“Wedidtrap her in a volleyball net.”
“It’s not—” Gideon looks at up at me and huffs. “It’s for her own good.”
“Is it? It seemed like it was for you to do science.”
He’s still holding my hand in his, the warmth slowly leaching out into the cold air, his thumb still rubbing thoughtlessly over my skin, a frown still creasing his forehead. I want the laugh lines back. I almost reach out and touch him, and it’s thrilling, destabilizing, because Icould, and I’ve got no idea what would happen next. Maybe he’d kiss me back. Maybe he’d shove me away. Maybe he’d panic and somehow teleport to the nearest ranger station. It’s been twenty years, I don’t know what Gideon’s capable of.
“It was for her own good in the greater scheme of things,” he says, and the forehead lines disappear and the crinkles in the corners of his eyes deepen, and there it is. “Keep an eye on this. You’re probably fine but birds can carry diseases. You know.”
I want to point out that I’ve gotten worse injuries brushing my teeth—embarrassing, but true—but instead I promise to keep him updated on all minor scratch developments, so finally he relents and we retreat to the boulder and wait for more birds.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
GIDEON
“Well,it’s a sign of how far society has fallen, because we’re denying our heritage,” I tell Andi. “Obviously.”
“Because it’s trees instead of mining equipment?” she asks, incredulous.
“The trees are catering to the wealthy elite hippie environmentalists,” I explain as I follow her up the back steps and onto the cabin’s back porch. It’s smaller than the front porch, but covered, and just big enough for a small table. I put the net, ropes, and stakes on it, all neatly rolled into a package.
“And the old shovel and pickaxe are as blue collar as a country song,” Andi finishes for me, and I snort. “The fight was seriously that bad?”
She kicks one boot against the doorframe, knocking snow off, and I make a face at her for doing itrightby the back door where it’ll be the first thing one of us steps in if we come back out. Andi rolls her eyes at me and switches to kicking a post on the other side of the porch, but she’s smiling about it.
“Thankyou,” I say pointedly, because we’re trying to be civilized, here. “And yes. Blood in the streets. Brother fighting brother. Houses torn asunder. Susan Curtis is no longer welcome at either Hank’s Pub or the Brick Wall Tavern, and I’ve heard if you say her name around Bobby Calhoun, you’d best settle in because he’ll talk your ear right off.”
“Because they finally got a newWelcome to Sprucevalesign and put trees on it.”
“You say that like those stakes aren’t life or death.”
Andi makes a face as she steps out of her boots and onto the doormat. I open the screen door and hold it for her as she picks her boots up and carries them in, placing them into the boot tray. I refrain from pointing out that in exchange for two seconds of discomfort she doesn’t have to clean muddy slush off the floor.
It’s warmer in here, though not by too much.
“I guess,” she says, unwinding her scarf. “Lucia was also telling me about the battle over naming the snowplow. Apparently that one made the front page of the Sprucevale Sentinel-Star over my daring and dramatic rescue.”
Andi slides me a look I can’t quite parse because she’s still got her hat on, and because she’s flushed and pink from the sudden warmth, and because it’s mostly teasing but there’s something else in it, too. Maybe there’s a flicker of heat. Maybe I’m imagining it because I want there to be.
“Good thing or I’d have heard about it even more,” I say, also dropping my boots into the boot tray, the two of us huddled into a small space by the back door between the counter and the pantry. “As it is I’ve got Matt and Zach asking me pointed questions, Hannah and Sadie excited that the cool girl is back in town, and Reid wondering why his older siblings are being so weird right now.”
Andi laughs, plunking her hat on the top of a coat hook and rubbing her hand over her hair, which is both plastered against her head and sticking up in every direction.
“What did you tell them?” she asks, unzipping her coat. I’m right behind her and she turns her head slightly so I can hear, her braid threatening to slide over her shoulder. I reach out and nudge it so it does, and then on impulse I trace one lock of hair as it weaves through the two others, holding my breath. Andi doesn’t step away. I breathe again.
“That reception’s pretty bad out here,” I say, and drop my hand. Andi goes to shrug out of her coat, but one shoulder catches on something. She makes an annoyed noise and before I can think, I reach out and fix it, then pull the coat off her arms, the backs of my fingers tickled by the wool of my sweater she’s still wearing.
“Thanks,” she says, voice hushed and a little breathless, maybe, or maybe I’m imagining things, but I hang her coat with one hand and run the other back up her arm, to her shoulder, to the back of her neck. My fingers are still cold but her body warmth is bleeding through the heavy fabric, unfurling into me.
“Sure,” I say, the best I can do right now. Her shoulders relax as I trace over one, her head tilting back a little. I can’t see her face but I know her eyes are closed and her lips are parted a little, and imagining it makes me feel like I can’t quite breathe right. Her hair’s half out of the braid, escaping in every direction, sticking to the back of her neck, so I drag one finger along the warm skin there, sticky with heat, pulling her hair from where it had migrated under the neck of her sweater. My sweater.
I’ve got calls to make. I should put more wood in the stove, heat this place up, figure out what we’re going to eat for dinner, but Andi’s skin feels like an electric current under my fingertip and she tilts her head as I trace it across her neck. There are short, dark curls at the edge of her hairline and the tendons are standing out like an invitation.
It is. Isn’t it? I’ve never had a thought in my life, never had anything in my head except the urge to put my mouth on Andi’s neck and see what it feels like.
I take the invitation. Andi makes a soft noise when I do but it’s loud in this room, in this snow-covered cabin, in the middle of this forest. She’s warm, her skin damp from the sudden flush of heat, and smells like sunscreen and snow. Her shoulders shift as she breathes and I hook a finger under the neck of my sweater that she’s got on, gently pull it down, following my finger with my lips. The sweater’s too big on her and the neck pulls past the hollow above her collarbone, to where it meets the point of her shoulder. I stop when I hit a bra strap, my face buried in the crook of her neck.
There’s a voice in the back of my head. It’s always there, always evaluating my actions and usually deciding I’ve come up short. Sometimes it shouts and sometimes it murmurs, and right now it’s not so much a voice as a tug in the space behind my rib cage, a slow swirl of heavy guilt, the sense that if I want this so much, it must be wrong.
