Something Wilder(56)

“I’m good.” Leo bent and began rolling up his pants. They were expensive—lightweight nylon-spandex—and she was slapping herself for not bringing something like that along. Then again, when would she ever have imagined a detour like this?

Deftly, he managed to get them to midthigh, and Lily felt her thoughts come to a dusty, coughing stop.

She’d forgotten his legs. Or, more likely, she’d forced herself to not remember them quite so vividly. His thighs were unreal: defined and thick; the most surprising part of a body that was otherwise so lean. Broad shoulders, narrow waist, then thighs that could crush her like a walnut. Jesus, Lily had loved those thighs.

Pulling her brain up from the free fall, she looked down at her jeans. She wouldn’t be able to roll them high enough to stay dry, but crossing this river in only her underwear, with Leo beside her, sounded like number ninety-nine on her list of one hundred things she did not want to do, just above stabbing a fork in her leg.

Still, fuck it.

Without looking at him, she kicked off her shoes, unbuckled her belt, unzipped her jeans, and shoved them down her legs. She tried not to think of her own thighs, and the way they’d looked the last time Leo had seen them. She wasn’t nineteen years old anymore. She worked hard and ate heartily when she could, but unlike Leo, she had never set foot inside a gym. Rolling her jeans into a ball, Lily pushed them deep into her pack along with the wasted energy of worrying about her body. Looking great in her underwear wouldn’t get her across the river any faster. She put her hiking boots back on and then straightened, setting her backpack on her shoulders and buckling in as if she did this every day.

Lily registered that he’d gone suspiciously quiet. “What?” she said sharply.

Leo cleared his throat. “Smart.” He paused again, and when she glanced over at him, he quickly tore his eyes away. “Would it make you feel better if I took mine off, too?”

Her “NO” rocketed out of her, too fast.

Way too fast.

Leo smirked. “Then let’s go.”

Together, they approached the edge and stared down at their entry point. The water was unsettlingly murky and dark.

“Unbuckle your waist and sternum straps,” she reminded him.

If either of them stumbled, the weight of their giant packs could flip them over, pull them under. The bags could snag on an obstacle and trap them. Yes, with it unbuckled, Lily could easily lose everything in there—including her pants—but considering the alternative, she’d take it.

She’d crossed this river before, many times, but never when it was this full or this swift. It was the danger of being deep in a low canyon—rainfall could quickly flood them out. Last night’s storm had been short, but it was a rager. When Lily looked up, she could see a few tiny waterfalls pouring over the edge of the red rock just from where she was standing. It wasn’t going to get easier if they just stood there and watched.

Lily put one foot in, facing the oncoming current, side-stepping into the water. And then, once she’d found her footing, she kept her eyes on the opposite shore, careful not to get dizzy looking down at the river swirling around her legs.

“Try to stay on the sandbar,” she said.

To her right, Leo stepped in slightly upstream, and her heart tugged insistently at the realization that he was protecting her by breaking the current. He reached out, grappling for her hand, and together they moved in tiny shuffle steps through the knee-deep water.

And then, only about five feet in, they abruptly dropped to their waists. Leo sucked in a sharp breath at the frigid temperature, and she looked over at him, stomach sinking. They weren’t even to the middle yet.

“We’re going to have to hold our packs up,” she told him. “We’ll just have to hope that it doesn’t drop much deeper in the middle.”

It would throw them off balance, but if they moved slowly, they should be okay. Shrugging out of their packs, they carefully raised them above their heads.

“Just one step at a time,” he said, meeting her eyes steadily. “Are you okay?”

Lily nodded, her focus on the opposite shore, allowing herself only tiny peeks down at the river even though she could no longer see the bottom. The water was icy rushing over her waist, her ribs. Her feet slipped around rock, around small branches and reedy detritus. Every step was a slow process of extending a leg out only a few inches, feeling around, finding solid footing, carefully shifting her weight forward. She sensed the same careful focus in Leo.

Everything was okay so far. But still… Lily felt uneasy. There was an instinctive, dark hum in her blood.

“This feels like a bad idea,” she said.

“We can do it,” he murmured, eyes on the other side. “One step at a time. We’re almost halfway.”

They hit the deep, quiet middle and, to their surprise, the water rose only a few inches up their torsos. Leo looked over at her in triumph. “See?” he said. “Almost there.”

She smiled, but a sharp sound ripped from her throat as her next step landed wrong, her foot sliding off the slippery edge of a jagged rock. Lily cried out, arms struggling to hold her bag overhead under the increasingly taxing weight. Leo looked over, eyes wide. “You good?”

A yes was on her lips, but then, suddenly, she wasn’t good. Her balance veered sidewise, and to compensate Lily did a quick sidestep, but all that did was bring her into a small eddy; she leaned to steady herself, tripping over an invisible obstacle. Her foot was swept out from under her, and she fell backward, submerging entirely for a shocking, gasping second.