Scot and Bothered

12. Now

12

NOW

Brooke woke in utter darkness to the sound of snapping , like wind whipping a flag. Only the flag was her entire tent.

The wind she’d been pleading for all afternoon to blow off the goddamn midges had arrived in full force, as loud as the roar of the ocean, as if she was sleeping on the beach in the middle of a storm surge. Except she was sleeping in a tent on rocky ground on the lightest air mattress money could buy.

Brooke could’ve sworn she heard the sound of fabric tearing. Sitting up, she felt along the top and sides looking for a hole, but didn’t find anything. As much as the wind sifted through the tent, stealing away the warmth from where her sleeping bag had fallen to her hips, she couldn’t find a distinctive draft anywhere, either.

Brooke’s feet ached, and her shoulders were probably bruised. Her eyes were scratchy from exhaustion. And every inch of her itched. She reached around in the dark and turned on her headlamp dangling from the arch of her tent to see how many more hours until dawn. Two in the morning.

Brooke threw herself back onto the miniature inner tube masquerading as her pillow, clenching her eyes shut as the wind continued to grab and shake her tent. She scratched at her itchy face before realizing what she was doing and curled her hands into fists. She was never going to get any sleep.

Fighting down the hopeless panic spiraling inside her, Brooke pulled out her notebook. Sometimes the only thing that soothed her was getting all her thoughts out on paper. She wrote down Jack’s comment about being far from nature and knew exactly where she could slot it into the draft. But she wasn’t feeling all that productive as she thought back over the rest of the day.

Now that she’d experienced the trail for herself, she could see how she’d portrayed it like those commercials with a woman traipsing through a meadow, but in reality it was a hellscape of death bugs and duplicitous, boggy soil. If that was the authenticity Mhairi wanted, then consider the job done. Brooke had a lot to fucking say.

Dear Trail Management,

On June 1st, I set off on the Skye Trail. I am writing this letter to bring to your attention that the quality of this trail has left much to be desired. Even a single signpost along the ridge would do. Surely, others have experienced foggy days on Skye and this should have been rec-tified by now.

Not to mention the mutant swarms of piranha flies you allow to roam freely, without providing the one-and-only insect repellant they are, in fact, repelled by.

To set matters right, I would like your company to provide me with a portable bug zapper that lights up in a satisfying way at the death of my foes and ensure that my ex must continue to wear his mesh hat that makes him look like an insect trapped in a toy bug catcher.

If you could do something about the wind, that would be great, too.

Sincerely,

Brooke Sinclair

306 Simon Square

Edinburgh, Scotland

Brooke heard something outside, a scuffling that wasn’t the wind. She tucked lower into her sleeping bag.

Once she’d gone night hiking with Chels and Kieran up Arthur’s Seat and gotten terrified by something lurking in the dark—a mountain lion or a black bear; her biggest fears growing up in Colorado. They’d laughed themselves silly when a rabbit hopped into the glowing sphere of her headlamp and they’d assured her everything ferocious had been wiped off the face of the British Isles centuries ago.

But still. There could be a hairy coo out there. She wouldn’t even want to come face-to-face with a fox in the night, if she was being honest.

Brooke’s name floated on the wind and a shiver snaked down her spine. Just in case the thought of peeling her own skin off from bug bites wasn’t enough to make her cry, the idea of ancient ghosts or water horses seeking her out in the dead of the night was sure to catapult her over the edge.

“Broooooke.”

She sucked in a breath and held it, listening hard through the beat of her own heart and the kerfuffle of the wind in her tent.

“Brooke, it’s Jack.”

Oh, fuck . Brooke blew out a breath and sat up to unzip her tent. “Are you trying to terrorize me?” Because seriously, if it wasn’t the debilitating backward hat or the personal attack of looking hot in zip-off hiking pants, he needed to freak her out in the night, too?

Jack stood in the whipping wind—much worse outside the tent—with a headlamp highlighting only the ridges of his perfect face. “I saw your light on. You alright?”

“No. This is awful.”

“Here.” He reached into the tent, palm up, and Brooke couldn’t make out what he offered her.

“What are those? Gummies?” Unclear if that would help her sleep or make her paranoid out of her mind, but it was a risk she was willing to take.

“Earplugs.”

She took the highlighter-orange foam from his outstretched hand. And hated that she was aware of the feel of his skin, of those hands that had cradled her face, roamed over her body. Hands that would never touch her again.

Brooke closed her fist around the earplugs, crushing them, but needing something to ground her in the present. “Thank you,” she managed to say, looking up into the light of his headlamp.

Jack sucked in a breath on a hiss, loud enough she could hear it over the wind.

“What?”

“Your face looks…painful. I’ve got some calamine lotion with me. Hold up,” he said and jogged off into the darkness. Brooke rolled back from where she’d been sitting on her knees.

It’d been too fortuitous to run into Jack in Mhairi’s office when she’d been put together, sparkly eye shadow and all. Of course he’d have to see her now, under a distilled fluorescent light, when she probably looked like she had chicken pox.

The little bubble of light reappeared, closely followed by Jack’s shadow. He crouched down at the edge of her tent, the wind ruffling his hair and tugging at his clothes. That gray hoodie had already been ancient when she’d last seen it. Soft and threadbare and just the right amount of cushion when she pressed her cheek into the hollow between his pecs. It probably smelled the same—sweet, like Pink Panther wafers and watermelon.

“Here,” he said, handing it to her. “Oh, you don’t have a mirror… I can do it.”

Kill me now .

She had the wrong bug spray, couldn’t actually read a map, hadn’t remembered earplugs. She should be able to do this herself. Resentment curled inside Brooke; she hated to rely on Jack of all people. But she’d have chalky pink lotion all over her sleeping bag or miss half her face if she tried to do it alone. “Thanks.”

Jack rocked back on his heels from the force of the wind, catching himself with one hand. The glow of the headlamp highlighted his black sweats stretched over his thighs, adding insult to injury.

She did not want him in her tent, in her space, but this wouldn’t work when the trail was so intent on destroying her. “Um…just come in.”

“Right.” Jack clicked off his headlamp and tipped his head to crawl into the tent.

Brooke didn’t move fast enough, pushing back onto her elbows, and suddenly Jack was above her, hands on either side of her waist, knees bracketing her thighs. She couldn’t feel his heat through her sleeping bag, but she imagined it. Could recall the slide of skin on skin so easily.

Her heartbeat pounded like a Wild West steam train and she was sure he could hear it when he looked down at her and froze, only the strings of his hoodie swinging. She had this memory—this impulse—to wrap them around her fist and pull him to her.

Jack cleared his throat, his gaze dropping to his hands as he tried to maneuver in the small space. Brooke rolled to the side, zipped the tent, and pulled her knees to her chest. She mentally added some choice words to her complaint letter to the Skye Trail Management, aka Mhairi, aka the devil.

Brooke’s headlamp hung from the loop at the peak of her tent and the light rocked and bobbed with the wind, casting a swaying halo over them. It was somehow too quiet inside, even with the wind, the sound of their breathing too loud.

Jack, kneeling beside her, uncapped the pink bottle and poured out a few drops onto the pad of his pointer finger. He touched spots along her forehead and nose. The bottle gurgled as he poured out more.

When his finger brushed her cheek, she closed her eyes against the ghost of memories that fought to remind her of all the times he’d stroked her jaw, hand slipping to the curve of her neck. He paused, his thumb resting on her chin, and she looked up at him.

“I lost things, too, you know.” Jack’s voice was faint, whisper soft.

“You were only in grad school because your dad pushed you. You didn’t even want it.”

“I did by the end. But I’m not talking about getting sacked. I’m talking about you . There’s a difference between fucking up and screwing someone over. You hurt me, too.”

His eyes were black in the dim light, dark pools full of desperation tugging at her.

She’d spent enough hours making eyes at Jack Sutherland. She could interpret what she saw in them with one hundred percent clarity.

It wasn’t the look of someone who’d never cared. It was the look of someone who still cared.

Brooke didn’t know what to do with that information, but she trusted that look more than the thousand times she’d tried to convince herself otherwise. It put a hard revert on all her memories with him she’d overwritten with one-sided infatuation and never cared like you did.

“I loved you and you disappeared.”

Brooke sucked in a breath. She’d felt it back then. Known on some bone-deep level. And the words he hadn’t said before settled softly around her heart even though they had no business being there. But she’d loved him, too, once. And maybe that kind of history couldn’t be unwritten or plastered over.

“You never told me you loved me.”

“I was waiting. I wanted it to be romantic and special. I wanted to do at least that one thing right.” Jack’s eyes went back to his work as he continued dotting her face. “I’m still trying to do something right. I know I can’t undo the past, but I’m trying here.”

She wasn’t sure if the soothing cold of the lotion was enough to erase the burn of his touch.

Maybe he deserved her anger and it sure as hell felt good to indulge in her rage, but she didn’t want to be this bitter person who lashed out just to see him bleed.

They didn’t have to be friends—they’d never been good at that anyway—but they could be acquaintances. She didn’t need to hold him at the barbed end of a spear.

When he finished, he gave a short nod. “Everything will look better in the morning,” he said, and slipped from her tent.