich to satisfy my own twisted attraction.
“For the most part, I’m kind of a hybrid between a single gal in my late twenties and an old cat lady in my late fifties.”
“Do you have many cats?” One of his eyebrows was raised and his sandwich was paused halfway up to his mouth. He looked concerned.
“No,” I giggled. “I actually don’t have any pets. But, I fit the profile. I should have cats. But I’m too busy working, and now taking care of Ruby and Jax, I don’t even have time for a cat, let alone the twenty minimum I’d need to reach cat lady status.”
“Yeah. Ruby and Jax. They seem like great kids. Their mom must have been pretty special.”
I fought past the lump that formed in my throat at his words. “She was the best,” I managed, but my voice was strained and my eyes were down again. Suddenly, I felt Nate’s warm hand on the top of my knee.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he said quietly, rubbing his hand gently over my bare skin. “How long ago did she pass?”
“It’s been a few months. But it feels like days or hours.” I let out a loud sigh. “Those kids though, they’re tough. Some days you can’t even tell they’ve lost their mother, which I’m glad for. That’s a blessing. The days when they’re laughing and smiling like nothing ever happened, I live for those days. But then there are days when there aren’t enough tissues in the world to dry their tears.” I paused, trying to push the images of those two kids crying out of my mind. “Ruby’s eight, so she feels the loss more. She knows what she’s missing a little deeper than Jax. But Jax is a little momma’s boy with no momma. Some days, he seems lost and that’s hard.”
The Absence of Olivia Page 15