“What would you choose?” Cole came closer, waiting for my answer.
I thought about it. I really thought about it. I didn’t have one for him. At least not an honest one. On one hand, living carpe diem each day and every day was appealing to that wild child within on a level that paralyzed me. On the other hand, I had firsthand knowledge of the void felt when someone you loved died young. My mom had barely made it to thirty. What I did remember of her, I do know she was happy, but was it worth it? Would I choose a few days of happy to thousands of so-so?
“I don’t know,” I whispered, gazing at our joined hands. I knew this wasn’t appropriate—holding another man’s hand in a dark room when I had a boyfriend. When my stare went from our hands to his eyes, I almost gasped. The look in his eyes made me shiver. It was far too intimate for what Cole and I were.
We’d just climbed another rung on the inappropriate ladder.
“When you figure that out, let me know, okay?” His voice was low again, almost rough, and the darkness seemed to exaggerate the electricity flowing between us.
I needed to get out of this room and stop touching Cole before I did something I knew I’d regret. At least, I was pretty sure I’d regret.
“Why don’t you give me a tour?” I said, moving towards the hall. My hand went icy cool the moment his left mine.
“What? You’ve never seen the inside of the camp before?” He was smirking at me again.
“Nope. I’ve never had the opportunity to experience a walk of shame from the bunks. Although I hear the bunks themselves are almost creak-free.” I was smarting back at him again, but I was starting to like it. It felt like less of a vice and more of a virtue. I had wit. Deep down, it was there, and I shouldn’t feel the need to hide it.
I’d kept it buried for too long.
“You’ve heard right,” he said, coming up behind me. “You want to give them a test drive? You know, so you can have first-hand experience when the topic comes up on girls’ night again?”
I felt a flush run all the way down my face, down into my neck. I could tell from Cole’s tone he was only teasing; it wasn’t him or his words that unsettled me.
It was my answer to his said-in-jest question. I was smart enough to not verbalize it.
“I think we can skip the bunk room,” I said, thankful the hall was dark. If he saw the way he’d unsettled me, he’d never let me forget it. “I’ve been to camp before and I doubt it’s much different.”
“It isn’t,” he said, with a smile that suggested all the ways it was. “And it is.”
Now that his smile had given me something to think about, I’m sure the smokejumper bunk house dominated mainly by young, single, impulsive men was vastly different from the bunkhouses I’d shared for a week in the summer with a bunch of girls at 4-H camp.
“So you don’t want to see the bunks, you’ve already seen the kitchen, and I wouldn’t let my worst enemy go into the communal bathroom the night before its weekly cleaning . . .” He tapped his temple as we continued down the hall. “What will I show you?”
I almost had to clap my hands over my mouth to keep from blurting out my immediate answer—anything.
He quirked a brow at me at the same time an easy smile slid into position. I was starting to believe he actually knew what I was thinking.
That idea was horrifying on so many levels.
“Okay,” he said like he was answering my silent response. “I’ve got just the place.” Without another word, he continued down the dark hall, and the only thing more disturbing than following a semi-stranger down a black hallway in an unfamiliar building was how willingly I did. I didn’t feel threatened around Cole. I felt the opposite. It was irrational and I could have the survival instincts of a dodo bird, but I felt protected.
Cole did strange things to me. Made me feel even stranger things.
“So . . . what schools did you apply to?”
I came to a halt and, though I couldn’t really see him, I knew Cole stopped too when I couldn’t hear his footsteps anymore.
“What?” was my brilliant reply.
“Colleges? Universities?” I could hear that smirky smile in his voice. “Which ones did you send applications in to?”
“Who says I sent any in?” I said, crossing my arms, calculating what number this was on our uncomfortable conversations scale. I was pretty sure it was somewhere between fifty and one hundred.
“You said you sent some in,” he said.
“No, I didn’t say that. You did.” I narrowed my eyes at him until I realized he couldn’t see me.
“You might not have admitted it, Elle, but I know you well enough by now to say with absolute confidence that you applied to a good handful of schools. You do a good job of covering up that part of you you’re ashamed of or scared of or whatever the hell it is, but you haven’t let it die. I’m glad you’re still fighting.” He paused and I could both hear and feel him move closer. When he exhaled his next breath, I could feel it breaking across my face. “I’ll repeat my question. What schools did you apply to?”
I sighed just so he knew I was irritated. “U dub, Wazzu, and University of Oregon,” I said. “Now that I’ve told you something, you tell me something. How did you know?” I hadn’t told anyone about the applications I’d sent in last fall. Not even Dad, Logan, or Dani knew. Especially not Dad and Logan.
“You may have everyone else fooled, Elle Montgomery,” Cole said, his voice vibrating through me. “But not me.”
So it seemed.
Without another word, Cole grabbed my hand and pulled me down the remainder of the hall. I went with him not because it was what he wanted, but because of what I wanted. It was a foreign concept—doing what I wanted and not what I guessed, assumed, or knew what someone else wanted.
It wasn’t long before we burst through a door. Inside might have been dark, but the sky was clear, and one of the few things that made the prospect of spending the rest of my life here in Winthrop bearable was that I could stare up at a night sky like this at the end of every day. No clouds plus no city lights equated to a sky so bright with stars it was almost more light than dark.
Cole took in the sky for a couple moments with me before pulling me along again. I started laughing, for a hundred little reasons and one big one.
I felt free.
I was free.
I couldn’t comprehend how running with Cole’s hand wrapped around mine late at night could make me feel freer than I’d ever felt when, in truth, nothing had changed. I was still Elle Montgomery, promised to Logan Matthews, expected to manage and run the diner when Dad retired, the girl who would be born, die, and everything in between in this town.
But it did.
I was still laughing when Cole’s jog slowed.
I’d been so busy staring at the sky and him I hadn’t realized I was on a runway. Or about to run into a small plane.
“A plane? Really?” I said as Cole led me up a ramp before opening the plane’s door. “Is this where you take all the girls?”
Elle the Witty had come back out to play. She was growing on me.
Cole gave me a twisted little grin. “Only the girls that make me work really hard for it,” he said. Before my mind could get carried away with what “working hard for what” entailed, Cole grabbed my hand and pulled me inside the plane.
I knew I shouldn’t follow him inside. I knew what being in another dark, confined, quiet space would make me want to do with Cole. I knew the electricity shooting through my hand from his touch would only compound if we touched anywhere else.
I knew so many things.
But darn if my heart, or my soul, or that rebellious Elle inside of me, wasn’t outwitting my mind at every turn tonight.
“You jump out of this?” I asked, looking outside the tiny door. I felt sick at the thought and the plane wasn’t even in the air.
“Well, the other guys jump,” he said, stepping up behind me. “I fly out of it.”
He was close, t
oo close. I couldn’t feel his body against my back yet, but I felt the heat coming from it. My eyes closed when I imagined Cole’s chest pressing into my back, the rest of him sliding into position. Another flash of our first meeting went through my mind.
My breathing had just picked up when my body acted without my consent. No longer able to bear the line of distance between us, I stepped back until I felt his body hard against mine. I took one more step because now that I felt him, I wanted to feel more.
Cole inhaled sharply, but that was all the surprise he showed. His hands slid down over my hips, and when his fingers curled deep into me before he shoved me harder back into him, I gasped.
Apparently we could get closer and feel even more of each other.
I was breathing so hard I had to open my mouth to keep from passing out. Cole’s hips pressed into my lower back and I felt something hard against my spine that both made me blush and moan.
My hands covered my mouth immediately. Where the heck had that come from? I didn’t know I was capable of such a sexual sound.
Cole’s mouth dropped to my neck. His breath was so hot against it, I felt the muscles relax.
Well, they relaxed until something wet and firm slid up the curve of my neck. I tensed for a moment, but then his tongue played with the tip of my earlobe before he gently sucked on it.
I moaned again, louder and longer, but this time I didn’t cover my mouth. I didn’t want to fight anymore. I was done ignoring the way Cole made me feel with a simple look or a not-so-simple touch. I hadn’t been exactly successfully ignoring him as right now—his hands gripping hard into my hips and his lips doing things to my earlobe I didn’t know could be done—proved.
“That’s it, Elle,” he breathed as one hand slid up my body before forming around my cheek. “Don’t fight it. I can see the person you are, the one you’re fighting.” He took my earlobe back into his mouth, but this time, his teeth sunk into it carefully. Of course, my only response was another porn-worthy moan. Or groan. Or sigh. I don’t know how the heck you would classify the sounds I was making, but I did know they were the opposite of innocent. “And that girl makes me all kinds of crazy.” Cole’s hand guided my face closer to his. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to stare at: his eyes or his mouth. Both were tempting on so many levels.
“I’m going to kiss you now. Unless you stop me,” he said, lowering his mouth to mine. It was so close, I could taste his lips. But I wanted to feel them. I wanted to feel them move over mine. I wanted to feel him suck at my lower lip the way he’d just done with my ear. I wanted. I wanted too much, and what was worse, I wanted what I couldn’t have.
But tonight, I was going to finally have what I wanted.
“But if you stop me now,” Cole said. His eyes had no degree of indecision; they stayed firmly on mine. “I’ll try to kiss you again later. I’m persistent, Elle.”
Those words, those eyes drilling into mine, those hands holding onto me so tightly I couldn’t budge, and that certain something pressed hard into my back broke down any and all last reservations.
I lifted an arm and curled it around the back of Cole’s neck. In this position, I felt totally vulnerable, totally not-in-control. But still, totally protected.
“And yet you’re still talking,” I whispered, lifting my brows suggestively.
When Cole’s lips dropped to mine, I could feel the tilted smile on his mouth. I’d been right. Whatever voltage our combined hands could create was compounded to the hundredth power when our mouths moved against one another.
I felt clumsy at first, inexperienced in every way as I was, but what I lacked in experience Cole more than made up for for the both of us. The way his lips could both polish and suction to mine in the same heartbeat confirmed this man had been perfecting his craft for a while. I didn’t want to even guess the number of women he’d been perfecting it with, so I tried to follow his lead and not make a kissing fool of myself.
I wasn’t very conscious of his hands with his mouth doing what it was, but I did have enough remaining wits to realize they stayed where they were. I wasn’t sure if I was more relieved or disappointed.
When Cole’s tongue slid out, encouraging the seam of my lips to open, they didn’t take much encouragement. In fact, his tongue hadn’t even entered my mouth before mine met his. I think he was as surprised as I was because a sound that was deeper and more gravelly than the sounds I’d been making traveled up his throat.
Knowing I was responsible for that sound, despite feeling like I was all thumbs in the kissing department . . . all that knowledge made me want him more. Made me want him in ways I knew I couldn’t, shouldn’t, and absolutely wouldn’t indulge.
So instead, I focused on our tongues winding around one another, our lips smoothing over each other, our bodies formed against each other so tightly I didn’t doubt my back would be wearing a Cole-sized dent in it for a while.
My hand slid down to his hands kneading my hips. Our fingers curled together the way our mouths were. I’d never been kissed like this, never even close.
I’d kissed a total of one boy in my life: Logan.
Logan.
The name was familiar, it meant something, but Cole’s mouth and body were making me forget what that name meant. Only when Cole’s fingers started drifting lower, sliding into the front pocket of my shorts, did reality hit me head on. I felt the small, hard circle at the bottom of my pocket hard against my thigh.
I didn’t know if I broke out of Cole’s embrace because I was ashamed of what I’d just done or because I’d been scared of Cole finding the ring, but the pain of separation was instant.
“Elle?” Cole’s face was as confused as his voice sounded. He had a right to be. One second ago I’d been a making out fiend and now I backed away from him like I was being chased by the devil.
“I’ve got to go,” I said, more to myself than to him as I stumbled down the ramp. Apparently there were more ways to get drunk than from alcohol. Cole’s body had done a number on mine and it wouldn’t function properly.
“Did I do something wrong?” He stuck his head out the plane door and watched me.
“No,” I said, having to look away. If I stared at him any longer, I was going to run back and pick up where we’d left off. “I did.”
I had so much more to say. I had one big thing to explain, but I was either too cowardly or too confused to do any talking or explaining tonight. Without sparing another look or word Cole’s way, I ran.
The tears fell when I realized this wasn’t the first time I’d run away from something I wanted. My life was a snowball of regrets and dreams shoved to the side, and even though I ran in the opposite direction from him, I couldn’t shake the feeling that Cole Carson would be the one to change all that. To change everything.
I ignored Cole’s calls again. He’d called every hour since I ran away last night. Lucky for me, the diner, where my Jeep was parked, hadn’t been that far of a walk. Or a run.
When I’d heard a car approaching, I dodged into the dark tree line, guessing it would be Cole.
My guess was confirmed when an old Land Cruiser went by. It went slow, so I caught a glimpse of his face. It was a mixture of tortured and anxious. I stuck to the trees the last half mile back to the diner and didn’t race to my Jeep until I was certain Cole wasn’t lurking in the shadows waiting for me. I wasn’t ready to face him, but I was even more not ready to tell him about Logan. I knew I had to tell him the very next time I saw him, but I also knew that would end everything we had.
I wasn’t ready for The End.
Trying not to think about endings, or Cole, or Logan, or anything at all the next morning, I headed up the bleachers towards where my dad sat. I had to squeeze and weave my way through a few bodies because I’d showed up an inning late. Reason for my tardiness? I wasn’t ready to face Logan either.
I was convinced that Logan would know I’d been unfaithful. As soon as he took one look at me, he’d know another man’s hands and li
ps had been on me.
So I avoided Logan.
And I avoided Cole.
And I wanted to avoid Dad too, but this was a small town baseball game and there was a total of one set of bleachers. It was kind of hard to get lost in the crowd.
“Hi, Dad,” I said, sliding between a couple bodies before plopping down on the end of the bleacher. The row was so packed I practically hung off the end. “Thanks for saving me a seat.”
“I was getting ready to call Bill,” he said, tilting his bag of popcorn my way. I curled my nose and shook my head. My appetite had been next to non-existent lately.
“Why were you about to call Uncle Bill?” I asked. Dad’s younger brother, my uncle, was the town sheriff. I wasn’t exactly the kind of person that, if he wasn’t my family, would be familiar with the town sheriff.
Correction, I didn’t used to be that kind of person. Now I was the kind of person who made out with boys while her unsuspecting boyfriend was asleep. Cheating had to be on the list of gateway indiscretions that led to incarceration, right?
“Because the last time you were late to one of Logan’s games, you had strep throat. Even then, you made it before the pitcher took the mound.” Dad’s voice was as light as a person as serious as him could be. I knew he was teasing, but it struck a sensitive chord.
“I had killer cramps this morning,” I lied. “I could barely get out of bed.”
That wasn’t the first lie I’d told Dad, but after last night’s lie and last night’s make-out session with Cole, I was starting to become a serial liar. This, I knew I wasn’t okay with.
At least I could still be confident about something.
Dad shifted and cleared his throat. Girly business made any man uncomfortable, especially dads when it came to their daughters. “Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better and could make it,” he said, his face looking a shade redder.
Poor Dad. You would have thought being a single parent, the one who’d raised me the better part of my life, he’d be more comfortable talking about things of a female nature.