“Screw you, Slater!” she snapped. He reached for her, and she shoved him hard, causing him to stumble back awkwardly enough that he tripped over his own feet. Evie heard him hit the ground, but she didn’t stick around to see it for herself.
Maybe it was childish, but she took off at a hard run back down the path, hating how clumsy the backpack was making everything.
“The hell with this,” she mumbled, sliding it off as she ran and leaving it on the ground. There was no way she was going to run all the way back to her cabin. After all, they were almost thirty minutes into the hike, and even though they had been going fairly slowly, she knew she wasn’t in shape enough to run for that long. The only good thing was that she didn’t hear Slater running after her, so maybe he got the hint that she didn’t want to be near him.
Never in a million years did she think something as minor as a non-kiss would be the thing to freak out big, bad Slater. Nothing bothered that guy, and he seemed to enjoy any and all attention from women.
Except her.
Awesome.
If moving to Kansas didn’t work, her next logical step was to enter a convent and just give up on men all together.
Tree branches scraped her arm, but she didn’t slow down. Unfortunately, she didn’t know the trail or the resort well enough to know where she was or how much farther it was until she was at her cabin, but she pushed herself until her legs and lungs were burning. When she finally rounded a bend and the landscape leveled off, she prayed she was close.
And when she spotted resort guests casually walking around, she knew she was almost there.
Her throat was dry, her skin was slicked with sweat, and she’d never been more thankful for all those spin classes than she was right now. When her cabin came into view, it took everything in her to close the distance. And as she slowly dragged herself up the porch steps, she swore she wasn’t going to be able to move for the rest of the weekend.
Not that it mattered. It wasn’t like she had anything else to do now that all her activities Slater had planned for her were officially off the table.
Yanking the door open, Evie stumbled inside with a tremendous sigh of relief. She’d barely had time to slam the cabin door behind her before there was a knock.
Not polite. Not hesitant.
Just loud and insistent.
There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that it was Slater, and she cursed the fact that she wasn’t ready to face him. Her heart was still racing from the hike, from the fight, from the humiliation of realizing she’d misread everything. She pressed her forehead briefly to the door, counted to ten, and then yanked it open.
Slater stood there, chest heaving, hair mussed, one hand braced on the doorframe because he’d run the entire way too. There was dirt smeared along his sleeve and a scrape on his palm that made her stomach flip even as annoyance and guilt tangled together.
And her backpack was at his feet.
“Are you out of your damn mind? You don’t just leave someone alone on a trail like that,” he said, breathless, voice tight.
“Oh, please,” she shot back, just as breathless. “You’re a freaking hiking guide, Slater. It wasn’t like you were some novice. And clearly you made it back in one piece.”
“No thanks to you!” He stepped into the cabin, forcing her to take a step back. “Why would you do that? You had to know that I fell! I could have been seriously hurt and you just took off.”
Was he for real right now?
“There’s no way I could have hurt you. I’m a full head shorter than you.”
“Not the point,” he said tightly, staring hard at her. “You asked me what was wrong, and I told you. I thought we could talk about it like adults. Clearly, I was wrong.”
“What’s there to talk about? You freaked out,” she mocked, finally feeling like she could catch her breath. “So I saved you the trouble of rejecting me in great detail. I’d heard enough.”
“That’s not what happened.”
She folded her arms, bristling, as heat crawled up her neck. “You literally said you were freaked out, Slater.”
“Yeah,” he snapped, then dragged a hand through his hair. “Because you kissed me and I panicked.”
There it was. The thing she’d been replaying over and over, every humiliating second of it.
“Right,” she said flatly. “Great clarification. Thanks.”
He let out a sharp, frustrated laugh. “God, Evie, will you just…will you let me finish?”
