“I’m sorry, I’m not entirely sure where I put the map,” I admit, taking the opportunity to step closer until I’m on the verge of being too close to her.
“Oh, here you go,” she says, stepping back a pace and tipping her head back as she hands me a map, finally giving me a chance to actually look at her.
Just like I expected she would be, she’s fucking gorgeous. Her navy-blue eyes are shaded beneath inky-black lashes. Her skin is sun-tanned but still pale, and there are dark circles beneath her eyes that make her look older than I’m sure she is.
“How old are you?” I blurt.
“Err, what?” she squeaks.
“Sorry, I just thought you were older when I saw you yesterday.”
“I’m twenty,” she says.
My stomach sinks. I knew she was younger than me, but twenty is young. Too young. Fuck, so fucking young. But her eyes don’t hold the kind of youthful hopefulness that most kids her age do.
Honestly, she looks tired as fuck and not just physically exhausted, but drained, like the world has been sitting directly on her shoulders, and she’s crumbling beneath the weight.
“Fuck, amore mio, that’s…” I trail off, not bothering to say anything else, because honestly, even though she’s young, I can’t seem to find it in me to care. She’s mine. Yesterday I wasn’t sure this connection I felt with her was romantic, but it is, and I’mmore sure that she’s meant to be mine now that I’ve looked into her eyes than I ever have of anything ever before.
“I should.” She gestures to the maps in her hand. “Enjoy your hike.”
“You could join me,” I suggest, not wanting to leave her.
“I’m working.”
“But you finish at lunch, right? Let me take you for food, or coffee, or an ice cream.”
“Enjoy your hike, Warrick,” she says, sidestepping me and heading for a group of hikers I hadn’t noticed arriving.
“Fuck,” I hiss under my breath, wanting to stay but knowing I can’t. Locking my car, I head down the trail, walking faster than I should to a place I have no interest in going. For a moment I consider turning around and just hanging out in the parking lot, but I have no reason to be there, and I don’t want to freak her out or make her think I’m stalking her, so I keep moving forward but at a slower pace.
After about fifteen minutes, I reach a fork in the path. Opening the map that’s still gripped tightly in my hand, I take a moment to figure out where I am. The route I took yesterday, and the one the majority of the visiting hikers seem to take, continues off to the right. The trail to the left ends at a glacial pool, but it’s a much longer hike, nearly thirty miles versus the ten miles to the vista point I saw yesterday when I was here.
I don’t really want to hike thirty miles, but I don’t want to walk the same route I took yesterday either, so I turn left, leaving the crowds on the trail behind me. Within ten minutes, the noise of the other hikers has faded away, and all I can hear are the buzzing bees, the birds in the trees, and the constant hum of nature doing its thing all around me.
Pausing for a moment, I tip my head back and close my eyes, enjoying the loud silence. Inhaling, I exhale slowly, then blinkmy eyes open and try to decide what I should do to try to get to know Verity better.
Clearly asking her out was too forward. Or maybe it was demanding to know her age, then calling her young before asking her out that scared her off. Either way, I need a new approach that’s not going to freak her out or have her calling the cops.
Slowing my pace, I meander along the path, my thoughts focused on her and not the beauty around me. After I’ve walked for another fifteen minutes, I stop when something around me feels wrong. I don’t know what it is, but something seems out of place.
Turning in a circle, I almost miss it. Twenty yards off the trail, hidden in the trees, is a tent. A tiny, green tent that’s clearly been there long enough for grass to have started growing around it. The entrance is almost hidden behind the tall strands of grass that have woven their way around the ropes that are pinned to the forest floor.
Obviously, this isn’t the first tent I’ve come across in the woods. In fact, last summer alone we attended dozens of small fires, started by campers lighting campfires out in the middle of the woods, completely oblivious to the danger until the trees around them were on fire, and we were dumping lake water from the sky to stop a wildfire from consuming the entire area.
Stepping off the trail, I move quietly toward the tent, not wanting to alert the inhabitant that I’m here, but there’s no sign of an irresponsible campfire here. In fact, whoever owns this tent has clearly been here long enough to have dug out a fire pit, lining the sides with rocks to stop the fire from spreading along the dry grass.
There are no signs of trash or a mess or anything to suggest this belongs to a drunk or a drug user. In fact, apart from the tent and the fire pit, there’s nothing else here. While dispersedcamping is allowed here, the fire pit is against the rules and completely prohibited, especially at this time of year.
Suddenly angry, I march forward, no longer trying to be quiet as I slap my hand against the canvas. “Hey, you in there?” I yell.
Waiting for the hatch to open, or for someone to speak, I pause, then slap my palm against the top of the tent again when no one appears. “I’m from the Rockhead Peak Fire Department, open up,” I call again louder. When there’s no response, I unzip the door a couple of inches and peer inside.
It’s a small tent, probably only big enough for two people at a push. Inside is a thin bedroll and an old, worn sleeping bag. Pushed in the far corner is a larger backpack that looks to be filled with stuff.
Unwilling to start rifling through someone’s personal belongings, I zip the door closed and instead pull out my cell, stepping back far enough that I can take pictures of the tent and the firepit.
Clearly this tent has been set up here for longer than a night. Probably longer than the two or so weeks you’re allowed to continuously camp in one place in this area. For a moment I consider waiting for the camper to show up so I can yell at them and make sure they move on, but while I’m pissed that they’re lighting fires and endangering the woodland, because it’s my job, the pit is cold and empty. It could be hours before they return, and I doubt whoever is staying here will have packed up and left in the time it takes me to walk further along the trail.
