Page 41

“You still back there?” He stops, facing me, making me realize I’ve been quiet.

“Sorry,” I say. “That’s amazing. I love that you do this.”

“Looks likewedo this,” he says with a smug raise of his eyebrows before turning around.

The laugh I make is a softpah!and it’s the only noise either of us make besides our footsteps. I don’t think about cancer or dying. I don’t think about how I told Bo my hardest truth in the grocery store. I don’t think about Huck getting adopted. It’s just a steady stream ofroots and rocks, roots and rocksthat floats through my brain along with the rustle of the water next to us.

It’s as though I’ve stepped into a meditation app and my mind has never been so calm. Clear.

When he says, “We’re here,” it startles me. I have no idea how long we’ve been walking or wherehereeven is. We’ve been goingup at a slight incline, but it hasn’t been steep, and now I see the river that we’ve been next to has been replaced by a slick-covered stack of smooth gigantic rocks. Boulders. Whatever’s bigger than a boulder. They’re huge and cascade down a gentle slope.

The water is glossy, and if the rocks weren’t there it might be a waterfall we were looking at instead.

“It’s beautiful,” I say, mesmerized by the movement and the way the light shimmers off every wet inch of stone.

“Wait ’til you feel it,” he responds, making my head whip toward him.

His arms lift, elbows bend, and he tugs at the neckline of his shirt between his shoulder blades, yanking it overhead. There’s a shit-eating grin on his face when his head pops out from the cotton.

Bo is shirtless and I can’t help it, I blatantly gawk. The sight of him—his muscles and tattoos that I very much see now—makes my mouth drop. An outline of mountains covers the space between his shoulders where the muscles of his neck melt into the muscles of his back in shades of grey ink with silhouettes of trees dotting the slopes.

When he turns around, it does nothing to stop my staring. Defined chest, subtle abs that lead to—a T-shirt hits my face at the same time Bo says, “Earth to Birdie,” stopping my thoughts from going any further in that direction.

George Strait plops at my feet and I shake my head too many times with rapid blinking. “Sorry…swimming?” I ask, looking back at the water-covered rocks. “Hardly looks deep enough.”

He points to the base of the rocks. “Down there it is.”

My chin pulls back when I see the pool that he’s talking about. “Then why are we up here?”

“We are going to slide down these rocks”—he glides a finger through the air—“and land in there.” His hand does this splashing kind of motion that translates to exploding or being obliterated.

He smiles when I frown. “Uh, that’s a hard no. Is this even legal? Or regulated?” The pitch of my voice increases with every syllable.

“I knew you’d ask, so I looked it up, and there isn’t a single recorded injury or death from doing this.” He has the nerve to look proud when he recites this information.

I scoff. “Recorded?!People get hurt all the time and don’t call the authorities!” This is absolute insanity andnothappening.

“Birdie—”

“Don’tBirdieme,” I snap. “Youslide down this death trap and I’ll meet you at the bottom.”

I reach for the dog’s leash and Bo grabs my hand, my gaze lifting to his in a way that I can’t control. Like our eyeballs are opposite ends of magnets that have to point at each other because laws of nature say so.

“Birdie.” His voice lowers and takes on a softness as he looks at me. “If I thought you’d get hurt, I wouldn’t bring you here. But I’ve been coming since I was a kid, you’ll be fine. I’ll be with you the whole time.” He drops my hand, bends down to his backpack, and pulls out a sticky note. When he hands it to me, I see the wordsdo something scary.

My heart pulsates with a swift and constantba-dum!at every surface point of my body. I look from him to the rock-slab slide, to the pool at the bottom, back to him. I stretch my neck side to side…repeatedly. In seconds,I can’t do thisturns toCan I do this?thenI can do thisuntil, finally,I want to do this.

It’s a truth I’m not prepared for.

“If this is how I die, Bo,” I say, jerking my hand from his and throwing the cap off my head. I toe my shoes off before peeling down my shorts, revealing a simple black bikini bottom. “I’m going to haunt your ass for the rest of your life.”

“Deal. But you aren’t going to die.”

His smile is giddy, like a kid on Christmas morning, and he kicks his own shoes off then ties the dog to a tree.

Then my shirt is off, exposing the high-necked bikini top I’m wearing. I allow myself one deep breath of being self-conscious before turning and facing the water.

His eyes rake over me, approving. One side of his mouth hooks into a smirk. “Nice suit.”