The Absence of Olivia(49)

He walked through the canal created by the water and at its deepest, I saw the water ripple from his heavy breathing. He was scarily close to being underwater and I tried not to panic. Surely, my dry shirt wasn’t worth his dying. But then the water line started to lower, and more and more of his body was out of the water. When we’d made it through the deepest part and the water had receded to his waist again, he tapped my thigh with his large hand. Again, I ignored my body’s immediate response to the feeling of his hand and the primal sound it made against the wet skin of my leg.

“I’m gonna dunk down again so you can climb off, all right?”

I nodded, still gripping his forehead tightly.

“Evelyn? You good up there?”

“Sorry,” I said, realizing he couldn’t hear me nod my head. “I’m fine. Go ahead.” He slowly slipped down into the water, and when it was deep enough, I pushed off his shoulders and found my footing on the riverbed below. He stood up and even if I’d tried, I couldn’t have kept my eyes from watching the water cascade down his back, his arms lifting to run his hands through his wet hair. It was, possibly, the sexiest thing I’d ever seen in person.

He turned back to face me, eyes wide as cold water rushed down his face. A hand came down and brushed the water away, and then his eyes focused on me. His gaze darted from my eyes, to my shirt, then back up again.

“You’re dry,” he said with a smirk.

“Relatively,” I responded quickly, before I thought much about it. I realized what I’d implied, blushed, and then watched as his smirk grew into a smug grin. “Okay,” I groaned, embarrassed, “where’s my camera?”





Chapter Fourteen


Present Day

True to his word, my camera was safely deposited under a tree, dry as a bone. We continued our wade through the water, and when we came to our next obstacle, I couldn’t hold in my laughter.

“This is the weirdest hike I’ve ever been on,” I mumbled. Before us, blocking the stream was a naturally made stack of logs. A pile of downed trees had obviously fallen from the tops of the ravine and landed in the gorge. A legitimate logjam. I watched as people climbed over the wooden obstacle course. The image of the logs alone was breathtaking. It was a little amazing to think nature had made something so intricate and beautiful.

“Hey, I never said it was going to be boring. In fact,” he said, turning to look me in the eyes, “I can pretty much promise it’ll never be boring with me.”

“Noted,” I breathed. His smiled changed, grew a little warmer, but then his eyes swung back to the mound of logs.

“It doesn’t look difficult. See, children are climbing over it.” He pointed toward a group of teenagers climbing up the crazy log pile with gusto.

“I never said I wasn’t going to do it.”

“Well, all right then. Let’s see what you’ve got.” He winked at me and then started toward our next adventure.

Not one to ever back down from a challenge, I followed him. Approaching the naturally made ladder of sorts, I tried to think objectively about how best to get to the top. I placed my foot on one log, but then changed my mind and tried another tactic. Nothing felt natural. No step I took felt like the right way to tackle the problem.

“Lyn,” I heard Nate call out, and then I heard him say it again before I realized he was talking to me. I looked up and caught his gaze. “Sorry,” he said, his eyes smiling so brightly at me. “It just kind of slipped out. I know other people call you Evie, but Lyn seems to fit you so much better.”

I shook my head, breathlessly. “You can call me Lyn. That’s fine.” I wasn’t sure how I’d managed to use real words. He was right. Everyone did call me Evie and I’d never thought much about it. But thinking about Nate calling me something different, something he liked, something he had come up with, made every part of me ache in a delicious way. Even more, knowing he was the only one who would call me that made it even sweeter.

He smiled as his shoulders relaxed a little, looking as though they were sagging with relief. “Don’t overthink it, Lyn. Just go for it.”

It took me only a moment to realize he’d been talking about the log obstacle. He waved a hand at me, urging me to join him. He was easily ten feet up the giant log ladder. I let out a deep breath and decided to try it his way and just wing it.

Hand over foot, I slowly made my way up, log by log. Some were cramped tightly together, others were farther apart and caused me to take longer strides to make it up. I stole a glance at Nate after a few successful steps and was happy to see him smiling down at me. It took about ten minutes of climbing and strategizing on the fly until I reached the summit of the logs, and was happy to see Nate standing on the tallest log, looking a little like Captain Morgan with one leg propped up higher than the other, hands on his hips.

“You made it,” he said, a genuine smile spreading over his face. I couldn’t help but blush when he reached a hand out to me, helping me up the very last log, and then continued to hold it, threading his fingers through my own. I was closer to thirty than I’d like to admit, but I was holding a guy's hand and blushing about it.

“That was fun,” I managed, smiling up at him, hoping the blush of my cheeks could pass for a healthy glow from the climb.

“Wanna sit up here and have lunch?”