Chapter Seventeen
If Abbi were trying to get to the closest part of the firebreak from Ridge Line Road, she knew where she’d park. Around a sharp curve was a turn-off designed for cars that needed to pull over on the steep hill. It’d be an easy place to stash a truck for a few hours to take off in the woods. And it was high enough up the mountain that the steepest part of the climb was already done.
A little poking around through the brush revealed a trampled path leading northeast from the road. They followed it, single file, Tyler playfully grazing her ass whenever she let him get close enough.
She was still kind of shocked over what she’d done to him in the truck. Not the blowjob itself—that part was plenty fun.
But did sex get him to stop asking her questions? Or was this all going to backfire on her?
She tried to stay focused on the trail. Or the lack of one. It wasn’t impossible to walk, but it would never attract a hiker out for a stroll. Whoever had been up here had to know the area well enough to know where to park, where the path was, and how not to get lost. It wasn’t an easy undertaking. But if you didn’t have a pack, didn’t have a lot of time, and didn’t give a shit about what you trampled, it would definitely be possible.
“Think Russ could really make it up here?” Tyler asked as they followed the marks of bent stalks and trampled brush.
“He does huge construction projects with tons of physical work. And he’s not a quitter—if he started going this way, he wouldn’t stop.”
“A man of persistence,” Tyler said. “I grudgingly have to admire that.”
“Even when he can’t have what he wants?” Abbi gave him her flirtiest grin. Her I know what you just did in the truck grin. Her and if you’re lucky, you may get it again little tease.
She loved how he flushed, giving a groan that said he knew exactly what she was thinking.
But that didn’t mean she wanted to talk more about Russ. About her and Russ. About her and any other exes. About anything else Tyler might ask about her past.
He was leaving in less than three weeks. He was still working on this firebreak. He was only here being her protector. He was nothing more than her crazy summer fling.
“I really am sorry about my question earlier,” he said, as though reading her mind. “I shouldn’t have pried.”
Abbi felt bad for how she’d so clearly avoided answering him. It wasn’t that she was trying to shut him out. It was just…
If he thought she was an idiot for getting involved with Russ, what would he say if he ever found out who else she’d slept with?
“Never underestimate how long February can get around here,” she said, by way of an answer.
“And the summer?” Tyler asked.
She smiled at him, but she couldn’t hide her sadness. A glimpse of how she really felt.
“No,” she said. “Summer always goes too fast.” And she meant it.
Cash’s letters to her the summer between her freshman and sophomore years of high school had been central to the prosecution’s case. Long, extravagant prose about the time crawling by, aching for September so he could see her again. Every word read aloud in a courtroom as Abbi’s father popped his jaw in and out of its socket and her mother scraped her manicure until her cuticles bled.
With Tyler she felt like a kid again, wanting summer to last forever. Only this time it wasn’t because she dreaded what was coming. She wished she could hold on to what she had right now, in this one moment, without anything getting in the way.
“There.” She pointed. “Remember when we got to that clearing that intersects where the break comes in from the west?”
She shouldn’t say it like that. “We” like they were an item. “The break” like it was a done deal.
Summers ended. That was what they did. Whether she liked it or not.
But Tyler understood what she was talking about. How quickly could they go from fucking to personal to tension to business and back around again? Abbi was used to keeping things more compartmentalized. Here was work, friends, family, sex in their separate boxes. Tyler was a blender who swallowed every part of her life and churned it all together.
She hoped what she was left with wouldn’t be mud.
…
They found cigarette butts. Unfiltered Camels, ground into the brush.
“Russ’s brand,” Abbi said when Tyler picked one up to inspect. “And I’m sure hundreds of other people’s choice in this town.”
“Does this town even have hundreds of people?”
“Very funny. Yes, we do. And it may not look it compared to L.A., but this is peak tourist season for hikers. Anyone could have passed through here.”
“Anyone who happened to follow a nonexistent trail from a nonexistent parking area to intersect exactly with the proposed firebreak?”
“There’s old growth forest here,” Abbi said. “They could have come up at night to see the owls.”
“Right,” Tyler muttered, and he didn’t have to say those fucking owls for Abbi to know that was what he was thinking.
“Why are you defending Russ, anyway?” he said. “Leaving butts in the brush is illegal with the fire danger as high as it is. I’d think you’d relish busting him. It would at least get him to stop acting like he owns the place.”
But the next time the nature center needed a new roof or the deck repaired, who did Tyler think they were going to call? He could point whatever fingers he wanted—in three weeks, he’d be gone. Back to his real life without her. And she’d be up here to deal with the fallout from her accusations. Alone.
Funny, maybe she should have thought of that before she’d pretended to Russ she was off the market.
But that had been a joke, a harmless night of fun. She’d never expected it to get out of control, drawing in the whole office until they couldn’t back away. She’d never expected it to turn into…
She swallowed and looked away, out over the limited view the clearing provided.
This. She’d never expected it to turn into something where her heart was involved.
“I just think we really need to be certain,” Abbi said.
Tyler cocked his head at her. “You’re a good person, you know that?”
“No need to sound so surprised.”
“I just mean, you’ve got this whole…thing going on.” He raised a hand as though sizing her up.
“This thing wasn’t bothering you an hour ago in the car,” she said hotly.
“I didn’t say it was a bad thing. I was merely observing that you’ve got a bit of a don’t-fuck-with-me-because-I’ll-fuck-you-right-back vibe going on, when not so deep below the surface there lies someone incredibly sweet. Too sweet, I might add. You really don’t need to be giving Russ so much of a chance.”
“And once again, I ask you not to fight my battles.”
He held up his hands. “God forbid I ever try to help.”
She kicked the brush with her toe, turning over dry earth. “When I was in high school,” she started, then backtracked. “I know, that’s never a good start to a story.”
“No, tell me. Tell me something about you.”
She shouldn’t have said the words high school. She didn’t even know how to tell him this story without mentioning Cash.
But after the number of nights he’d spent at her house, did she really think all they were doing was fucking, and only pretending to everyone else that they cared?
“When I was in high school, there was this girl named Heather who I was friends with and then…wasn’t.”
“Why?” Tyler asked.
“It’s complicated.”
Because I got her favorite teacher fired. Because I ditched her a thousand times and lied about sex, crushes, where I’d been. Because I was a terrible person. A terrible friend.
“It had to do with a boy?” Tyler guessed.
A man, she wanted to correct him, but didn’t.
“She thought I stole her boyfriend. Heather decided the reason she’d been dumped was because I was after him. Or something. He was my lab partner in Chemistry but I got a C-minus in that class, so it’s not like he was spending all his time helping me study.”
Actually, Heather had found out Abbi was “a lying, sneaking little bitch” (her words), decided that meant she’d fuck anything, decided that meant she’d fuck Parker, and concluded that was the only reason Parker would ever deign to break up with her. It wasn’t exactly logical. But lots of people had been upset with Abbi in those days.
Tyler sighed. “And if it was what everyone thought, then what did the truth matter anyway.”
“You can imagine what happened the week after this blew up and Heather lost her favorite pair of jeans.”
“Uh oh.”
“She insisted I stole them. I think they must have been expensive. Or were the only pair that made her butt look good.”
“Suddenly I don’t feel so bad for never attending one school long enough to figure out everyone’s drama.”
Abbi paused. “You really moved that much?”
Tyler raised a finger. “No way,” he said. “We’re talking about you.”
“The fact that Heather found her jeans shoved in the back of her own damn drawer didn’t matter. The fact that her boyfriend started going out with this other girl right away didn’t matter, either. I’d been accused. And in this tiny universe, I was tarnished.” She paused, running a hand through her hair. “I know it’s a stupid example. I know in the scale of life traumas, some mean girl who’d once been my friend couldn’t be more irrelevant. But it mattered, you know? It mattered to me.”
She picked up the cigarette butts and put them in her pocket. “I’m not protecting Russ. I have no idea what he could possibly be doing up here. But don’t you think you and I might be a little predisposed to be after him? And don’t you think running to the police to accuse him of trying to set fire to all of Gold Mountain with a few cigarettes might be a little premature?”
“Okay, fine,” Tyler conceded. “But it got us out of the office and alone in the woods for an afternoon, so it can’t be all bad. Right?”
Abbi tried to match his grin, but her heart was racing from skimming so close to Cash in her story. No matter that she hadn’t said his name. She could feel him all around, his large hands, his prickly mouth, his warning, always, that she’d better not tell anyone their secret because they’d both get in trouble, and surely she’d never want to ruin both their lives.
There was no way Tyler would be looking at her with that hunger if he knew the things Abbi had done, the mistakes she had made.
But he didn’t know, and that was why his arms circled her waist. She wanted to push him away. And she wanted to sink into his arms. Did it only take a man with biceps as hard as bricks to put his hands on her and every lesson she’d learned the hard way went flying out the window, along with her brain?
“You know, I don’t see our mystery man around anywhere,” Tyler said, brushing her hair over her shoulder. “And I think we have some unfinished business from the car.”
“I think somebody finished just fine,” Abbi said.
“I think somebody else still has to catch up.”
She felt a shiver. A push-pull twisting all the day down to her toes. She didn’t know whether to hold him closer or run away. She should stop this before it all got even more out of hand. But she’d hesitated too long, and his arms were still around her.
“Not here,” Abbi murmured as his hand snaked between her legs. “This clearing gives me the creeps.”
“Come to my place,” Tyler said. “I’ve been spending too much time invading your house. I’ll cook for you. We’ll pick up wine. Watch shitty television.”
She laughed.
“Come on, Abbi. Let me be the one to take care of you tonight.”
She should have taken him up on his offer to lie down right here, a quick and dirty tangle in the brush. He’d drop her at her car back at the nature center with bits of dried grass in her hair, clothes wrinkled, her knees stained with dirt. And while she’d be a little embarrassed walking into the office like that, it sure would keep their story airtight.
But that wasn’t what she’d asked for. That wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted it dirty, yes. Everything he wanted to do to her, she wanted.
She wanted, too, to lie in bed with him. And not just in her house with her things, the order she’d created in her world. She wanted to be in his space, see his things. Be part of his life.
To feel him. To hold him. To close her eyes against his bare chest and feel the strength of him, that power and softness, that certainty—so misleading, she knew—that when she was with him, she was all right.