Page 58 of Seven Rules for Breaking Hearts

Since when did I even think words like adorable? Yet here I was, cheesing just as hard as he was. “Shut up. You have fifteen minutes to get ready.”

“Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise.” I stepped back and gave him a quick appraising look to make sure his clothes would work for what I had planned. Everything looked to be in order. “Just make sure you put on some sunscreen.”

He winked. “Only if you’ll help.”

“Surprise,” I announced, more than a little nervous as I spread my arms wide and posed in front of one of the Hummers like they’d offered me a sponsorship. When Declan only stared, I turned to look at the Hummer, in part to hide my insecurity. I’d never done anything like this for a man. I needed a little reassurance that I’d done an okay job, and him just staring at me wasn’t helping matters. “You wanted to see the bison, so I thought I’d take you to see the bison.”

We were at the start of the same dusty road we had hiked before, only this time we wouldn’t have to break a sweat hiking it. The tour guide had told us it was a day’s hike to see the buffalo on foot, but that translated to only a couple hours on one of the open-air Hummer tours.

“Wow. This is so …” He broke off, and I wondered what word might fill in the blank. Ridiculous. Stupid. Sweaty, dusty, not really a date-worthy activity. But then his arms came to my waist from behind, and he kissed the back of my head—a much more public display of affection than I was used to. Warmth rushed to my cheeks, but I didn’t totally hate it. “Thoughtful.”

“You remember a lot about me,” I said. Including little things, like me drinking Sprite on the ferry, or eating my ham sandwiches with mayo in high school. “I figured the least I could do was remember something you mentioned less than a week ago.”

“This isn’t exactly cheap,” he mumbled against my hair.

I pulled away, leading him by the hand. “Well, you did pay for my dinner last night.” When he resisted my attempts at dragging him into the Hummer, I turned and looked him in the face. “Seriously, it’s no biggie. I want you to see the buffalo.”

The shadow of a dimple appeared in his cheek, and he shook his head as he climbed up into the Hummer beside me. “You do know that they’re technically bison.”

“The tour calls them buffalo, smart guy.”

He slung an arm around my shoulder as we waited for everyone else on the tour. The driver—the same gruff-looking woman as before—was already seated up front, waiting to scan the QR codes on people’s phones. “I like the hair, by the way,” Declan said. “Didn’t really give me a chance to say it earlier.” His fingers toyed with a loose tendril near my face, and a fresh wave of goose bumps erupted on my skin. “I mean, I liked your old hair, too. But this is nice. What made you decide to dye it?”

I fought a blush. He must really like me, if he thought my washed-out green hair had looked anywhere near good. “Felt like I needed a change. And I wanted to make sure it looked okay for the wedding.”

“It looks more than okay.”

Now I did blush. Next to my face, his smartwatch lit up. Text from Erin. I didn’t mean to glance at it, but I did anyway. Force of habit—a screen lit up, and there I was, checking it.

“My sister,” he explained. “I’ll text her later.”

“What’s up with the smartwatch?” It had been eating away at me for the past week. For someone who hated technology, he sure was confusing about it. He worked as a mechanical engineer, probably dealing with all sorts of complicated crap like satellites and space shuttles, but he apparently didn’t know how Venmo worked. He had a smartwatch, but zero social media presence. I didn’t get it, but I wanted to get it, and this time it wasn’t just because I was hungry to stalk his nonexistent Instagram.

“Erin gave it to me as a joke. I hate smartphones. She thought a smartwatch would be funny.” Another text came through and he reached around me to dismiss it with his other hand, so that I was completely encircled in his arms. “It is kind of useful, though.”

“What’s your issue with technology, anyway?”

“It’s not technology. Just social media. And that’s Erin, too, actually.” He seemed to hesitate before elaborating. “She got cyberbullied pretty bad by these girls after posting a couple videos of herself singing, back in the early days of YouTube. My parents took the case to the school board and everything. It was a whole mess. There are still news articles floating around somewhere. Pretty much scared me off the whole social media thing long before Instagram even existed.”

“Wow. That sounds terrible.” I couldn’t imagine being in her shoes—putting myself out there like that only to have my dreams completely and utterly wrecked by the internet. I had a hard enough time dealing with the Twitter comments. “So, she’s older than you, I take it.”

“Significantly older.” I raised a quizzical brow, and he elaborated. “She’s eleven years older than I am. Not a half-sister. My mom got pregnant with her when they were still in school. Dad married her right away, but they decided to wait awhile before having another.”

“Are your parents still together?”

“Yeah, they are. Stupidly in love, too. It’s kind of gross,” he added with an embarrassed smile, because he probably thought I couldn’t imagine anything worse than two people happy and in love. He was wrong, though. I didn’t hate the idea of love. It was just that I’d seen so few examples of it growing up that I’d always had a hard time believing it existed. But this week—talking to my mom about the possibility of putting herself out there again, and watching Jo and Peter—a part of me had started to rethink that. Maybe it was rare. Maybe for every couple that found love, you had a hundred false starts. But even if it was a one-in-a-million chance, it existed.

And that gave me a tiny glimmer of hope. Small. Almost inconsequential.

The Hummer’s engine turned over, a last call for any dawdling passengers before we roared off into the hills. Declan narrowed his eyes at me, and I realized that I’d been staring at him a little too hard, trying to imagine his parents and whatever stupidly in love looked like. “What are you thinking about?”

“Are they redheads, too?” I asked, hoping to really round out the image I was painting in my head.

There was a slight pause. “My sister and my mom, yes,” he admitted, as much as I could tell he didn’t want to admit it. “My dad’s bald, but when he was younger his hair was more of a … blondish color.”

“Strawberry blond?” I teased. When he only pressed his lips together, I threw my head back and cackled. “Oh my God, I knew it. You’re like the Weasleys. A whole family of redheads.”