I finish writing before I’m tempted to commit to the page all the reasons I’m grateful Jensen is here. That list would be long and damning, a paper trail leading straight to my own undoing.
I turn around, prepared to duck into my sleeping bag without changing into my pajamas, and groan.
“You brought Swedish Fish?” I stare at the box in his hand. “And you’ve kept that to yourself?”
He grins and holds it out to me. “I forgot.”
I take the box and slowly tap four fishies into my palm, giving them the reverence they deserve. “This might make me willing to overlook all your other faults.”
“I don’t have any faults,” he says with a laugh.
“In your dreams, Nashville.”
His low laugh heats the air in the tent by approximately twenty degrees, and I tuck it away in my secret list of things that are going to make it extremely difficult to go back to my regular life without this man in it.
Chewing another Swedish Fish, I slide into my sleeping bag as Jensen reaches for a book I hadn’t noticed tucked in the front pocket of his backpack. There’s still enough light filtering through the tent walls that we can see each other, his face lit in the soft gray-gold of a rainy evening.
“What are you reading?”
He holds it up.Walden; or, Life In The Woods
“Unexpected,” I murmur.
He shrugs. “They didn’t have much of a selection at the sporting goods store where I stopped to get my gear. What’d you bring?”
This time, my groan has nothing to do with Swedish Fish. “Idownloaded the books I was going to read on the trail to my phone,” I tell him flatly.
“The one you left back in Red Lodge?” He sounds way too pleased with himself.
“Yup.”
“Guess I’m not the only one who made some ill-advised trail decisions.”
I elbow him through the nylon. “Being dry trumps being entertained.”
“Being both is better,” he counters.
“You could read to me.” I’m surprised by how natural it feels to ask this man for something I want instead of pretending I don’t want anything.
“I can do that.” He sounds pleased, and for some reason, that makes me happy. Not because I’m desperate to be entertained, but because I’m letting him give me something, and the world didn’t end.
He opens the book, and God, hearing him read is almost as sexy as listening to him sing. He reads Henry David Thoreau like he’s savoring each word. His deep, rumbly voice makes nineteenth-century philosophy sound like foreplay. AndWalden—a classical piece of transcendentalism about communing with nature—wasn’t exactly written to give a person the tingles, but my body’s not getting the memo. Not where Jensen’s concerned.
Settling deeper into my sleeping bag, the fabric rustling like secrets being shared, I listen to his voice and try not to acknowledge the connection growing between us. Tomorrow we’ll get to Kristen’s cabin, and I know where that leaves Jensen and me. This thing between us exists here in the woods, where I’m not the sick girl, and he’s not the famous musician.
But for now, I’m content to be where I am.
We have one more night of whatever this is. And maybe I could blame it on his voice, or the intimacy of the moment, but Ican’t stop the feeling that I’m standing at the edge of a cliff knowing I’m going to jump.
Before I can think too hard about what I’m doing, or all the reasons this man is wrong for me because he knows the one thing I wish he didn’t, I prop myself up on one elbow. And when he turns his face toward me, I press my lips to his.
14
JENSEN
I don’t movefor several long seconds, because I must be dreaming. And I sure as hell don’t want to wake up.
I wait for Sloane to realize what she’s doing and pull away. Flatten herself against the opposite side of the tent again, or tell me to get the hell out.
