Jackson (Wild Boys After Dark, #3)(6)
He had no doubt in his mind that he was a selfish bastard, because the urge to tell her just that grew stronger with every passing second.
They parked at the entrance to the trail and loaded up with their camping gear. The air was crisp and the sun was bright. Perfect weather for their hike up the mountain. Laney looked cute as hell in her cutoffs and hiking boots, carrying a backpack that looked like it weighed twice as much as she did and sporting a scowl that he knew would eventually wear off. At least he hoped it would. They hadn’t been in this particular situation before, and Jackson had no idea how to navigate this new terrain. But there was one thing he was certain of. No matter what her decision, she needed him right here, right now, and he had no plans to let her down.
“Laney?”
She didn’t respond, and he knew by the way her eyes were trained on the ground that she was lost in thought. She got like that sometimes, tied up in her own head and unaware of what was going on around her.
He stepped in front of her and placed his hands on her shoulders. When she gazed up at him with emotions warring in her eyes, it just about did him in. Seeing Laney sad or worried had always cut him to his core. When her parents had split up, she’d been livid, scared, and sad all at once, and come to think of it, she’d looked very similar to the way she looked now.
“Listen, Laney.” He searched her eyes until they settled on him. “This is a big decision, and whatever you decide, I’m right here. I’m not going anywhere, and you’re not in this alone.”
“Really?” she snapped. “Did he ask you to marry him, too?”
He tried to stifle his smile, because really, adorable didn’t even begin to cover how she looked with her eyes blazing and a half smile, half smirk on her lips, spewing venom with every word.
“In a sense, yes,” he said honestly, wondering why, if she wasn’t happy about the proposal, she didn’t just turn it down. But he wasn’t going to dip his toe in that pond. Laney had her reasons, and chances were, she wasn’t quite clear on what they were yet.
She banged her forehead on his chest, then smiled up at him. “I’m not going to let this ruin our trip. I promise. We’ll have just as much fun as always.”
He brushed a lock of her hair from where it had fallen in front of her eyes and held her gaze. “I’m not worried about having fun, but I am worried about you.”
Chapter Three
WHILE JACKSON SET up the tent, Laney gathered wood for the fires they’d need in the evenings to keep warm. They’d been camping together for so many years that they had a system down pat. She remembered the first time they’d gone camping together. Jackson had been camping a zillion times with his family, but it had been her first time, and she hadn’t really known what to expect. Jackson had been patient with her and was careful to ensure she didn’t do anything that might cause her to be injured. As she’d learned, he’d loosened up, hovering less over her every step and treating her more like an equal than the naive girl who hadn’t known the difference between a square knot and a timber hitch. She smiled with the memory of lying naked in their tent as Jackson taught her how to master knots while they took turns tying each other up, then teasing and taunting until they were both begging for more.
She carried the wood she’d gathered back to the campsite, where she found Jackson putting their gear in the tent.
“Good job. Did you have any trouble?” he asked as he helped her stack the wood by the area he’d cleaned out for their fires. How he managed to get so much done while she was gathering wood used to baffle her, but she’d come to accept that Jackson was simply good at everything he did.
“Nope. No bears, snakes, or strange backwoods freaks anywhere in sight.”
“Well, then, I guess we’re safe.” His lips quirked up. “For now.”
He handed her a fishing pole, then ducked into the tent and came back out with his camera around his neck and the tackle box she’d bought him for his twenty-second birthday.
“Usually you wait for the sun to go down before you start giving me a hard time about things lurking in the woods,” Laney teased as he reached for her hand.
“I figured that with your confused state of mind, you needed a reminder.” He led her away from the camp and assumedly toward the lake. She wondered how he always knew exactly where to go without a compass or anything else to guide him, especially since they never seemed to camp in the same spot twice.
She needed to distract herself from the whole proposal situation and decided to catch up on his family, whom she loved. His parents had accepted her into their family so warmly from the moment they’d met. Even after his mother had caught them in bed together, she’d still allowed her to spend the night on those occasions when she’d been too sad or angry to face her mother, whom she’d lived with after her parents’ divorce. Her only stipulation was that Laney sleep in the sleeping bag on the floor. As if Laney would ever have sex with his brother in the room. They slept in bunk beds, for God’s sake. The afternoon his mother had caught them in bed together, while his brothers were at school and she was supposed to be out for the afternoon, they’d even had the bedroom door closed, even though they were alone in the house. She hadn’t seemed to mind that they’d skipped school, or at least the sex part had overshadowed that part. She hadn’t gotten angry as much as she’d been worried. She’d asked a lot of questions, which seemed to have more to do with whether they’d practiced safe sex and whether Laney was emotionally okay than with being angry about the actual sexual act. Poor Jackson had been mortified, whereas Laney had been so shocked and frightened about his mother calling her parents and her father finding out that, to this day, she wasn’t sure what her responses had been to any of his mother’s questions. For whatever reason—and Laney wasn’t about to ask for them—his mother never had told her parents, and from that moment on Jackson and Laney had been more careful where they had sex.