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“Well, there goes our only chance of getting out of here without becoming bear food.” I run my hands through my hair, trying to calm myself down.
The emotions running through me have so much more to do with other things than they do with currently being trapped in the woods. I can’t put words to those fears right now though. Acknowledging them will only make them that much more real, and I don’t have time for that.
We have to get out of the woods before it gets dark. Though I’m sure someone will come looking for us if we’re gone too long, I don’t know what the too long marker is. Hopefully only an hour or two past the time we’re supposed to be back, because if they don’t start until it’s dark out, my chance of becoming bear food increases.
“You know that most bears are preparing for hibernation right now, right?” Brookes smiles, like a simple boyish smile is going to fix everything. That smile only makes me more irritated.
“We would have been out of here sooner if I’d gotten enough of a signal to load up a map. This is horrible, Brookes. There’s no way I can do this anymore. I need to get out of here and I don’t need your jokes after you broke my phone.”
He rolls his eyes and folds up the map. “It’s not like I meant to break your phone. It was an accident. I was trying to stop you from tripping over all the roots.”
“Thank you, but now look what’s happened.” I gesture down at the broken phone, mourning the loss of the calendar I programmed into it. Months of tweaking my schedule to perfection were documented there. Having to face the next week without it is going to drive me insane.
Right now, everything feels like it’s completely out of my control, and I don’t know what to do.
“How did you expect to navigate a mountain with a phone anyway?” Brookes asks, his tone sharp.
Clearly, he’s in the mood for another argument, and so am I. It seems to be all we can do whenever we’re together. He says something to bother me—whether he’s trying to get under my skin or not, I don’t know—and then the fighting starts.
I’m so damn tired of fighting with him all the time, especially when I feel like I’m the one being the asshole. Maybe holding on to my anger for five years is petty. I don’t care though. For once in my life, I want to be the petty one for just a little bit.
What I really want is for him to realize that he can’t waltz into my life like nothing happened. We’ve been around each other nearly every single day for the last week, and not once has there been an apology for the way he treated me.
He can’t just look at me with that boyish smile and those stunning gray eyes and expect me to fold. It isn’t going to happen. I deserve an apology.
“I thought I might be able to get enough of a signal while you were busy fucking around with the map, but clearly I couldn’t.”
He chuckles and I want to wring his neck. I allow myself to imagine pushing him off the cliff and watching him tumble down the rocks. Maybe if I was lucky, he would hit every rock on the way down.
“I don’t like that look in your eyes right now,” he says while waving the map at me. “We need to get going. This is the first task, and if we don’t prove that we’re ready to join the group, you’re going to lose your chance at the fellowship.”
A pit opens in the bottom of my stomach. I hadn’t thought that far yet. I was too busy focusing on being bear food when I should’ve been thinking about my future.
“We have to get back to the rest of the group.”
“I’ll buy you a new phone.” Brookes points to a place on the map. “This is where we are now. If we cut through this section here, and hurry, we might be able to make up for the hour we’ve lost.”
“You want me to run through the woods.” I shake my head, already picturing myself falling and rolling down the side of a mountain. “And I don’t need you to buy me a new phone.”
“We don’t have much of an option now that we’re so turned around!” He tosses his hands up in the air. “I don’t know why you won’t just listen to me about this. I know how to read a map, but it’s clear that you have no idea. I don’t know why you’re doing this program to begin with.”
I press my lips together, not willing to tell him anything. We’re not friends. He doesn’t need to know what makes me tick. We just have to work together to get out of this damn forest and then we’ll be on our way. I can ignore him at work as much as possible without impeding patient care. The only time I have to interact with him is when it’s for the betterment of my future.
That’s what I keep telling myself as Brookes starts to lead the way through the woods.
“You know, I know you don’t like me much, but I didn’t ask to be put on this team with you. Don’t you think I would have wanted to be with a partner who doesn’t hate me?” he asks, his tone sharp as he looks over his shoulder at me.
“I don’t hate you.” Guilt eats at me a little. I may not like him at all, but I wouldn’t go far enough to say that I hate him. There’s just so much water under that bridge that it feels like it’s trying to drown me right now.
“You could have fooled me.”
“Can you honestly blame me for not liking you?” I climb up the side of a fallen log. “Some people have to work for what they have. You take every advantage that life gives you, and then you have little regard for anyone else in your path.”
“Are you referring to what happened between us?”
My cheeks warm, and I shake my head. “Nope. I’m talking about the way I’ve seen you treat people in general. The first day we were at the wilderness center, you came in late. You didn’t care that other people were there and waiting to learn.”
He scoffs and walks a little faster, making it harder for me to keep up with his long steps. “You don’t know the first thing about me, Jessie.”
