Page 68 of Jonas

I hated that, absolutely despised it.

“There was this mountain in the back pasture. When I was little, maybe five or six, I used to climb it. It took forever to get to the top. On my tenth birthday, I went up there with a packet full of flower seeds I’d bought from the feed store. I remember twirling in a circle as fast as I could, opening my hands, and letting the seeds fly. When I was done, it dawned on me—getting up the mountain was no longer difficult. When I was a teenager it occurred to me I’d been calling that place ‘my mountain’ for so long, I forgot to stop calling it that, because in reality it was nothing more than a steep incline. It wasn’t even a hill, not really. The cattle would go up and down to graze. But when I was little that incline looked huge. Anyway, that’s not the point,” I huffed out. “The point is I spent a lot of time up there thinking. I’d go up there after my daddy would take his belt to me, and lay on my stomach crying, asking God, why me. My mother would do something Daddy didn’t like and he’d take a whip or cattle strap and bloody my back to beat the devil out of his home. I’d go up there and yell at God and ask, why me? Then one day I stopped asking. The day before I left I went up, laid on my back watching the clouds and got it. Why not me? Maybe it needed to be me. Maybe it had to be me because God knew I was strong enough to take it. Maybe it had to be me so it wasn’t someone else.” I stopped speaking to concentrate on Jonas, to really look at the man standing next to me. The strength he possessed earned by circumstance, by tragedy. Like me, it wasn’t the kind of strength either of us wanted but nonetheless it was ours. “Maybe it had to be me, so I could be the peace and protection for someone else. Maybe it had to be me so I could find power in the pain, find my strength, find my resilience, find empathy.”

Maybe it had to be me so when the time came all of my jagged fragments would slot and piece together with Jonas’s, making what was perfectly broken, perfectly whole.

Or maybe I was absolutely nuts and needed a delusion to mask my agony.

“Dee Dee,” he whispered.

“I wish I could’ve been the one⁠—”

“No, baby. Hell no.”

The growly rasp in his voice cut through the heat of the day and made me shiver.

I shuffled to face him. I felt my sneaker sink into the mud. I pitched toward the bank, not wanting to fall into the water at the same time Jonas reached out to grab my arm. My foot slid deeper, I grabbed ahold of Jonas’s shirt just as I completely lost my balance. The next thing I knew I was falling backward. At the last second before I hit the water, Jonas twisted. With a splash we both went in. I only had seconds to register how warm the water was before my head and chest were back out of it.

“Holy shit,” I sputtered and spit.

When I could still taste putrid pond water, I spit a second time.

Unfortunately, that’s when I realized I was straddling Jonas. The water lapped around his waist, my knees rested in the mud, and my hands were on his shaking chest. I blinked away droplets coating my lashes and sure enough he was laughing. Not only that, but his hands were on my hips.

“Did I just spit in front of you…twice?”

“Yup.”

Someone kill me.

“Some nature girl I am, falling into a shallow body of water.” I tried for self-deprecating.

It was wholly inappropriate where my thoughts turned. I also didn’t care, not when Jonas’s gray t-shirt was molded to his chest, his face was only a few inches from mine, his hair was wet and spiky, and his fabulous blue eyes were dancing with humor.

I wanted to kiss him.

I wanted to sample what a future with him would taste like. I wanted to know if he could heal me with a kiss. I wanted to know what it felt like to have his hands on my breasts and other places besides. I wanted to rock my hips and feel what was behind the zipper of his cargos.

I did none of these things, except stare into his beautiful eyes and absorb the moment.

One of his hands left my hip and came up to brush back the wet hair stuck to my cheek.

“We need a shower,” I stupidly proclaimed.

A dark brow arched.

“Is that an invitation?”

Yes!

“I peeked and I don’t think it’s big enough for both of us.”

“Peeked?”

“Not while you were in it of course,” I rushed out. “But last night, I peeked behind the shower curtain. Actually, I don’t even know how you fit in there.”

“It was a tight fit.”

I bet it would be.