by Hill, Hayden
"We're focusing exclusively on truth because Kade's dares are too racy."
"But that's what makes the game so fun," I said.
"Well?" Gina kept her eyes on Blaine. "The first thing you notice about a girl?"
Blaine rubbed his chin. "Her areola?"
Gina beat him playfully with her hand.
"Just kidding." Blaine raised his arms defensively. "Probably... her eyes."
I could definitely agree with that. Eyes were the hottest things on a girl. It was cliche to think it but they truly were the windows to the soul—and Ash's eyes were the most incredible windows I'd ever seen.
Blaine turned to Ash. "Okay, Ash. Your lover has been transformed into an animal. To turn him back, you need to have sex with him once. Which animal would you choose him to be?"
"A falcon," Ash said almost immediately.
Gina's eyes widened. My own became pretty big.
"A falcon," Blaine chuckled, apparently not noticing the double meaning. "What, you'd stuff its entire body in your vajayjay?"
Ash turned crimson in the torchlight. "I mean, no, that's not what I meant. A different animal. A dog, maybe."
"Too late," Blaine said. "Your deepest, darkest desires have been revealed. Bird sex. She's into bird sex."
I felt like telling Blaine to shut up but I thought it would just make Ash feel even more uncomfortable. I rubbed the tattoo at my neck. Falcons were beautiful animals. That's what she meant. Of course she wasn't implying anything about having sex with me.
Of course she wasn't.
Eager to get the heat off Ash, I turned to Gina, who was staring at her thoughtfully. "Who do you think is the most well-endowed—me or Blaine?"
"Oooh," Gina said. "Good question. I'm going to have to go with you, Kade, just because you're taller."
"Taller don't mean longer, baby," Blaine said.
More questions were exchanged and as the evening progressed, I learned Ash shaved her vajayjay twice a month, once wore a sexy devil outfit for Halloween, her most embarrassing nickname was Cucumber, and she'd always wanted to have bigger boobs.
I shared a few cringe-worthy secrets of my own. I shaved my privates once a week, had dressed as a dominatrix for one Halloween, was once nicknamed Shaggy Dog, and my most embarrassing intimate moment was bringing home a hot chick from a bar and having a bad case of whiskey dick. The chick accused me of being gay and somehow word got around so that the next time I went to the bar a bunch of dudes hit on me. Needless to say, I changed bars.
The evening was growing late and I wanted to sleep soon. We agreed on one more round of questions and decided to reverse the order we'd been asking them in.
Gina went first. "What's the one thing that's most important in the world to you, Kade?"
"What happened to the naughty questions?" Which I actually preferred. A question like this was deeply personal and I'd never shared something like that with anyone before. Well, Momma Jeanne, maybe, but no one else.
"Being out here," I said finally, mostly for Ash's benefit. "In the heart of nature. I can be myself and have nothing to prove to anyone. Not out here." I felt exposed emotionally yet I was glad Ash knew this about me. I'd gone and lifted one of those barriers I always put up to keep people from getting close.
I turned toward Ash to ask her my question. Her eyes seemed a little moist in the firelight. "Since we're getting all philosophical, I'll ask you this, Ash—if you had a time machine, what moment would you go back to, and what would you change about that moment?"
Ash stared at me with wide, shocked eyes. "I—" She started to choke up, and grabbed at that lump of jewelry she kept hidden beneath her sweater. "I—"
Abruptly she stood and dashed into the shadows.
Gina was instantly on her feet. She shot me a scowl.
"What?" I said.
Gina ran after her. I saw Ash's silhouette standing motionless in the dark. Gina embraced her. Ash's body was shuddering and I thought she was crying.
"Shit." I rubbed my forehead. "What did I say now? What the hell did I say?"
Blaine shrugged. "Beats me. Must be the Kade magic tongue again. You're quite the lady's man, as always."
I flipped him the bird and angrily stabbed at the charred wood in the firepit with one of the leftover marshmallow sticks.
Blaine retired to the tent. Ash and Gina joined him not long after that. I ignored them, glad they were gone, but a few seconds later I heard the tent flap move and someone ducked outside again. Ash? My heart beat like a drum machine until I realized it was Gina.
She sat on the log beside me and spoke in hushed tones. "If you hurt her, Kade, I swear I'll rip you apart. I'll hunt you down and you'll wish you never lived."
"Got it." I forced a brief smile. She'd never understand I was more afraid of Ash hurting me.
"Good." She gave me her own smile now, one that never met her eyes.
"I don't know what the hell I said. I really don't."
"And it's better if we leave it at that." Gina got up and ducked into the tent.
Sighing, I put out the fire with the water bottles and then felt my way in the dark until I was inside the tent. We'd arranged the sleeping bags end to end, placing them alongside the four walls of the tent so that the beds formed a square around the supplies in the middle. I groped at my sleeping bag, which was right at the entrance, and when I was sure it was empty, I hopped inside and zippered it up.
I lay there a while, feeling guilty. What happened out there with Ash was eating away at me. I felt compelled to say something but I wasn't sure what.
"Ash," I finally said into the dark. "Are we good?"
The tent was silent.
"Ash—"
"Yes," she said. "I— well, I overreact sometimes."
"Nah. It was a silly question. I shouldn't have asked it." Though, to be honest, the question didn't really seem all that silly to me. I mean, come on, there were lots of moments I wished I could travel back in time to and take back. The asking of that question, for example. But I didn't say anything. I'd gotten myself in trouble enough tonight.
I closed my eyes.
The distant howl of a wolf caused my eyelids to shoot right open again. I sensed movement in the tent.
"What was that?" Gina was sitting up and so was Ash, their bodies faintly outlined against the tent fabric.
"Just a timber wolf," Blaine said.
"Shit." Gina's voice sounded panicked and I thought she and Ash might bolt.
I rolled onto one side, glad my body was blocking the entrance. "Remember what I said. Wild animals will leave us alone as long as we're together. You have nothing to worry about."
"What about bears foraging for food?" Ash said. "You always see that on TV. A family is camping and a bear barges inside the tent while they're asleep."
I sighed. "Bears won't bother us, Ash. Trust me. Besides, you have me guarding the entrance to the tent. That's got to count for something, right?"
Finally, me and Blaine convinced the girls to go to sleep. It helped that the wolf call didn't come again.
When everything quietened down I found myself lying awake, remembering Ash's kiss. Her lips had felt so soft on my forehead. So wet.
I was glad it was pitch black in there because I didn't want anyone to see my throbbing erection. Probably showed right through my sleeping bag.
That girl would be the end of me.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Ash
I was the first to wake up. Because of the way we'd laid out the sleeping bags, mine was the farthest from the entrance so I couldn't really get up without disturbing everyone else. So instead, I lay there, waiting, listening to the morning birds.
Kade woke a few moments later and he had no problem noisily extracting himself from the tent, waking up Blaine in the process.
After Blaine went outside, I secured my hair in a ponytail and prodded Gina. "Rise and shine."
Gina moaned, pulling the top of her sleeping bag over her eyes. With a sigh, I st
epped over the empty sleeping bags and around the backpacks in the middle of the tent until I was outside.
Kade had already started a campfire so I helped him prepare a pot of instant coffee. Once I'd drunk the ambrosia of the gods, I started to feel a little life coming back into me. I offered to cook up the batch of oatmeal Blaine brought out and I had it ready just in time for a bleary-eyed Gina.
"Gruel is served," I told her.
"Coffee," Gina grunted. "Must have coffee."
I poured her a mug and ate my oatmeal. Kade sat beside me, silently eating his own bowl of my top-quality gruel.
"So what's the plan for today?" I asked him.
"Think about smoking," he said.
"Kade, come on."
A hint of humor lit up his eyes, and he chuckled softly. "Right. Okay. The plan. Well, for the next three days we're going to be surveying the nests, among other things. We've got a lot of ground to cover and I'm not sure we'll have time to check them all. Most of the nests are on cliffs. A few in trees. So we'll see."
"Trees?" I combed a loose strand of hair from my face. "I thought falcons didn't build actual nests? They choose a site and scrape away the loose soil and sand. You can't do that with a tree."
"You can't," Kade agreed. "Which is why they choose trees that have hollows in them."
I supposed that made sense. "So what if some of the nests have moved?"
"That's what the tracking collars are for."
I was enjoying making him talk. I could listen to his voice all morning. "How about the circular drill thingy from last night? What's that for?"
"Marshmallow roaster."
I rolled my eyes. "What, am I a part of a team of double-o-seven park wardens or something? We have all these secret spy gadgets. Tracking collars, marshmallow roasters..."
He returned my smile, his cheeks dimpling in that ever-so-attractive way. "Welcome to the Secret Service, Moneypenny."
"Moneypenny? Why do I have to be Moneypenny? A secretary. The only way this is going to work is if I'm your partner in crime."
He winked. "I work alone."
If only he knew how badly I wanted to be his partner in crime right then. When I'd kissed him last night, even though it'd only been on the forehead, I'd felt that raw tingle of pleasure again and I nearly died from the want. It was like I was discovering everything I'd been missing out on over the past year and a half. I wanted to be loved again in all ways of the word. I really did. But I couldn't just forget the past even if I felt like jumping Kade every time he looked at me.
I rubbed the necklace I kept hidden beneath my shirt.
Devon.
I couldn't see myself with anybody else, especially not a player.
And maybe it was better that way.
We spent the next three days doing exactly as Kade said, confirming the locations of each nest, taking pictures, cataloguing the number of eggs, if any. I finally learned what the circular drill was for when we found two trees whose needles had turned completely red. Apparently, there was something called pine beetle disease that was infesting the forests around here. As part of their work as conservation wardens, Kade and Blaine were supposed to tag infected trees for burning. Normally, forest health officers did that, but there weren't enough to cover the vast forests of British Columbia and since Kade and Blaine had the training the center put their skills to use.
I watched Kade use the drill to extract several cylindrical "cookies" from the bark of the dying trees and those pines closest to them, but he found no signs of pine beetle larvae. He let me try the saw and I made my own bark cookie, which I pocketed as a souvenir.
Blaine and Kade often made fun of me and Gina's strong southern accents, mimicking the way we pronounced our S's on the end of words as Z's, the way we were always "fixin'" to do something, the way we said Florida and Georgia (Flarda and Jawja). Honestly our accents weren't that bad.
In the mornings, we ate the oatmeal gruel for breakfast. Lunch was a few soda crackers or that terrible pemmican. At night, we ate two balls of pemmican each and exchanged stories or played party games over the campfire. Sometimes we stargazed because there was no light pollution at all out here. I'd never seen Cassiopeia shine her W so brightly, or the stars of the Little Dipper twinkle so intensely. Then there was Orion, the hunter shooting his bow, a constellation I don't think I'd ever even seen in the south.
All in all, I forgot everything about my past in those moments. I was finally free of my emotional baggage, and felt I was living my life the way it was meant to be lived—in the company of good friends, close to nature, making a difference. I don't remember laughing so much in a long time. The bear spray remained tucked away in my backpack, untouched. Momma Jeanne had been right. I was completely safe out here with these two. Blaine was a great guy and I started to look at him as a brother. Kade wasn't so bad either but I still couldn't decide what I felt for him. My body was attracted—there was no doubt there—but my mind kept me distant.
The sexual tension seemed to lessen, somehow, during those three days and nights, as if we'd both come to realize we'd never be anything more than just friends. Though that was what I wanted, strangely it made me feel unhappy.
By the third night we'd doubled-backed to our original campsite. We were almost out of food and it was time to return. We'd checked all the nests and catalogued all the eggs so that even if Rebecca grounded us for the rest of the summer, we had the data the center needed.
The atmosphere around the campfire was subdued. Gina was trying to keep everyone's spirits up but she wasn't doing the best job of it. Kade had returned to his old grumpy self and he only offered short replies to anything anyone said. I hadn't heard him mention the word smoke in three days but tonight he said it every other sentence.
I guess I should've been relieved to be going back to the comforts of civilization but to be honest, I felt a little disappointed. It seemed way too soon. I could've stayed out here for the rest of the summer, away from the internet, other people, and problems in general.
Despite my misgivings, I slept fitfully that night. Three exhausting days in the wilderness had a way of doing that to you.
In the morning, I awoke to heavy pattering on the tent canvas above me. I was freezing.
Near the entrance, I saw Kade sitting upright in the twilight alongside Blaine. The flap was unzipped slightly, and the two of them were staring out the small opening.
I crawled forward to join them. Outside, the rain beat down so thickly, I could barely see more than a few feet in any direction.
"Everything was so clear last night," Kade said when he noticed me. "We could see the constellations. Damn it all to hell."
I had no idea what was bothering him. The tent had a waterproof bottom and so far, the inside seemed untouched by the rain.
"Everything seems dry in here." I lifted one of the packs. "Supplies are good."
"It's not the supplies I'm worried about." Kade exchanged a look with Blaine. Both their faces were grim.
"What is it then?" I wasn't really sure I wanted to hear the answer.
"What do you think, Ash? The river."
* * *
We slid on our rainproof jackets, refolded and packed the tent, and began the half-day trek back to the river.
The rain alternated between drizzle and all-out downpour so the going was slow. When we finally reached the river, the water was about three times higher than before—with raging rapids. I couldn't believe it. There was no way we were crossing that. Our little ford was long gone.
It turned out Blaine had forgotten to pack spare batteries for the satphone. Needless to say, Kade wasn't too happy when he tried to make a call and couldn't get the thing to turn on.
"We could wait it out," I said when Kade and Blaine took a break from accusing each other. The rain had kept up at a light drizzle for the past hour or so and I was hopeful it was going to stop soon.
When Kade turned to me, his eyes seemed a little sad. "Storm systems like the one last
night usually flood the river all the way to the mountains. The water could take up to three days to return to its usual level."
"Three days?" I said. "How much food do we have again?"
"Exactly. No more crackers. Oatmeal's all gone. And we're down to our last three portions of pemmican. That's what, half a meal each?"
"But you and Blaine are experienced outdoorsmen. Can't you hunt or something?"
"Oh, sure. Maybe we can carve ourselves a few spears with our knives and go get us some fine quality wilderness meat. But tell me something, do you really want to eat roast squirrel every day for the next three days?"
I exchanged a disgusted look with Gina and we both mouthed, "Ewww."
Kade was studying the raging rapids."I can swim it," he said abruptly.
Suddenly, I felt scared. No one could swim a river like that. I didn't want Kade to even try.
Blaine shook his head. "Too dangerous."
"I can do it. Tie a rope around my waist. I'll take it to the other side and make us a zipline." He looked at me, his eyes almost pleading. "I can do this."
My eyes pleaded "No" right back. I didn't want to lose him. Not so soon. Not when I was still trying to figure out my feelings for him.
Blaine crossed his arms. "I won't let you do it, Kade. That water's gotta be close to zero degrees. Even if you get across, you'll have hypothermia."
"The Jeep's not far." Kade was already sitting on the bank. He took off his boots and socks and stepped into the water. The river surged around his feet. "Get me the rope."
Blaine didn't listen. Instead, he shouted above the gushing water. "The river's too powerful, Kade."
Kade didn't move for the longest time. He just stared across the floodwater as if he could somehow will the river to calm. Finally, he climbed up the bank. His shoulders were slumped.
"Current's too strong." He dried his feet and pulled on his socks and boots. "There's nothing we can do. We're stuck here."
"What about that drill of yours?" I said, wanting to be useful.
"What about it?"
"Could we use it like an ax and knock down one of the trees? Form a bridge?"