back, fumbling on the bank for my boots, choked with embarrassment. What’s wrong with me? I wanted to kiss Ty more than anything. Why didn’t I?
Minutes later, we’re walking down the same path we took to get here. “Thanks for asking me to meet you,” I say.
“I thought you could stand to get away for a while.” He shrugs. “And I wanted us to have some time together without your mom around.” Ty slants me a look, and I try to pretend that it doesn’t turn my bones to jelly.
“What?” I ask, my nerve endings humming beneath my skin.
“What, what?” he teases. “You keep saying that.”
“And you keep looking at me.”
He stops walking and covers his eyes with one hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know looking wasn’t allowed.”
Pausing on the path, I knock against him with my elbow and giggle, disarmed. “It’s not the fact that you’re looking, it’s the way you are.”
Spreading his fingers, he peeks through them. “Like?”
A wildfire of heat spreads through my body, all the way up to my face. “Like you’re thinking something,” I say.
“You mean if I want to spend time with you, I not only have to wear blinders, I have to get a lobotomy, too?”
“Shut up.” I cross my arms and try not to laugh.
We start walking again, Ty with his hands in his pockets, me with my arms behind my back. “I’m just trying to figure you out,” he says after a moment. “I’ve never known a girl who dunks her head in mountain streams and stares down bears.”
I send him a smug look. “That’s nothing. Wait until I tell you about the time I wrestled with a mountain lion and won.”
He draws his head back. “You’re kidding.”
I arch a brow.
We reach the place where the waterfall sprays over a jutting cliff above us, just missing the path as it tumbles to a pool twenty feet down the side of the hill. The path follows the cascading water, and it’s an easy climb to the bottom. We make our way down.
“Amazing,” Ty says when we’re standing alongside the pool. “What was it like for you growing up here? I mean, not many people have an entire forest right outside their door.”
The air is damp and musky and alive with energy. I breathe it in, feeling revived like I always do when I come to this spot. “I loved growing up here.”
“Don’t you ever get lonely?”
I think of Iris and how isolated my childhood would have been without her. “Sometimes,” I say. “But I’ve learned to be alone.”
I follow Ty across the trail. We climb over a stack of felled limbs that lie crisscrossed like the old pickup sticks Dad and I used to play with. When we reach an aspen tree with letters carved into the bark, Ty pauses to trace them with his finger.
“‘L.W. and W.P. were here,’” he reads. “Did you do this?”
“Wyatt and I did when we were eight.” I give a short laugh. “Silly, I know.”
“Not when you’re eight.”
“Yeah, you believe nothing will change at that age. That everything will always be good.” I hear the sadness in my voice, and shrug.
“Too bad that’s a lie, huh?” Ty says.
I nod, wondering what good things Ty has lost.
He sticks his hands into his pockets again and says, “I’ll take you up on that offer of climbing the peak together.”
“Good. I mean, you shouldn’t hike alone. No one should, but especially if you’re inexperienced.”
“I’m not a complete greenhorn,” he says with mock offense.
“One fourteener doesn’t make you an expert, either.” Smirking at him, I add, “Maybe I can show you how it’s done this weekend.”
As I’m turning toward the waterfall, Ty catches my arm. “Lily.” I face him again, my skin tingling where his fingers push against my arm. “I have something to confess,” he says. “What I said to your mom about needing to make money for the trip home? That’s not really why I’m sticking around Silver Lake longer than I’d planned. I have plenty of money.”
“Why are you staying then?” I say in just above a whisper.
He lowers his head and kisses me, his mouth pressing gently against mine. He tastes like chocolate and smells like fresh air and sunshine and shampoo.
Our noses bump when we finally lean apart.
Breathless, I murmur, “You had candy after lunch,” then think: Ohmygod, what a stupid thing to say.
Ty pushes a loose strand of hair off my face and tucks it behind my ear, the corner of his mouth twitching.