Page 10 of Falling Like Leaves (Bramble Falls #1)

I shake my head, stepping onto the first rung. “You’re stronger, so you should hold the ladder for us.” Plus, the sheer look of horror on his face reminds me that he’s afraid of heights, a detail I won’t rub in right now. Not when he’s finally talking to me again.

He nods and grips the ladder rails, clearly relieved. “Yeah, okay.”

I climb the rungs until I’ve reached the top. Harley is still a foot above me, but I can’t get any closer. “All right, buddy, I’m going to need you to crawl this way.” I hold my arms out, ready for him.

He looks at me, unsure, then blows out a puff of air before nodding. His movements are slow and deliberate as he inches toward me.

“Okay, let your feet drop but keep holding on, and I’ll grab you,” I tell him once he’s above me, the weight of him making the branch droop in our favor.

He unwraps his ankles from around the branch and lets them fall into my left arm while I use my right to hold on to the ladder and balance.

“I have you, don’t worry. Now let go.”

With tears in his eyes, Harley lets go of the branch, and his full weight falls into my arms. I slowly lower him in front of me until his feet are on a ladder rung.

“You climb down first,” I tell him, but I’m not sure he even hears me. Because the second his feet hit the ladder, he takes off.

“Thank you both so much!” Dorothy says, clutching her chest.

Harley’s eyes scan the ground. “Where’s my apple?”

Cooper walks over to where Harley’s apple rolled and picks it up. “It’s right here. It didn’t make it far.”

“Oooh, thank you!” Harley darts underneath the ladder, bumping the unstable base with his shoulder, causing it to tilt too far to the right.

Everything after happens quickly.

The ladder shifts and begins falling over. My scream gets caught in my throat.

I try to leap off, but my shoe catches on the side rail, twisting my ankle and my free-falling body.

The ladder hits the ground just as I fall into Cooper’s outstretched arms. He’s breathing fast and hard, pure panic on his face.

His horrified eyes lock on mine as he seems to process that he caught me.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I… think so?”

He lets out a huge breath and closes his eyes for a second. I can almost feel the relief rushing through him. Then he says, “You were right about the three seconds.”

It takes me a second to realize he’s talking about how long Harley can be unattended, but once I do, a laugh bubbles out of me. Cooper’s lips slide into a lopsided grin.

“You said a potty word!” Harley shouts at me.

“No, I didn’t.” I pause. “Did I?”

“You definitely did,” Cooper says, amused.

“You said ‘shit,’?” Harley tells me.

Dorothy gasps. “Harley Andrew Dempsey! You do not use grown-up words!”

“She’s not a grown-up and she said it,” Harley points out. “And you didn’t yell at her.”

“She isn’t six years old, and she isn’t mine to yell at,” Dorothy tells him.

“No, I shouldn’t have said it either,” I tell him. “When I get home, I’m putting myself in time-out for using a potty word.”

Harley looks at me like I’m bananas. “Who puts themselves in time-out? You’re weird.”

Cooper laughs as Harley runs off, leaving his apple on the ground beside us.

“I’m going to put you down, okay?” Cooper says, pulling my attention back to him.

A blush spreads across my chest when I realize my arms are wrapped around his neck, as if holding on for dear life. I nod and let go, and Cooper sets me on the ground. But a sharp pain shoots through my left ankle, and I fall back on my butt.

“What’s wrong?” Cooper asks, squatting next to me. “Did you hurt your foot?”

“My ankle, but I’ll be fine,” I say, pushing back up but bearing my weight on my right foot.

“I’m so sorry, Ellis,” Dorothy says to me.

“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say, trying to smile through the pain.

“Harley, get over here,” Dorothy calls.

Harley comes barreling over, and Dorothy makes him apologize, even though he clearly has no idea what he did wrong.

“I think we ought to head back and get some ice on that ankle,” Dorothy says.

Without warning, Harley jumps on Cooper’s back, climbing him like he climbed the apple tree.

“Nope,” Cooper says, unwrapping Harley’s arms from around him. Harley’s feet drop to the ground. “It’s Ellis’s turn. Can you lead the way, though? I don’t think I know how to get back.”

“What are you talking about? I’m not getting on your shoulders,” I say.

“You can’t walk all the way back on that ankle,” he says. “I’ll carry you on my back.”

“Isn’t there, like, a golf cart we can use or something?”

Cooper stares at me.

“Fine,” I grumble. “But that’s a long way for you to carry me.”

“I’ll be just fine,” he says, kneeling down.

I limp over and set my hands on his shoulders as he reaches back and scoops his hands under my thighs and stands effortlessly.

“Are you going to be okay, Dorothy?” I ask.

“I’m not as spry as I once was, but I’m not bedridden yet, honey. Didn’t I tell you about my daily walks with my girls?”

“Okay, point taken,” I laugh. “But the ground is uneven, like you said, so please be careful.”

Cooper walks slowly in the direction of the orchard shop, trying not to outpace Dorothy, while Harley runs figure eights around trees.

“Doesn’t he ever get tired?” I ask Dorothy.

“Oh no. He’s like the Energizer Bunny,” she says. “In fact, it seems the more he does, the more energy he has, like the activity charges his internal battery.”

Harley runs by with his arms spread wide, pretending to be an airplane, and I try not to think about Cooper’s muscles beneath my palms. Or how he smells like sugar and citrus and laundry detergent. Or the heat radiating from him, warming me from the inside out.

Instead I try to focus on my throbbing ankle. Because I can’t be attracted to a guy who wants nothing to do with me. A guy I’ll likely never see again after I leave Bramble Falls.

“You know,” I say to Cooper, “the last time I was here, I was the one giving you a piggyback ride.”

Cooper laughs. “Don’t remind me.”

“Oh, but I’m going to. You’d just jumped off the floating dock at the lake…”

“Ellis, come on,” he whines, but I can hear his smile.

“And you burst out of the water crying.”

“I had a rusty fish hook in my toe!” he exclaims.

“Yeah, but I didn’t have to carry you because of the injury. You ended up on my back because you were sobbing so hard about the possibility of getting tetanus.”

“A legitimate concern,” he says in his own defense.

“The hook barely broke your skin. You didn’t even bleed,” I laugh. “There was no reason you couldn’t have walked.”

“Did you go to the doctor?” Dorothy asks, reminding me that we’re not alone.

“Don’t, Ellis,” Cooper says quickly.

“Three times!” I say, cracking up. “He went three times that week because he said the doctor was wrong. He was convinced he was dying.”

Dorothy laughs with me, and Cooper squeezes my thighs, making my insides crackle and hiss like a blazing fire.

“Yeah, yeah,” he chuckles. He shakes his head. “I hate you.”

The sentiment snaps me right back to reality. He can’t see me, but I nod, my smile faltering and my voice becoming quiet. “Yeah, I know.” And I can’t stand it, despite trying to convince myself I don’t care.

Once we’re out of the field, Dorothy and I wait in the parking lot with Harley while Cooper goes inside to get a bag of apples for them to take home since apple-picking didn’t go as planned.

“Dorothy, it was so nice meeting you,” I say as Cooper gives her the free apples.

“It was lovely meeting you, too,” she tells me.

Dorothy wrangles her grandson into the car, and they drive off. Cooper carries me inside, toward a hallway at the back, and sets me down in a small employee break room.

“Sit.” He nods at a chair. “I’ll be right back.”

“O-kay…”

Cooper returns five minutes later carrying a first aid kit and an ice pack wrapped in a thin towel. He sits in a chair across from me, scoots close, and pats his leg, nodding at my foot.

I reluctantly lift it, and he takes it in his hands, slipping off my boot and dropping it onto the floor. He pushes up my pant leg, and I shiver when his soft fingertips graze my leg.

“I can do this myself,” I tell him.

He looks up through his thick lashes, giving me a look that says, Shut up.

I look away because those hypnotizing eyes might kill me otherwise.

“Where does it hurt?” he asks.

I touch the outside of my ankle. He nods and places the ice pack on it, holding it as he clears his throat.

“I’m sorry,” he says.

“For what?”

“I shouldn’t have walked away from the ladder, especially with Harley running around. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Oh.” For some reason I thought he was going to apologize for how he’s been toward me since I arrived. I thought maybe we could be friends again. I hoped we could be friends again. “It’s okay. I’m sure my ankle will be better by tomorrow.”

He nods, but he still looks torn up about it.

“Besides, you did save my life,” I tell him.

“I doubt you would have died,” he says, his lips inching into a grin.

I shrug. “Could have. But now we’ll never know.”

He sets the ice pack on the table and unravels an ACE bandage, circling it around my foot then up and around my ankle.

He hands me the ice pack. “You’ll want to hold this on there. Twenty minutes on, twenty minutes off.”

“Okay. Thank you.”

Cooper stands and holds his hands out for me to take. I scan them, finding the scar on his left thumb from when he burned it on a baking sheet the last time I was here. It’s faded now—white instead of bright pink—but it’s there. Yet another reminder of how different things used to be between us.

I place my hands in his and try to ignore the soft buzz his touch elicits inside me. And as he pulls me up, something comes over me and, without really thinking, I find myself saying, “So, um, would you maybe want to go get tacos when we’re done here?”

When he doesn’t immediately answer, instead seeming to study me, my cheeks flood with heat, and I silently berate myself.

His friendliness today doesn’t negate the fact that he’s acted completely disinterested in connecting with me since I’ve gotten to town, and I feel stupid for getting caught up in the moment.

“Tacos?” he finally says, his expression unreadable.

I train my gaze on Cooper’s shirt instead of those captivating eyes and bite my lip, wondering if I should tell him to forget I said anything. Wondering if I could get away with telling him I was just kidding. “Uh, yeah. We could go to that cute stand we used to stop by every day after swimming?”

“That place closed,” he tells me, his tone flat as he drops my hands. “It’s an ice cream stand now.” He takes a step backward, not meeting my eyes, and I can tell he’s shutting down again. “I’m going to get back out there.”

I nod, trying to hide my embarrassment. “Oh. Yeah, okay. Thanks for your help.”

“No problem.” He runs his hand through his hair as he looks at the floor. “Sorry again about your ankle. I’ll see you around, Ellis.”

I wilt as he disappears through the doorway, leaving my extended olive branch snapped in half on the break-room floor.