“I want to show you something,” he said. “If you’re up for it.”
“Is it something in your pants?” Reverting to humor was my coping mechanism for dealing with heavy stuff, and I was still processing everything Cassie had said at the coffee shop.
He grinned wickedly. “Maybe.”
I rolled my eyes as we crossed the railroad tracks at the end of Main, but his grin was enough to send a rush of heat between my thighs.
We drove along Preserve Road, a desolate strip of asphalt that ran parallel to the Blackwell Preserve, and a half mile later, Bran pulled into an empty gravel turnout. It was quiet in this part of town, the dividing line between Southside and the parts of the preserve that tourists didn’t bother with.
Bram turned off the car, reached into the backseat for the picnic basket, and we got out of the car.
Snow still covered the ground from the last storm but not a ton of it. Still, I was surprised when Bram started for an overgrown opening in the tree line. There were countless hiking trails in the preserve, paths with signs and marks on trees that kept hikers from getting lost in the thick forest that surrounded Blackwell Falls.
But this wasn’t that. This felt like… I don’t know, the actual woods. A place with no signs or markings.
A place where you could get lost.
“Are you sure this is okay?” I was already following him, knew I’d follow him anywhere even if I did have questions along the way. “What if we get lost?”
“We’re not going to get lost.” He stepped into the woods, and for a few seconds, we were separated by an invisible boundary — Bram in the woods while I stood in the gravel lot. “I come here all the time. It’s where I found your Christmas tree.”
I already knew Bram had cut down the tree himself, but hearing about it was different than standing in the place where Bram had gotten out of the Hummer, ax in hand, to hike through the woods while looking for a tree to cut down and bring back to the loft.
I nodded. “Okay.”
Then I was on the other side of the tree line, taking Bram’s hand and walking with him into the woods.
“What is this place?” It was deathly quiet, even the birds and small animals silent, probably hunkering down for winter. Trees surrounded us on all sides, the path through the forest so narrow and meandering it seemed unintentional.
“It’s an old trail,” Bram said, his boots crushing what remained of the snow. “They took it off the map a long time ago.”
“Is that something they do?” I wasn’t a hiker. The Blackwell Preserve had just been a backdrop to my everyday life, a place for the tourists who invaded our town for hiking or skiing.
“Not a lot, but yeah. They keep track of the traffic on the mountain, delist the trails that require lots of maintenance but don’t get many visitors, take some off the map if they’re overrun with bears or mountain lions.”
I stopped walking. “There are bears and mountain lions here?”
He chuckled. “We’re in the mountains. There are bears and mountain lions all over the place.” I was about to start dragging him back toward the parking lot when he continued. “But that’s not why they shut this trail down. It didn’t get a lot of traffic because the trailhead is on the south side of town.”
I let him pull me forward when he resumed walking.
It made me sad to think that this place was abandoned because it was in Southside, and it made me even sadder to realize that even if I’d been a hiker, I probably wouldn’t have chosen a trail that started here either.
I’d been a snob. The realization hit me with a deep sense of shame. All these years Southside had been a neighborhood rich with community like the people who stood outside the loft to make sure Ethan Todd didn’t come back, with small businesses like Marv’s and Screamin’ Syd’s and even with nature trails like the one Bram was showing me.
I’d ignored it — even feared it a little — because it had been different from what I was used to.
We’d been walking for about fifteen minutes when we started up a gentle rise. At the top we got a view of a partially frozen river, and halfway down the hill I caught the trickle of water, faint under sporadic sheets of ice between the rocks that jutted out of it.
Bram headed for one of the concrete blocks that supported a worn wood walking bridge spanning the river. “This is the place.”
He set the picnic basket on the low, wide concrete block. It had obviously been here for decades: the concrete was beginning to crumble from exposure to the wind and rain. But it looked sturdy enough.
“This is what place?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said, looking around. “My thinking place, I guess.”
“You come here alone?”
