I was quiet for a few moments, not really knowing where to take the conversation from there.
“And what about their dad?” Nate’s voice was like velvet draped over hard steel. It was rough, but I could tell he was trying to ease it up. He didn’t like asking the question, but wanted too badly to know the answer to let it be.
I shrugged. “Devon is a man who lost his wife, the mother of his children. He struggles daily, but is trying hard to be the pillar of his family. He’s still trying to figure it all out.”
“Does it bother you to talk about him?”
“No,” I answered immediately and truthfully. I’d much rather talk about him than be with him. Being around Devon was becoming confusing and tiring. Things were tense between us.
“It just seems like there’s more going on than a friend helping out a friend.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.”
“How complicated?”
I paused, searching for words, searching for truth. I wasn’t sure how complicated it was. The relationship between Devon and I had always been so much more than what lay on the surface, even if we never spoke about it or acknowledged it. Finally, I shrugged, not having any words for Nate.
“Complicated enough that I should stop pursuing you?” My eyes snapped up to meet his gaze and I felt the intensity of his question, his eyes holding mine with a force I’d never experienced before.
I shook my head gently and whispered, “No.” The only thing stronger than the strange connection I’d always felt with Devon was the way Nate’s eyes were locked on me in that moment. His gaze said more to me and made me feel more than any passing touch from Devon had caused.
I’d always thought Devon was the end-all and be-all to my being. I’d always assumed he would be the pinnacle of emotions for me, thought he’d been the yin to my yang. And I’d stupidly been all right with letting my other half spend a lifetime with someone else. Suddenly, atop a pile of logs in the middle of the forest in the Columbia River Valley, I came to realize that, perhaps, I’d been wrong. Perhaps, Devon wasn’t my other half.
I felt my mind take a mental snapshot of that moment. Nate across from me, tanned skin glistening in the sun, legs straddling a formidable log, brown hair shining in the sunlight, eyes trained on me, expression serious yet compassionate. I wanted to remember the moment when I realized life wasn’t as bleak as I’d made it out to be, and I wanted to remember the person who’d reminded me that I was still worth pursuing.
“No,” I repeated, my voice a little sturdier than before. “You shouldn’t stop pursuing me.”
The smile that spread across his face was award winning. Bright, genuine, relieved. “Great. I didn’t plan on it anyway.”
We finished our sandwiches, drank our water, and sat atop those logs for an hour, talking about everything and nothing. Nate collected comic books. This did not surprise me in the least. He’d shown some boyish tendencies all day, but it wasn’t unattractive; it was sweet. And it took the pressure off a little. Picturing him perusing a comic book store, purchasing plastic wrapped picture books somehow made him less threatening. How dangerous could a man who read comic books be, after all?
Any ideas I had about him being boyish, however, were thrust to the back of my mind as we climbed down the logs, trying to make our way toward the end of the ‘trail’. I was slowly stepping down the logs when my foot hit a wet spot and I stumbled. I was going down, my hands splayed out in front of me, trying to break my fall, when I felt his strong hands grip my shoulders. My eyes snapped up and I realized he’d caught me. He’d simply reached out and gripped my shoulders, stopping me from tumbling down a hill of logs.
“Whoa. You all right?” he asked with concern lacing his voice as I found my footing again.
“Yeah, thanks.”
“I knew I’d get you to fall head over heels for me, but I don’t want you to break a limb doing it.” His screen-worthy smile was back and his hands were not letting me go. In fact, he just moved down my arms and wrapped his hands around both of mine. I was standing on a log above him, so my eyes were level with his beautiful brown ones, and I felt my breath hitch at his words and the playful yet sexy look he was giving me. His confidence was on full blast again, and just like before, I was eating it up.
My eyes darted down to his lips, for one brief stolen moment, without my permission, and I saw his reaction. His sexy smile morphed into a cocky one, which, for the record, wasn’t any less sexy. Quite the opposite, in fact. In the split second I was staring at his lips, his tongue darted out and wet the tip of his top lip, and my knees almost buckled again. Reluctantly, I brought my eyes back to his.
“Maybe you’ll be the one to fall for me,” I said, unsure of where my bravado suddenly came from.
He laughed. “Lyn, baby, I’m pretty sure that was a foregone conclusion.”
“Oh,” was all I could say in response. My heart was thundering in my chest at his use of the word baby. Had we progressed all the way to the pet-name stage of our relationship already? Not only was I unsure of when and how you were supposed to start calling people things like baby and honey, I also didn’t care. He could call me whatever he wanted as long as he used that particular timbre of his voice, which made every inch of my skin crawl with anticipation.
He gave my hands a squeeze, broadened his smile, then let one of my hands go, keeping one, and leading me down the ladder of logs.
We walked in companionable silence, never letting go of each other’s hand, soaking in the sights and sounds of our surroundings. The water, which continued past the log graveyard, never went more than waist deep again. After about thirty minutes of wading and walking, we came to the climax of the trail, the place which was responsible for the people risking their lives on the enormous logjam. Obviously, someone had leaked what waited past it, because otherwise, fewer people would traverse it.
I was looking at the most beautiful waterfall. Without thinking, I dropped his hand and started snapping photos furiously. I very truthfully forgot he was there for a few minutes, finding perfect shots and lining them up in my viewfinder, snapping away. I started to back up, trying to get more of the falls in the shot, when suddenly he was in my screen. He was facing away from me, one leg bent more than the other, hands resting at his sides, his face angled toward the sky trying to see where the water was falling from. The sun was bursting above him, rays raining down on his gorgeous hair, and I was captivated.
I captured the image in my camera, in my mind, and more deeply, in my heart. He was burnt in it, forever plastered against its walls, leaving a permanent mark. I knew the photo would be immaculate, but it wouldn’t do the moment justice. Not even close.
He turned and caught me taking his picture, but only smiled at me, allowing me to take one last perfect picture of his gorgeous smile with sunlight radiating around him, mist from the falls clouding the air around him. He held his hand out to me and said, “Come on.”
I let my camera drape from my neck and took his hand, unable to hide or smother the smile I wore.
He walked along the edge of the water, leading me around the pool that formed at the bottom of the falls. He continued to hold my hand as he led me up a rocky ledge that led to a manmade path that brought us back behind the falls. It was, compared to other falls in the area, a relatively small waterfall, but the cavern behind the falls was large and dark. Water dripped from the cavern roof and a cold breeze blew through, making me shiver. Nate stopped when we were deep in the cave and sat on a large rock. My voice caught in my throat when he pulled me into his lap, leaving me sitting sideways on his large thighs. He wrapped his big, warm arms around me, his hands moving over the exposed skin of my arms.