Tessa woke up at 6 a.m., got off my lap, and refused to touch me—until I had to help her get down from the tree stand. It would have been much faster to carry her toward our tent, but she refused the offer, instead choosing to lean heavily on me, hopping on one leg and stopping to rest every ten feet. Our tent had been undisturbed. Other than the smooshed grass around it, there were no clues that we had almost been trampled last night. Even the rogue sandwich hadn’t been touched, unless you counted a hoof print smashed into the edge. Nature was fascinating that way.
“You want to know what’s funny?” Tessa asked, pulling me back to the present. She was sitting on a rock just off the trail while I knelt before her, trying to wrap her leg. She looked at me with an expression on her face somewhere between deep loathing and utter exhaustion. If I hadn’t known the activities the previous night had held, I probably would have thought she was drunk. Her speech was slurred slightly, and her green eyes were wild, her hair plastered to her cheeks in clumps. The high ponytail she had gone to bed with had long since disappeared.
I looked at her but said nothing.
“I was going to marry Logan 2.0.” She laughed without humor.
I continued wrapping the wound. This was headed somewhere I didn’t want to go, and I refused to accelerate the process.
“Logan 2.0 was a big deal at his high school, too—he played sports, everybody liked him, had lots of girls after him.” Another laugh blurted from her lips and sent chills down my back. “I think, deep down, I just convinced myself that if I couldn’thave the Logan I really wanted, maybe Logan 2.0 would be fine. You see, Logans are a dime a dozen. Interchangeable. Except, I called him Tyler.” She watched me until I finally looked at her.
By this time, I had finished my pathetic attempt at binding her wound, so I grabbed her hands, pulling her up gently. She balked at the movement. The moment she was standing on her own, she pulled away from me, favoring her leg with a limp.
“Can you walk?”
“Yes.” Her chin lifted upward, eyes full of determination.
“It’s about two miles down a steep trail. Are you sure?”
“Yes,” she hissed again.
I held my arm out to her impatiently, her biting words causing my movements to be abrupt and callous. I reminded myself to be gentler. She was exhausted. That’s what it was. She definitely didn’t hate my guts. She brushed past my arm and limped down the trail.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, digging down deep for the patience I would need for the rest of this hike. Ahead of me, Tessa stumbled, her left leg giving out as she fell forward on her knees. When I reached her side, she was sitting back on her haunches, her hands dirty from catching her fall. She stared at them before slowly wiping them on her clothes. She was breathing heavily and looking like a bomb ready to explode at any second.
“Tess.”
She didn’t look at me. I reached down and gripped her under her armpit, attempting to pull her into a standing position once more. She leaned forward and yanked her arm from my reach.
“Tessa,” I growled. This woman would be the death of me. “You might not like me very much right now, but I’m the only way you’re getting down this mountain. You know it, and I know it. So. Let. Me. Help. You.”
This time, when I reached down to help her, she didn’t jerk away, but she didn’t look at me either. Once I got her standing, I immediately put my arm around her, my fingers clasping her below her armpit, holding her up. She fit just right in my arms. Perfect, actually. Of course, that was a really unfortunate thought to have when the lady wanted me dead. We shuffled down the hill for a time. It was torture. At first, Tessa kept her hand fisted at my side, but eventually, her hand loosened, and she clutched at my shirt. We looked like we had just survived a zombie apocalypse. All I needed was a crossbow slung around my shoulders. Andthatwas the fantasy that got me through the next two minutes of torturous silence.
Until she spoke again.
“You know, I’ve had this massive crush on you my whole life. And now, I don’t even want you. It’s funny how life works, isn’t it?” More laughter that wasn’t funny. “You’d just flirty flirt with all your girlfriends on the side. Never really commit. Dream about the old glory days. Same old, same old.”
“Alright, you know what? I just realized something.” I pulled us to a stop and moved her in front of me, forcing her eyes to meet mine. “I almost married Tessa 2.0. Blonde. Hot. Stubborn. Competitive to a fault. But in the end, I wasn’t good enough for her. No matter what I did to try and prove myself, my job wasn’t enough. My ambitions weren’t enough. My personality wasn’t enough.Iwasn’t enough. I’m not perfect. I never said I was. Yeah, I dated a lot of girls, but I never once cheated on anybody, alright? Not once. If you’re going to lump me in with that jackass you almost married, at least you should know that about me.”
She pulled away, and her lame foot immediately twisted, causing her to stumble. I caught her arm before she clattered to the ground. Frustration exploded inside of me. In one swift movement, I pulled her backpack off of her back, tossed it around my shoulder and lifted her off the ground and into my arms. As a reflex, her arm came around my shoulder, bringing her body and face close enough to nestle into my neck. Immediately, I reacted to her closeness. The warmth of her body contrasted with her icy stares, even as she nestled closer. Her soft curves sank into me. Heated puffs of air hit my neck. I ground my teeth in aggravation, my chest breathing heavily. We walked this way for a few minutes. My arms were burning, holding her and her pack, but I didn’t want to let go. Everything was in my arms right now, and even though, at the moment, everything felt more like a hissing cat, it was still nice to hold onto it.
A sniffle broke into my trance. At my glance, she hid into my shirt, covering her face with her hand at my chest.
“Don’t look at me,” she whispered.
“Tessa.” My words and my feet stopped there, waiting for her to speak to me. I wasn’t taking another step until she did.
“Tessa,” I said again. “I’m sorry.”
“You terrify me.” The words were a whisper. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to hear.
But I did.
More than that. I heard what she didn’t say. Those words broke open the barred window to my heart. All these years, I had dated every woman I could never bring home to my mom. I dated all the girls who were expendable to me. Safe from me because I knew I was never at risk of falling. Of failing. Of not living up to expectations. Of putting my heart out there again and watching it get smashed into dust. Tessa was the kind of woman you fell for. The kind you imagined your children to look like. The kind that struck terror into the hearts of men who were already scared witless.
The kind that could destroy me.
She looked at me then, her tears leaving streaks down her dirt-covered face. Her green eyes were softened…resigned. The fight was beginning to leave her. That should have been that. I would have kept carrying her down the mountain until my screaming muscles ached for a rest. Maybe we would have kept spitting out verbal jabs along the way, testing and trying each other before going our separate ways at the end of the week.
