Once Upon a Campfire

by Kait Nolan

  “So the passion is neurobiology?”

  Sarah thought of the thesis she was ready to set on fire. “I’m not sure ‘passion’ is the right word.”

  “You don’t like it?”

  “I’m not sure you like anything by the time you get halfway through your thesis. I think despising your topic is part of the graduate school process.”

  Beckett hummed a noncommittal noise. “So you finish your master’s degree. Then what?”

  She thought longingly of the cabin she was sharing for the week and wished she were going to be here longer. “A vacation would be nice, but a Ph.D. is the plan.”

  “More graduate school in a subject you just admitted you despise?”

  “A career in research seems to demand it.”

  “Is a career in research what you want?”

  The practiced answer she’d been giving her parents for years was hovering on the tip of her tongue. But this was a man who’d walked away from Dartmouth. “I don’t know what I want. Not business. I don’t like that any more than you do. But I’m kinda too far down this path to jump off.” Lord knew, if she changed fields again, her parents might kill her, even if they’d long since stopped paying her way.

  “It’s never too late to jump off.”

  The idea of it was simply mind-boggling. “I’m not as brave as you.”

  “I think you’re plenty brave. Look at what you’re doing here for your sister.”

  “That’s not brave. It’s foolhardy, as we established yesterday.”

  “Still. Takes guts. Deciding to admit you’re on the wrong path—if you are,” he qualified, “takes guts. It’s not for me to say one way or the other. But seems to me if you’re not happy doing it, if you don’t get excited about going in to do the job or the class or whatever, you’re probably not in the best field.”

  When was the last time she’d been excited about her studies? Her first semester probably. Before they put her through the hell classes meant to weed out those who couldn’t hack it. She’d proved she could more than hack it, but everything since then had been a grind. Especially this last semester. But if she didn’t stick with neurobiology, if she didn’t go on for her Ph.D., then what the hell would she do with her life?

  “This is way too heavy a conversation for this hour of the morning,” she declared.

  “Fair enough. It’s time we got started anyway.”

  Sarah set her empty cup down. “Teach me, oh wise one. What are we doing today?”

  “You’re going to practice your knots, and then you’re suiting up and we’re going to practice falling.”

  As she watched him grab the equipment, she didn’t think she needed any more practice doing that.

  ~*~

  Beckett loved summer storms. To his mind, nothing beat a good thunderstorm for driving people inside and encouraging naps—or other horizontal activities. Not that Sarah was cooperating on either front, just now. She stood at the doorway to his cabin, looking out at the torrential downpour that had granted them an unexpected reprieve from all the hard work of the week. The other staff had mostly holed up at the big lodge for games. Those who hadn’t were ensconced in their own cabins, making the most of their leisure. He knew what he’d rather be doing with his.

  “Will you come sit down?”

  “Are you sure we can’t head down to the equipment shed? Do some more drills or something? I hate to waste practice time.”

  It could never be said that Sarah didn’t take her tutelage seriously. “Honey, you’ve conquered Boulder Mountain and passed every demonstration and oral quiz I’ve thrown at you.” She had, in fact, excelled at every single challenge he’d thrown her way. She was a natural. “You’ve earned a break. C’mere.” Beckett patted the bed beside him.

  With one last glance out at the rain, Sarah slipped off her sandals and flopped down on the mattress, frowning.

  “That is not the expression of a woman happy to be in my bed.”

  Her lip quirked into a half smile as she gave him the side eye. “I’m sorry. I just can’t settle. I’m worried about the certification.”

  Beckett stroked a hand down her arm and laced his fingers with hers. “You’re not the one who has to take the test.” It was as much a reminder for himself as for her. He didn’t want to think about the fact that she’d be gone in a couple of days, and he’d be spending the summer seeing a woman with her face who wasn’t her.

  “Yeah, but I’m in it now. I have to finish the training, have to be ready.”

  “Just in case?”

  On a sigh, she rolled toward him, snuggling against his chest. “Mostly just to prove that I can be.”

  “Because everything’s a competition.”

  Sarah hummed in agreement.

  Beckett couldn’t wrap his head around that worldview. “Does it come from being a twin? This competitive streak? Were you and Taylor always trying to outdo each other growing up?”

  “Some. But a lot of times the competition is with myself.”

  He tipped his head down to study her. “What are you trying to prove?”

  She considered the question. “I don’t know. When I was younger, I think some of it was to prove that I wasn’t like Taylor. That I could stick things out, finish stuff. Then I guess I got addicted to winning. I like knowing I can push myself to do better, be better.”

  “Admirable,” he conceded. “But exhausting, I’d think.”

  “Sometimes.”

  Beckett shifted her closer, pleased when she tangled her legs with his. “I think there’s a place for competition and sticktoitiveness. But it’s not everything. Some things shouldn’t be finished. Fights. Brussels sprouts. Things that don’t make you happy.”

  Sarah folded her hands across his chest and propped her chin on them. “Didn’t it bug you? Walking away from your MBA, when you were so close to done?”

  He didn’t even hesitate. “No.”

  “You didn’t feel like you’d wasted that time and money?”

  “Some,” he admitted. “But I don’t think I’d have realized it wasn’t for me without doing it. So in that sense, it wasn’t a waste. I loved working for the National Park Service.”

  “I’m sorry things turned out like they did.” Sympathy shone in those big, doe eyes.

  “Eh, it’s a hard job. Harder than most people realize. People think it’s all hiking and climbing and doing fun outdoors stuff. It’s also rescues and being law enforcement and dealing with deaths and drugs and a million other things that happen under the surface, behind the scenes. I was headed toward burning out there, too.” Another three years, maybe five, he’d have been ready to move on.

  “So now what?”

  “I don’t know. That’s what I’m here to figure out this summer.”

  “I envy that. Having time to breathe, to think.”

  Beckett tucked a lock of her dark hair behind her ear. “You could take the time.” He wanted her to take it. He wanted her to take it here, enough that he was prepared to talk to Michael about hiring her on. But that was getting ahead of things.

  “I have a very tight schedule to finish my thesis.” She said it with the ease of a well-rehearsed excuse.

  “The thesis for the degree you’re not sure you like, to go on to the PhD you aren’t sure you want.”

  Her expression turned mulish, and he knew he’d probably pushed too far. But there was so little time to convince her.

  “I’m just saying—that’s a lot of years to invest in something you’re not passionate about.” The idea of it made him shudder. Being trapped like that would kill him. Sarah wasn’t him, but he could see the cost down the road of her stubborn insistence about finishing what she started. “What’s the worst that could happen if you took the time to make sure it’s what you really want?”

  “If I don’t roll on into the PhD program this fall, I might not get in. I might miss my chance.”

  “Did it ever occur to you that if you took the time and didn’t get in afte
r this, that maybe you’re supposed to do something else?”

  “What? Like fate or God intervening?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe. I just think the universe tends to set us on the right path, if we’re paying attention. But it’s easy to get distracted by other stuff instead of listening.”

  “And you’re here to listen this summer.”

  “That’s the plan.”

  Sarah frowned, clearly flummoxed by the idea. “How do you deal with not knowing what comes next?”

  “I’ve learned patience.” Though she was testing it. He’d been listening all week and knew what he thought was next, at least with her. But she wasn’t on the same page. Not yet anyway.

  “Not my strong suit,” she admitted.

  He’d pushed her far enough for one day. “Then how about distraction?”

  “What did you have in mind?” She went brows up in faux innocence.

  “I volunteer as tribute.” Grinning, he rolled her beneath him and took her mouth.

  ~*~

  “You ready for a real challenge?” Beckett asked.

  Sarah eyed the rock face, already mapping the path of her ascent. Her heart began to thump. This was no Boulder Mountain. But Beckett wouldn’t have brought her out here if he didn’t think she could do it.

  “Yeah, I’m ready.”

  They suited up, going through the checklist she’d learned by rote, checking and rechecking safety equipment and determinedly not talking about the fact that she was leaving tomorrow. Sarah didn’t know what he’d said to the Tullys so that they could spend their last day together in the adjacent state park, but she wasn’t about to complain. There was nowhere she’d rather be than right here with him.

  Something else she was determinedly not thinking about.

  “You take the lead. I’ll be right behind,” he said.

  On a nod she started the safety protocol. “On belay?”

  Beckett grinned. “On belay.” He had her locked in and ready to catch.

  “Climbing.”

  “Climb on.”

  With a deep breath, Sarah took her first step and began to climb. Beckett said little other than offering up praise here and there. She kept her focus on the mountain, on the next handhold and foot placement. It was, she thought, a kind of moving meditation. There was no room for anything else, and she loved it.

  Halfway up the rock face, she realized she’d miscalculated. The shelf that had looked minimal from the ground jutted out far more than she’d thought. The crevice she needed to reach was a foot beyond her fingers. Legs beginning to cramp, she clung to her position.

  Now what?

  “You okay?” Beckett called.

  “There’s no handhold I can reach. I can’t go forward.”

  “So you adjust. Work with what’s around you. There are more directions than up and down.”

  Sarah widened her view, shifting to check out her options to either side. If she made it about fifteen feet to the left, it looked like the overhang was minimal, with ready handholds for her to get up and over. But she couldn’t see what came next.

  Either way, you can’t stay here.

  “Slack!” she called.

  “Slacking.”

  “Watch me.”

  “Go ahead.”

  Decision made, she began edging her way to the side.

  “Good call. Keep your focus.”

  Sweat trickled between her shoulder blades, but Sarah barely noticed. She kept her attention on just what was in front of her, shoving up with her legs, stretching out. Her muscles trembled with fatigue as she hauled herself over the shelf and kept on going.

  Finish what you start, Meadows. Get to the end.

  When she pulled herself over the lip at the top, she shrugged out of the small pack and simply rolled to her back and lay there, staring up at the wide expanse of cloud-dotted blue as her heart rate began to slow and her breath evened out.

  Beckett wasn’t far behind, flopping down beside her. “You’re missing the best part.”

  “I’m thinking breathing is the best part. Or maybe the not supporting my weight part.”

  He reached over to haul her up to sitting and gestured to the view she hadn’t even stopped to see. “That is the best part.”

  The world opened up, a panorama of greens stretching as far as the eye could see. “Wow. It’s beautiful. And worth every aching muscle.”

  “I’ll rub your back, if you’ll rub mine.”

  Sarah bumped her shoulder against Beckett’s. “That’s a deal. Thanks for bringing me up here.”

  This was not a view she got in the city. The thought of it made her throat ache, even as she pulled out her camera. Central Park was nice and all, but there were people—constantly people—everywhere. Could she really go back to that? Could she endure it for another four years? Maybe more?

  “Hey, you did that climb all on your own. I was just here for backup.”

  “I thought I was going to have to use you for backup when I got to that shelf.”

  “So you ended up on a path that wasn’t what you intended. You still got to the destination you needed in the end.”

  Sarah gave him the side-eye. “Are you getting philosophical on me, Beckett?”

  “Maybe. Hard not to, looking at that.” He nodded toward the view.

  “Subtlety isn’t your strong suit.”

  “I’m out of time for subtle. That is the unfortunate truth. You leave tomorrow.”

  “And you think that’s a mistake.”

  “It’s not for me to say whether it’s a mistake. I just know I don’t want you to go.” He stroked a thumb across her cheek. “That spark didn’t fizzle, Sarah.”

  No, it definitely hadn’t. But was this pull she felt with him the real deal? Or was he just another challenge? Something she’d started and felt compelled to see to the end?

  “How do you see this working? For better or worse, my sister gets here tomorrow to take her rightful place. There’s no job waiting here for me, even if I was free to take it. Which I’m not. I’m going to finish my thesis. I’m going to finish my Master’s degree. I cannot have come this far down that path and not finish. Not when I’m this close.”

  Beckett laced his fingers with hers. “And what about finishing what you started here? With me? Or is this week it? Are we at the end, when we’ve barely even begun?”

  Sarah framed his face between her palms, searching the blue-gray eyes so steady on hers. “I don’t want this to be the end. But I don’t—”

  He pressed a finger to her lips. “Just stop right there. I don’t need to hear the but. It’s enough for me to know you don’t want to walk away.”

  “But how will we—”

  “We’ll figure it out.”

  It was the kind of loose, optimistic planning Taylor was so prone to. The sort that usually ended in a crash and burn. Much as she wanted to give things a chance to work with Beckett, she couldn’t see how they possibly would. What chance did a neuropsych grad student, who lived in Brooklyn, and an ex-national park ranger, who didn’t even know where he’d be at the end of the summer, have of meeting in the middle long enough to see if they had a shot?

  But as she sat with him at the top of their immediate world, Sarah found she didn’t want to think about it. Instead, she leaned forward to brush her lips over his, determined to make the most of what little time they had left.

  ~*~

  Beckett checked his watch, calculating how much time they had left before someone—Sarah or Taylor herself—would have to be slotted into the rotation for certification testing. Not a lot. He and Sarah stood at the edge of the staff parking lot, well away from all the goings on. She paced restlessly from one edge to the other, agitated that her sister hadn’t shown up when she’d promised.

  Was Taylor going to show at all?

  Sarah’s bags were packed. She was all set to walk away, and he didn’t know what he was going to do about it. He’d lain awake half the night, turning the problem over in
his head, wondering if he could convince her to give long distance a shot. It wasn’t ideal, but maybe…

  Beckett opened his mouth to say so.

  “Where is she?” Sarah demanded. “She texted me when her flight landed in Boston. She should be here by now.” She pulled out her phone and glared at it before shoving it back into her pocket.

  This was not the right time, and she wasn’t in the right mood, but he was out of time waiting for the right anything. He stepped into the path of her pacing, hands coming up to cup her shoulders. “Breathe. She’ll be here when she’s here. You’ve got this covered. You made sure of that.”

  “I just knew something like this was going to happen.” She vibrated with tension and nerves, staring at the entrance to the parking lot, as if that would make Taylor appear.

  Not what he wanted her thinking about. “Sarah, look at me. Please.”

  She lifted those big doe eyes to his. “I don’t want this to come crashing down on you and get you in any kind of trouble.”

  “I’m fine. That’s not what I want to talk to you about.”

  “Okay.”

  He felt her attention really shift to him then and slid his hands down to take hers. He hoped that was enough. “I don’t want today to be goodbye.”

  Regret twisted that pretty mouth. “I—”

  “Just let me finish. I know you’re headed back to Brooklyn, and I know you’re writing your thesis this summer, but there’s no reason we can’t still see each other. It’s only two and a half hours away. I get time off. You could come up for a visit between writing stints.”

  “You’d do that? Come to New York?”

  “Yeah. We could see where this goes.”

  The excitement that lit her eyes quickly banked. “And in the fall?”

  “I don’t know yet. But at least by then we’d know if we want to pursue this further. Just…think about it, okay?”

  The radio at his belt crackled and Michael’s voice rolled out. “Beck, where are you? Time to get rolling here.”

  Eyes still on Sarah’s, he picked it up and answered. “On my way.”