Page 26 of Fate Fiction

I’m practically clawing at the door in my mind, but from his perspective I’m nervously sitting on my hands.

He had started the truck already when I got into the front seat. The pine scented soap and warm amber on his skin was almost suffocating. I’d caught a small hint of it last night when we were in the bathroom together.

It was enough for a tremble to creep its way up my torso. The subconscious reaction was mortifying.

“Cold?” he asked after seeing the shiver.

Fuck fuck fuck. I was doubly mortified that he’d noticed.

“Uh, yeah, a little.” Kill me now.

He turned on the heated seats before pulling off onto the long driveway that connected to the dirt road. Printed directions that guided him from town into camp sat crumpled at my feet.

It took a few bars to notice, but the first song playing was the same old Fall Out Boy song I had been singing in the shower the night prior.

A bizarre coincidence.

I wouldn’t acknowledge it. It would be for the best to not mention anything about last night and dredge up his memory of seeing me basically naked.

Discomfort was the third passenger in the car, nudged between us in the front seat, making the air thick and heavy. There wasn’t much to say other than “look at that tree, and that one, and that one.”

And over my dead body would I bring up anything related to Thorndown.

We hit a split in the road and I told him to hang left. His brows raised in surprise that I spoke at all. Music continued to play quietly, I picked up familiar notes and choruses. It was the only thing breaking the silence.

If only I brought headphones, I could have spent the entire hike a few steps ahead of him, he could’ve followed in silence using my green backpack as a homing beacon.

Seven more minutes further down the road, another turn.

“Take a right,” I directed him. Tension was building and building. Would there would be an inflection point where something exploded to the surface?

The entry point to the trailhead was at the end of an even more narrow dirt road, so scarcely used it was practically overgrown. As we grew closer I sat up in my seat, scanning the gaps in the trees for the large boulder that would serve as our landmark to turn.

“At that huge rock up there take another right,” I gestured to a small opening in the woods a ways up. Evan turned to me and gave me a questioning look. I was about to make him drive straight into the forest.

“It’s not going to look like a road but, I promise, it is one,” I offered a weak smile.

“I guess I have to trust your judgment here,” he stiffly laughed.

He slowed the truck down and twisted the steering wheel, the road was invisible to anyone passing by, and his truck quickly disappeared into the brush as we ambled down it. Relief settled into his features.

If the forty mile drive on a dirt road wasn’t enough to confirm that we were in the middle of nowhere, this path certainly was. A mile down, it opened up into a modest clearing that acted as a makeshift parking lot. The sign for the trailhead was worn and bleached from the sun; we could barely make out the “Horseshoe Falls: 3.8 miles” written on it. His car was the only one parked.

Small streams of sunlight trickled through openings in the thick tree cover, but did little to let in the already warm sun. A breeze blew through that spread goosebumps across my skin.

I watched Evan from the trailhead as he stood still, gaze turned upward, astounded by the old growth trees that had been seemingly untouched for decades. After realizing I had been waiting for him he shook his head and did a slight jog towards me.

“Marvelous,” he said quietly when he came into earshot.

I wordlessly led him onto the trail, my backpack jostled up and down with each step. Evan was too awestruck to care about the silence. Unspoiled moments in untouched nature were a finite commodity, and I welcomed any opportunity to not force conversation between us.

I kept my eyes dialed in straight ahead, trying to forget about the fact that Evan McLeod— Sir Erwyn Nightengale of Rospice himself—was following me on this wooded path.

We weren’t going to be anything more to each other than a hiker and his guide the next six days. It would be for the best that I don’t get to know him any more than that. Our interactions had already been far too close for comfort. He wouldn’t think of me as anything but a nice stranger upon leaving the camp, and I would try not to think of him at all.

“Dani, wait.” I whipped around to see Evan propping his foot up on a rock. “Sorry, my shoe came untied.”

“Oh, you’re good.” I rocked back and forth uneasily on the balls of my feet. If my body was moving my brain would stop spinning.