“This morning. After you left. I drove out here and I walked it and I found us somewhere.”
I laugh into his jaw. Actually laugh.
“You scouted a make-out spot?”
“I scouted better than that.”
The trail climbs. We walk. He holds my hand. On a public trail. In daylight.
I have never held a boy's hand in daylight. I have never held anyone's hand in daylight unless you count Paul walking me across a parking lot when I was four. The air is cold. His hand is warm. My palm sweats into his palm and he doesn't let go.
Nobody passes us. It's Thursday morning and the trail is empty. The only sound is our feet in the pine needles and a raven complaining about something three trees over.
About a mile in, he leaves the trail.
“Here.”
“Where?”
“Follow me.”
He steps off the path and down a small bank and between two boulders and into a clearing I would not have seen from the trail. It's about the size of my bedroom. Soft with needles. A fallen log on one side. Thick pines blocking the view from the path. Sun coming down through the branches in patches.
He's right. He scouted better than a make-out spot.
He turns to me.
“We could get caught here,” he warns.
“How likely is that?”
He glances back toward the trail.
“Low. Not zero.”
“Good.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“Good?”
“I don't want zero.”
He grins.
That grin is not something I have seen on his face often. It's sharp and private and all mine. He takes two steps and has me against the trunk of a pine with my hood pushed back and his mouth on my throat.
He's careful with me this morning. I feel him being careful. My body is sore from last night and from the morning, and he knows it. He's not going to take anything from me I can't give. He kisses my throat slow. He runs his hand up under my running shirt and he finds the mark he left. He presses his thumb over it. I gasp.
“Still tender.”
“Yeah.”
“Good.”
He kisses the bruise through the fabric. He kisses the hollow of my throat. He kisses my jaw. His hand is inside my shirt now, flat against my stomach, not moving, just there.
I push him back.
