But Ryan falling at her feet in a fit of jealousy? No way. Shane was a sweet guy to think it would ever happen, but Krista couldn’t imagine it.
They packed up their lunch bits and continued their hike. They crossed half-frozen streams and soon absorbed themselves in the mountains, stones crunching underneath their feet and virgin-white clouds bundled against the vast blue sky. It was turning out to be a relatively hot day for June. The forest in the Little Yoho Valley as they tackled their descent a few hours later gave them some shade, and it was cooling to hike next to the Yoho River and waterfalls.
When they reached the car, Shane smiled at her. She grinned back, and they set off to their new campground. Neither had mentioned Ryan or the bet or anything to do with life back home since lunch. All they’d talked about were the superb views—the glaciers, the perfect alpine lakes, beautiful flower-filled meadows, and some of the most impressive waterfalls they’d ever seen.
After all, while walking through paradise, nothing else really seemed to matter.
Chapter 11
That night, while Shanesecured their tents, Krista sat on a log and finished washing their dinner plates in a bowl of cold water. They’d cooked a simple pasta meal together when they’d got back from their hike, though the drive out here took longer than they’d thought and the sun was already setting by the time they’d parked up. Now, clouds had covered the moon, throwing their backcountry campground—which was really a cluster of clearings linked by narrow trails—into more darkness. It was so quiet here too, and not at all like the night before at Lake Louise, which had been full of families and facilities.
All they had here was a cold-water pump by the campground’s entrance and a hut that passed as a washroom.
Krista didn’t mind at all about having only the bare basics, but after the sunshine and brightness of the day, it felt a little...spookyaround here.
Which totally meant she should get a grip—and definitely not let on to Shane that she was a wimp in the nighttime wilderness.
Drying the last bowl, she called out to him, “Do you need a hand?”
“No, I’m good, thanks.” Like a coal miner, Shane wore a light on his head. The beam flashed through the darkness as he moved. “I’m almost done.”
“I’ll go put these in the car, then.” She left him to it and placed the bowl of clean dishes in the trunk, next to their food supplies, which were placed in clip-closed metal tubs. They weren’t taking any chances with bears, and too bad that these mosquitoes that kept buzzing around her face didn’t take the hint either. She’d already sprayed a ton of repellent all over herself.
Shutting the trunk, Krista went to sit in the car and started to look through Shane’s trail maps, but after a few minutes of being cocooned from the great, dark outdoors, her gaze drifted to the glove box again where her phone was stored. Had Ryan messaged her?
Checking her phone would bring the world she knew back to her, and after such a peaceful day, she had mixed feelings about inviting her normal life into this vacation.
But as she stared at the glove box, common sense screamed at her that she should at least let her mom and Lisa know about the change of plans to her vacation. Anything could happen out here, and no one in her family knew that she was no longer staying at the Banff Spa Resort and had taken off with Shane.
Krista switched on her phone, and the one bar of signal displayed on her screen was just enough to let a few messages bleep through. The first one she saw was from Ryan. Her pulse kicked up, part surprised, part angry and annoyed, part...excited? She didn’t know how she felt about him anymore. He’d become displaced in her heart and in her life, and she still hadn’t figured out where he now belonged.
She read his message.
>How’s the hiking with Shane? Are you actually *with* him?
So Ryan was curious, but curiosity wasn’t jealousy. And still the fact remained that he’d chosen Zoey, so why was Krista even trying to read between the lines of his simple message? And wasn’t it interesting that hestillhadn’t mentioned Zoey? Ryan couldn’t know that Krista had seen them making out on the hotel bench. So when would he tell her that he and Zoey were now a couple?
