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I frown, my eyebrows shooting toward the sky as my voice turns stern. “You left the trail. No.”

“I did. C’mon.” He doesn’t turn to look at me as he takes another step.

I frown again, looking from the perfectly clear trail he’s left to the one he’s making by smashing down the grass that’s higher than his knees.

“Why?” I demand, refusing to budge as I cross my arms. “Is this even legal? Isn’t this grass protected ground or something?” If I wasn’t sure if I was panicking, the high-pitched sound of my voice lets me know that I am. Other than the time we slid down the rocks, we’ve never left the marked trail.

He stops walking and turns to face me, smug smirk slanting across his annoyingly handsome face. “I don’t see a sign that says we’ll go to prison for doing this, and there’s something I want to show you that’s this way.” He tilts his head in the direction he’s been walking. The directionnoton the trail.

I’m bouncing, nervous, weighing my options. Reading my turmoil, he retraces his steps until he’s back to me, plucking the toothpick out of his mouth before taking my hand in his.

“Birdie,” he coos. “What do you think is going to happen if we walk into this very open, very well-lit, very flat field?”

When he puts it like that…

“My trail guide seems a bit shady,” I say dryly. “You left that part out.”

He tugs at my hand, slow-to-grow smile curling across his face, then kisses me on the forehead. “Do you trust me?”

I give him an annoyed nod without making eye contact.

“Then you know I wouldn’t do anythingshady.”

I can tell he wants to laugh, and I have to bite my cheek to keep from smiling.

“Fine.” My gaze meets his where it stays. “Let’s go do whatever this stupid thing is before I change my mind.”

He smiles, keeping one hand interlaced with mine, and leads me through the field.

In mere minutes, the trail is out of sight, but something far better is in front of us—around us.

The tall grass of the valley has turned into something completely different. A field, yes, but instead of tall grass starting to fade with the onslaught of fall, it’s an explosion of color. Blossoms of fiery yellows and fierce oranges, muted only by the occasional faded green blades of the meadow grass mixed in. The field has been set ablaze by a flame of wildflowers.

And it’s not just my eyes that experience it—it’s as though the field has changed every piece of the atmosphere. The breeze blows cooler against my skin, and the earthy smell that was on the trail has been replaced by something sweet. Ambrosial.

My hands come to my mouth—becausehow?

“What is this?” My eyes move so slowly it’s as though I’m trying to commit to memory every single petal covering the field that stretches as far as the eye can see.

“I found it online,” he says. “I’ve never been here, but when I read about it,”—he shrugs—“it looked like you.” His smile is warm as sunshine as he takes my hand in his and leads us to the middle, careful not to crush a single stem as he walks. “Someone planted it years ago. One article said some sisters did it to honor their mom, someone else said it was a class from the college doing a project. Either way, it’s a mix of only late summer and early fall seeds so it’s unexpected. A secret.”

I see that now, recognizing several of them as flowers on my own skin. Black-eyed Susans, scarlet honeysuckle, and orange hawkweed. It looks like a postcard—an image that makes people ask,Is this place real?

My hand in his, I take it all in. Beauty that has no business being here but is anyway.

When we stop in a small patch of mostly grass, Bo drops his backpack and pulls out a blanket that he spreads across the ground, grin from earlier now something conspiratorial. Then, he pulls out another, and drops it on top of the one already laid out.

His hands rest on my hips when he stands, dark eyes exploding with gold flecks searching mine playfully. “Worth leaving the trail?”

I nod. Because, yes, this is absolutely worth it. “The blanket?” I ask, lifting my chin.

“I realized I’ve never laid in a field of fall wildflowers, and I thought maybe you haven’t either.” The tone of his voice implies there’s more to it, but I let it slide. Because withall this—my eyes go to the field around us again—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t seem real.

He sits on the blanket, stretches out on his back, hands behind his head, and just the sight of him, in all these flowers, makes me do the exact same thing.

We lie on our backs, looking up at the clear blue sky that’s framed by the contrasting reds and yellows and oranges that dance around us. They lean and sway in a dreamy slow motion. An ethereal flashback scene from a movie that makes me long for it to last forever.

Fingers interlaced, lying on our backs with colorful petals blowing in the breeze around us, if Bo wasn’t already going to be ingrained in me forever, in this moment he is. Pressed into me with the kind of finality of one of his Lincoln Logs in the floor of his cabins. I may never do another thing in my life without this one influencing it. A new gold-star standard which every other moment will be measured against.