Playing Hurt - By Holly Schindler Page 0,72

himself, Just calm down and think. He finally zeroes in on the first heart I’ve pinned. When he snags it off the tree, he’s not too far away for me to see the smile break across his face.

He glances about, grabbing the heart off the next limb, the next …

I’m absolutely brimming with excitement. Not fear. Just pure elation, anticipation. Adrenaline breaks inside me, scattering warmth through my chest. I return to spearing hearts onto low limbs. I work my way slowly, almost feeling like I’m play-acting what slo-mo looks like. But this isn’t a challenge, not like the day out there in the marsh on our ATVs. I’m not racing him. I want him to catch me.

Butterflies dance joyfully inside me when his feet snap a few twigs just behind my shoulder. He slips my last heart out of my hand before I can hang it on the tree in front of me.

“Finally ready to see that waterfall?” I hear him ask.

When I turn, he’s folding my hearts, putting them in his back pocket.

“I wanted to see it for the first time with you,” I tell him. I hold out my hand, which Clint fills with his warm, rough skin.

A fine spray pelts me as we hurry to the top of the hill. My breath bursts in harder, faster spurts as we near the peak. Good God—the sight that greets me as we round the top curve is absolutely majestic. Frothy white foam cascades over the top of a rocky cliff and pummels a small pond below. A stream of clear blue water flows back down the hill. Birds trill and flowers bloom everywhere—mist dots my skin and tangles itself up in my eyelashes.

Clint points out a flat rock where we can stand safely—high above the rest of the world, it seems—and watch bees flit from blossom to blossom in search of the sweetest nectar. We watch squirrels and a raccoon bravely come inches from our toes before racing off again. I gaze down into the glassy stream that flows into the Rainy River. The sound of the water is no mere rhythm—it’s a melody. A love song. As I watch a small gray-winged bird (a dove, maybe?) swoop down for a drink, suddenly I have to get a taste of that water myself, have to feel it against my skin.

I scurry down the rocks as carefully as I can, Clint following behind me. At the edge of the wide pool at the base of the waterfall, I put the comforter down and start to kick my sneakers off, ready to ease my body into the water, eager to feel gurgles and bubbles dancing up around me. This is the perfect place to pick up where we left off … this is no mere shower, but a waterfall. I want him to follow suit, to slip out of his shorts, kick off his shoes. But he just shakes his head.

“No,” he tells me, picking the comforter up and motioning for me to follow. “I want to show you something.”

He guides me along the edges of the rocks, closer to the waterfall itself. When we’re close enough to reach out and touch the brutal stream, he shows me a pocket behind the falls where smooth rocks have formed a tiny little room—a sanctuary of cool peace behind the violent, pounding water.

I’m still drinking in the utter sweetness of our seclusion as Clint spreads the comforter across the stone ground. “Perfect,” he says, sitting down on it.

I finally get my feet to move, and I sit on the blanket beside him.

The waterfall’s mist dances across our arms. I reach out to draw a small heart on his forearm, the way little kids draw on rain-soaked windows.

Clint picks up my hand, puts it against his chest. I can feel his heart beating so hard it must hurt. “That’s for you,” he whispers.

We start kissing as though we’d never once been interrupted—not by George on the night we fooled around in the lake, not by my mom, not by nagging guilt. And certainly not by the ancient (or not-so-ancient) histories of our own loves. It’s as though all the should-we-or-shouldn’t-we’s never bloomed and spread like weeds. As though neither one of us has ever worried about breaking someone else’s heart or dishonoring the past. As though neither one of us has ever been hurt. Or afraid.

The outside world evaporates. Desire—that’s the only thing that fills the space between us. Only there isn’t any