realized, looking into – more accurately swimming in – his blue ocean eyes that I did trust him. I trusted him here. I trusted him anywhere.
Penn was solid and true in a way I’d never known a man could be. And standing there, his hand still reached out to me, wearing a t-shirt and jeans splattered with mud (and God knows what else), he was the most beautiful man I’d ever met. Or cared to meet.
Penn was everything.
As soon as the thought shot through my head, terror followed it. When had I started to feel this strongly about a guy I’d barely known for a week? In fact, hadn’t I worked diligently hard to prevent this exact feeling from coming to be?
“I trust you,” I finally answered, my voice raspy with emotion. I took his hand, and the happiness on his face beamed – positively beamed – back at me.
“Good. Cuz you should. Come with me.” Penn tugged gently at my hand and we began walking out of the horse barn. I had no idea what to expect, but I knew it didn’t matter anyway.
I’d go anywhere with Penn Hardick.
“So I guess you’ve just gone from one mountain range to the other, huh?” Penn was trying so hard to find out more about me but with an evident, cautious gentleness.
We’d been walking for maybe a half an hour along a particular trail, taking our time. Penn’s mother had loved this trail the most, and there were many things along the way that he wanted to show me.
A patch of flowers she’d been fond of. A tree they’d climbed together often (apparently, River Hardick was a nimble woman), a little creek that the Hardicks had built an adorable wooden bridge over.
But he said he was saving the best for last, and I believed him.
“I didn’t so much live in the mountains though in Tennessee. It’s different here... Everything is so... elevated. I feel like I’m in the mountains even when I’m looking at the mountains.” The sentence sounded stupid when I said it out loud, but it was true. Colorado gave you a sense that you were living in the sky.
“Well, you’re not wrong. Elevations are much higher here. Do you like it here?” He gave me a side glance as he asked the question.
I nodded. “I love it here.” And I did. I’d gone a solid (almost) six months without being smacked, punched, or kicked a single time. I would have moved to the bowels of hell for that relief.
And Colorado, luckily, was anything but hell. Every direction I turned brought a new unbelievably picturesque scene. The air was crisp, even when it was warm outside. It felt clean in way that back-wooded, humidity drenched Tennessee never had.
“You don’t miss Tennessee at all? Not even a little?” Penn was surprised.
“No.” My reply was sharp and cold and I hoped desperately that I hadn’t offended him. The intense “no” had flown from of my mouth before I could even begin to calmly think about the question.
Penn was walking slower, studying me in a way that would have normally made me incredibly uncomfortable but... not when Penn did it.
“Anne... You don’t have to answer this or any other question I ask you – ever – okay? But if you ever wanna talk about... I just... I feel like maybe something bad happened to you back there.” He’d stopped walking, so I halted to.
But what I really wanted to do was run. And the irony that we were on a trail almost made me laugh absurdly.
I was pretty familiar with trail runs.
“Sometime... I’ll tell you all of the fun details of my whole entire life, okay? But please... not right now...” My eyes were begging him to drop it.
Penn nodded, but his brow furrowed. “Something bad did happen to you back there.”
I closed my eyes, and visions of Randall chasing Murphy and myself through the thick woods flashed like an unwanted reel of horror. His eyes had been absolutely mad when he charged. Insane. Gone.
“I didn’t say that,” I countered, taking a deep breath and continuing to walk. I wasn’t actually sure where we were going, but I’d rather go there alone than stand here reliving those nightmares.
“You didn’t have to.” Penn fell into step beside me, wisely deciding to let the questions go for now. “It’s right up here.”
“What’s right up –”
But then I saw what he was talking about. The trail kept going, but off to the left, giant rock jutted