Page 60 of Sparrow

“We have beds, you know. You don’t need to lay on the floor.” My voice is mild partially because I’m trying to figure out what the fuck she was doing.

She scowls at me. “I wasn’t laying on the floor until you decided to come exploding out of your room.”

“I had to explode out to get the door unstuck,” I say, pointing out the obvious.

She scoffs at that. “It wasn’t stuck, you moose, I was leaning against it! And if you can’t open a door just because I’m leaning against it, I guess that doesn’t say much for your general strength.”

She shuts her mouth and looks at me, eyebrows arched and expectant, and she’s so cocky, so adorable, that I want to tackle her and tickle her until she screams. Pin her down and feel her body under my fingertips, her skin hot and flushed and her mouth opening on a cry.

And holy baby Jesus, where the fuck did that thought come from?

I shove it away from me, half horrified and unwilling to admit that I know exactly where it came from, and then remember what I was doing in my office before the whole door incident.

“Get your jacket,” I say, turning for the kitchen.

She pauses. “What? Why?”

“We’re going.”

She catches up to me and strides along next to me, putting in two steps to every one of mine. “Where?”

“You ask too many questions.”

I can feel her look heating up the side of my face, but I don’t return it. I’m having too much fun.

“If you think I’m going to let you kidnap me, you’ve got another thing coming.”

This time I do spin and push her against the wall. I back her up until she’s pressed against it and then cage her in with my arms, my hands against the boards on either side of her head. I lean in until I can smell the oaky shampoo she uses and the scent of the chocolate she’s been eating. And then I lean further, until my lips are at her ear.

“Liar. You wouldn’t stop me. Now get your fucking jacket. I want some fresh air.”

Our mountain isn’t the highest in this range, not even the tallest in the area, but it does lead up to the belly of one of the taller mountains, and whoever decided to settle here also decided that we would need a bridge to that other mountain.

I can’t for the life of me figure out why they thought such a thing, or why they put so many resources toward it, but here we are.

The bridge in question is an enormous, sweeping thing, compete with arches and several tons of concrete, and bridges the gap between the peak of our mountain and a pass on the next peak. It spans a large valley, where a river runs year-round with runoff from the taller peaks, and though I’ve never bothered to drive across it to the other mountain, I come often to just sit on it and stare.

When I tell Arden this, she looks at me like I’ve lost my mind.

“You come out here just to... stare?”

“Hush,” I say. I grab her hand and walk from the flat dirt lot where I’ve parked the bike toward the bridge itself. “Don’t judge it until you’ve seen it.”

“You know, I’ve seen bridges before,” she says. “We have a few of them in this place you might have heard of. It’s called New York.”

“You’ve never seen a bridge like this,” I retort. “I promise.”

We get to the bridge and make our way out onto it, then onto one of the platforms that run along the side. I duck under the rail and pull her with me, then drop to a seat with my legs hanging off the side. Before me, the mountain drops away into air, water rushing under our feet with a soft roar and trees stretching up around it, reaching for the stars scattered across the night sky. The moon is full tonight, or close to it, and it touches everything with silver, outlining the branches of the trees and tinting the water with silver. Above us, stars crowd each other for space in the sky, their bright, twinkling light adding to the shine of the night.

It’s breathtaking, and I’ll never get tired of coming up here to see it.

“Wow,” Arden breathes.

She’s taken a seat while I wasn’t looking and is close enough to me that our knees touch.

And though we’re sitting at the edge of a bridge with hundreds of feet between us and the water below us, she didn’t argue about sitting here. Didn’t ask if it was safe or if we would fall. She’s not even shaking.

This girl, I think for the millionth time, is stronger than anyone has ever given her credit for.