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“So, no serious relationship for either of us then, huh?”
“I guess so,” I said. “If I did anything to put you off the idea of me…”
Lorenzo frowned and looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“Everything I’ve ever done was to get rid of men in my life because I refused to do what my dad told me to do or evensuggested.I’m just not so great at being good.”
Lorenzo chuckled. “A bad girl, huh?”
I laughed and blushed, but I didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m being serious. If I did something… old habits die hard but I’m not trying to push you away.”
“You didn’t do anything,” Lorenzo said.
I hadn’t thought I’d done anything wrong. I’d hoped I hadn’t. I’d hoped that by saying that, Lorenzo would tell me if something bothered him and what it was. He was tight-lipped, though.
For a moment, I considered asking him, but I swallowed my words. I was Celine Forger. I knew who I was and what I had to offer, and this small, uncertain person wasn’t who I was. I was the type of person who knew what I wanted, and I wouldn’t make excuses for it. If Lorenzo wasn’t happy about something, he could talk to me. I knew he would—Lorenzo wasn’t shy to speak his mind.
I wasn’t going to be worried about anything anymore, I would just let this whole business play out the way it was supposed to.
When I decided that, I felt better. I let go of the worries and the panic and took a deep breath. This situation wasn’t normal, and it caused all kinds of fears to creep up that weren’t normal for me.
After a couple hours’ walking, we stopped to rest. My legs pulsed and trembled with fatigue and my lungs burned. I worked out a lot but this was pushing it—we’d walked for days and there was no end in sight.
“Oh, wow,” I said, walking toward the edge of a ravine that looked out over a valley. “Look at this.”
Lorenzo came closer. “It’s breathtaking, isn’t it?”
I nodded. The valley that stretched seemingly hundreds of feet below was filled with trees with different colored leaves, creating a patchwork of nature. The sun was shining, the sky was clear for a change, and birds chirped above us.
“This is what I come out here for every year,” Lorenzo said. “It’s worth it when you see the true beauty.”
If this was the beauty he meant, I could understand camping to a degree. Not that this exactly convinced me to try this again, but it was a spectacular sight to behold. Until now, I’d only seen the ugly side of nature—the storms and the danger. This was something else.
Lorenzo turned away from me, walking to the pack he’d put down at the base of a tree when I’d called him. He checked his phone just in case, but he’d been doing that less and less. We were too far out for signal, and that wouldn’t change in the foreseeable future—we didn’t move fast enough on foot.
“You should drink some water,” he said.
I turned to face him. “I can figure out when I’m thirsty, you know,” I said. “I know I have to hydrate, so I—”
Before I could finish, the ground underneath my feet gave way. I screamed as I fell with nothing beneath me. I groped for something to hold on to as the ground crumbled all around me. Dirt got in my mouth, and whatever roots or branches I got hold of scraped me raw when it yanked out of my grip again, and I kept falling.
“Celine!” I heard Lorenzo’s voice far above me.
I hit something hard and kept falling. My head spun, and I saw stars, and then I hit the ground. A sharp pain shot into my ankle, and I cried out, coughing, choking on dirt. I was in panic mode right away. My breath came in shallow, ragged pants, and my hands burned like they were on fire. My head throbbed like a bitch, and I couldn’t see—everything was a blur.
“Celine!” I heard Lorenzo again, and I heard more rocks and dirt falling around me. I yelped and curled into a ball, covering my head with my arms.
Lorenzo landed next to me with a thud, but he was on his feet—he hadn’t fallen, he’d come after me. He fell to his knees.
“Oh, my God, are you okay? Celine! Talk to me!”
I blinked my eyes open and looked up at him. His face was riddled with fear.
“My ankle,” I said, and tears sprung to my eyes. My hands started trembling, and when I looked at them, my palms were bloody and an angry red. The sight of blood only made me cry more, and tears ran down my cheeks.
“Oh, no, no,” Lorenzo muttered. “I’m going to touch it, okay?”
When Lorenzo touched my ankle, the same sharp pain shot through my leg, and I cried out again.
