Wild About You

Chapter Twenty-Six

“Are we having fun yet?” Finn has the audacity to say an hour or twelve later, the most gorgeous, infuriating smile splitting his glistening face as I feel like I’m near death’s door. Not only have we rolled all six logs to the top of the hill, but, as our next instructions then laid out, we’ve stacked them into a staircase-like structure like the one I made of hay bales at the stables.

In other words, we reassembled the tree we’d just hacked up, just a little differently shaped.

“We’re having a great story to tell in couples therapy one day,” I snipe back. A rather wheezy snipe. I hear the camera operator snort-laugh, and it feeds the shameless attention-seeker within.

Then Finn lifts the hem of his T-shirt to wipe at his sweaty face, and it’s my turn to collapse. Unfortunately for me, the guy even perspires attractively.

Maybe all this exertion was worth it, I think to myself, in my exhausted, mildly disgruntled daze. Hundred thousand dollars or not. I have a hot partner, with arms that flex beautifully and a back that strained the confines of his T-shirt as he stacked the hell out of some logs, and isn’t that the real prize of it all?

Finn waves a hand in front of my face, looking at me like he’s worried I’ve come down with heatstroke.

“What?” I ask breathlessly.

“I asked if you’re ready for this,” he replies.

“Yes.”

A pause, in which I watch a drop of sweat travel down his neck. A nice neck. A—

“For climbing to the platform?” The impatience in his voice snaps me out of my stupor.

“Oh. Yes, that too.”

With Finn right behind me, I carefully work my way up our wobbly log stairs to the platform they lead to, affixed to a tree about ten feet off the ground. Waiting there is a tray of graham crackers, marshmallows, chocolate bars, and an orange envelope, all held by an official-looking person I don’t recognize.

“How are those hands doing right about now?” Finn asks once he’s torn open the next envelope, his eyes darting across the page of instructions. I look down at my palms, still bearing signs of the rope burn from a few days ago, but they’re more dirty than anything.

“Depends,” I answer warily. “Are they about to have to haul a log down this zip line?”

Fortunately, we get to leave the logs behind us from here on out. The long, scarily skinny wire looming like a specter behind the official stranger only needs to carry me and a small plate of s’mores on a relatively gentle but still terrifying descent to a platform farther down the trail. My hands’ job is to hold the plate steady enough to get to the other end with my s’mores completely intact, a task made much more difficult by the fact that we have no way to toast the marshmallows first. The three stacks—graham cracker on the bottom, chocolate bar, marshmallow, and graham cracker on top—are precarious enough without any sticky melted sugar goo holding them together.

In a way, I decide as the stranger who turns out to be the zip line attendant gets me all harnessed up and clipped to the wire, I find these uncooked s’mores relatable. What am I, if not a stack of shaky ingredients, barely holding it together, but made a little stronger every time I face the fiery intensity of my anxiety and fears, or every time Finn melts my insides a little by reminding me how great he thinks I am?

It’s possible I’m coming down with heatstroke after all.

When there’s nothing left for me to do but step off the platform, I take the—exceedingly careful and balanced—leap. It’s not as terrifying as I expected, flying over treetops with nothing but a flimsy metal string keeping me from becoming a splat on the forest floor. It’s not the fastest zip line, nor the steepest, only angled down enough to keep propelling me forward. And I’m too focused on keeping the plate still to feel anything but a nervous exhilaration, the wind whipping the sweaty wisps of hair at my temples into my eyes, chilling my skin all the way through my harness and damp tank top.

My eyes are so laser-focused on my kinda-s’mores that I barely notice the next platform is coming up in time to ready my feet for as soft a landing as I can manage. I don’t take another breath until I’m standing up straight again, processing what I see on my plate.

“IT’S GOOD!” I shout, like a commentator on all the football games my dad watches.

Finn, when he lands a couple minutes after me, is not so lucky, with all three graham cracker tops falling over. I can hear his creative, expletive-filled grumblings about how much he hates graham crackers for half his hike back up the hill, where he has to climb our stairs to the first platform and try again. His second trip down, the crackers redeem themselves, earning us the next envelope from the second zip line attendant.

From there, it’s clear we can both feel our team hitting our stride. I see it flash in Finn’s eyes as I hand over more lip balm–covered cotton pads assembled from my toiletry kit, and he uses them to quickly get a fire going in one of the familiar metal fire rings. It’s in the smile I can’t suppress while we toast the marshmallows as instructed.

When we get our next instructions, after speed-hiking to the end of our side trail where it meets back up with the AT, Finn reads them aloud, a smile stretching wider across his face with each word. “?‘Co-EdVenturers, this is your last leg—use it to make some trail magic for your fellow hikers. You’ll do this by handing out the six s’mores you’ve made, each to a different hiker you meet. You must find hikers willing to consume the s’more then and there, and they must finish it before you continue on. You have three miles from here to the checkpoint in which to distribute all your s’mores. See you at the finish line!’?”

I meet his hopeful grin with a gasp, raising the little storage container of s’mores I’ve been holding onto for reasons unknown until now. “I get to talk to people?!”

“Unless you want me to take the lead on this one,” he teases.

My laugh echoes off the trees as I begin to jog. “Here I was, thinking you wanted to win!”

I’m probably a little too confident in my sweet-talking abilities, and the universe decides it needs to humble me. It only takes interacting with the first few strangers to cross our path for team morale to sink.

“Where the fuck did all these hikers with food sensitivities come from?!” I screech when the latest guy to reject our s’mores is barely out of earshot. “Which is worse, Steve—you getting a wittle tummy ache from one square of chocolate, or me dropping out of college!”

The stifled snicker from the production crew peanut gallery is less gratifying in this instance. Finn takes my hand and squeezes as we resume our brisk pace.

“Plenty of trail left,” he says with a confidence I’m not quite feeling after three failed “trail magic” attempts. “We can absolutely do this.”

I definitely frighten every person I talk to from then on out, jumping down their throats with enough enthusiasm behind my “let me watch you eat my s’more” plea. They definitely think there’s s’more than just chocolate and marshmallows inside. But when I explain our situation as briefly as I can, the big TV camera beside me backing up my story, I start to get takers.

Turns out, making anyone stand there and let you watch them eat a room-temperature s’more you assembled a while ago is not the kind of beautiful connection with my fellow humans and hikers that I’d longed for when I first started walking the AT. Reviews aren’t glowing.

“Why is it kind of damp?” asks a decently good-looking twentysomething guy. Attractive or not, I don’t want to explain to him the concept of condensation when you put hot things in less-hot containers.

“I think this has some ash in it,” says a nice older woman a few minutes later, delivering the news apologetically.

“Thank god we don’t have a Yelp page,” I tell Finn after giving our third s’more out to a middle-aged man whose dismayed expression spoke volumes. “Why is torturing innocent hikers considered ‘trail magic’?”

“I’m sure if they understood the scope of the good deed they did today, it would feel more magical,” he offers.

I’m tired, and filthy, and sore in places I didn’t know could get sore. I know Finn is too. But he doesn’t complain. He stays patient with me when I have to slow down a little because of a stitch in my side or when I want to gripe about a total stranger’s gluten intolerance keeping them from eating graham crackers.

I know it’s a conscious effort to stay calm and positive. I’m acutely aware of what’s on the line, so much that I can’t let myself think about it, about all I have to lose. About the fact that we still haven’t seen Zeke and Enemi, and I have no clue if that’s a good or bad thing.

“I have to say,” Finn says while we speed-walk onward, apparently reading my mind, “it’s getting a little weird that we haven’t spotted the other team once since this morning. Like, did they only decide to cut their log in three pieces and do it in half the time we did? Or did they catch all six marshmallows on fire?”

“Yeah,” I agree. “Did a tree fall on Enemi, totally unrelated to the challenge, and crush all but the ruby slippers on her feet?”

“You sound a little too hopeful with that one.”

I shrug. Finn bumps his shoulder to mine with a laugh. “Point is, we don’t have a clue how close of a race we’re in.”

He doesn’t say it, but I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing—it feels closer by the minute.

It turns out I’m right about this, as we turn on a ridge that gives us a clear view of a section of trail we walked about ten minutes ago.

“NO!”Enemi’s shriek, coming only seconds after I’ve spotted her and Zeke back there and they’ve realized we’re in the lead, could probably be heard clear across the country. Hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail will be left wondering what kind of bird that far-off, irregular call came from.

“Is that the last guy we gave a s’more to?” Finn asks, referring to the familiar middle-aged man shaking his head—and holding out his hands defensively, for good measure—as he passes our competitors.

My laugh is delirious, a little unhinged, and too hopeful to be contained. “It is. Looks like he didn’t want seconds.”

This peek into the others’ progress, or lack thereof, reinvigorates us both. We begin jogging again, determined to keep our lead. Our fresh enthusiasm is rewarded when the trail magic fairies smile upon us, sending the two friendliest backpackers I’ve ever encountered straight into our path—and into our hearts forever when they take and eat our last two s’mores.

“Thank you so much!” I call as I walk backward toward the checkpoint and my two new best friends continue in the other direction, laughing and waving over their shoulders. It’s only the twelfth time I’ve said those words to them. “I’ll never forget you! Love you!”

Finn, a few feet ahead of me as he’s begun our final push to the finish with significant speed, lets out a funny combination of a laugh and a cough. “Wow,” he says, clearing his throat while I return to facing forward and speed-hike up to his side. “Should I have given you three some space?”

I sigh dreamily through my quickening breaths. “No, no. If it’s meant to be, we’ll find our way back to each other. And I need you around for the money we’re about to win!”

And it’s that single sentence that curses us. It must be, because not even half a second later, mid-laugh, Finn goes pitching forward, landing on all fours with a ground-shaking thud. I gasp as he rolls to his side, reaching toward his left foot then seeming to think better of it.

“Finn!” I drop to my knees beside him, gut twisting at the look of pain on his face. “Are you okay? What happened?”

“I”—he sucks in a sharp breath as he tries to bend his foot forward—“tripped on something. Think I hurt my ankle.”

I look back as our crew rushes closer. The producer starts asking him about pain levels from one to ten and if she needs to call medical backup. I’m frantic, replaying the last couple minutes in my head like I can roll them back and get a redo.

“I jinxed us!” I cry when the producer steps away to make a call on her sat phone. “The words ‘about to win’ had no business crossing my lips until we got to the checkpoint!”

He grimaces. “No, it’s obviously my fault. I should have watched where I was walking.”

“Well, I was distracting you by talking,” I argue.

“Uh, yeah, because I was talking too? We always are?”

How dare he insist on absolving both of us of guilt in this freak incident? If we’re about to lose the whole competition over this, I want something other than bad luck to blame.

“So is this it?” I say meekly. The producer has stepped away with her satellite phone to her ear, presumably to call for that elusive medical backup team.

But to my surprise, Finn sits up. “No way.”

“What?” I squeak. “How?”

Very carefully, almost in slow motion, he starts to stand. I make a bunch of incoherent noises of half-hearted protest, even as hope blooms inside me. Then he goes to put weight on his injured ankle and almost falls over, letting out a pained yelp.

Hope crashes to the ground, bursting into flames on impact.

“Nope, sit your sweet ass back down,” I command, even as it hurts like a sprained ankle.

“No,” he says, sharper than he’s been with me all day. Than ever, maybe. Softening his voice, he takes my chin to make me meet his serious gaze. “We’re ahead of Zeke and Alli, got rid of all our s’mores. We can’t give up, not when we’ve made it this far. All we’ve gotta do is hoof it to the finish line.”

“Yeah, with one busted hoof!” I retort.

Finn puts both hands on my shoulders, melting my insides with his molten chocolate stare. “What did Renée do when Wilder was losing consciousness from a snake bite, and the bad guys were closing in?”

My eyes widen. “What did who and who do when what?”

“Hot on Her Trail!” He snaps his fingers in front of my face and realization dawns. I’ve created a monster. “Keep up. Desperate to outrun their evil pursuers and get him to a doctor because, you know, snake bite, she found her inner strength to haul his mostly incapacitated body in a firefighter’s carry. Just in time, they made it to the safe house that happened to belong to a hot doctor–slash–Navy SEAL, who administered antivenin and kept them hidden from the bad guys until Wilder regained consciousness and could fight alongside him. They really set up Doctor SEAL as a future romantic hero, by the way—is the next book in the series about him?” Before I can answer, or really catch up to these ramblings, Finn shakes his head. “Not important right now. What is is that we don’t give up. Find that inner strength like Renée. Or like the you who was hauling logs twice your body weight like it was nothing. Help me hobble my way to the end of this thing.” He shrugs. “You never know when a surprise safe house is gonna appear.”

I can only look at him slack-jawed for a moment. But when he gives my shoulders a gentle shake and widens his pleading eyes, I feel his urgency and it moves me to action. “Okay, sexy forest ranger. Give me your pack.”

It’s the slowest race to a finish line Wild Adventures has ever seen. Or that any race has ever seen, really, except perhaps for that fabled tortoise-and-hare situation where slow and steady won. We are highly unsteady. With two packs strapped to my shoulders and hips like the most abstract, unwieldy butterfly costume ever made, I’m already top-heavy. Add my giant partner using me as his crutch, sending me swaying with every hop-step he takes, we’re a barely walking threat to public safety.

“At least this’ll be funny to watch back,” I offer, trying to lift my own spirits. I won’t let the full weight of this failure, this crushing loss, sink in until it’s official. But probably best to start easing into the impending letdown.

Finn squeezes my shoulders. “I’m telling you. The snake bite hasn’t killed me yet. Hot Dr. Forrester could be just around the corner.”

I laugh because the only other thing to do is cry, and I don’t want Finn to feel bad.

I feel fate catching up with us—or Zeke and Enemi, at the very least. I try to keep focusing on the good that’s come from this journey as we hop-step along. For example, Finn discovering his love of romance novels. I’ll have so much to share with him as he enters this exciting new chapter in his reading life.

It’s as I’ve started mentally crafting him a reading list that a few things happen at once. First, I hear them. Voices behind us, and not from the film crew.

“Zeke, if you don’t pick up the fucking pace, I swear—”

“Alli, if I keep hearing your voice in my nightmares for the rest of my life, you won’t even get to keep the hundred thousand, ’cause I’m suing you for emotional distress.”

Then we literally round a corner in the trail and I see it in the distance. A flash of orange waving between the trees, the exact shade and size of a Wild Adventures flag.

“Oh my god,” I whisper at the same time Finn says, “Is that…?”

“Oh my god!”Enemi shrieks once again, and I hate that we had the same reaction. “They’re right there, they’re right there, we can overtake them!”

“Does she think we can’t hear her?” I ask Finn, who is noticeably quickening his hop-stepping. I hurry to keep up.

Pounding footsteps get closer and closer, the curses I’m saying in my head get louder and louder.

Enemi zips by us, a witchy cackle echoing in her wake. “Wow, Natalie. Your clumsiness is contagious, huh?”

A menacing growl answers her, and it takes me a moment to register it’s coming from me, not Finn. No, he’s trying to whisper reassuring words in my ear, even as Zeke jogs past us too.

Still, Finn won’t let me just throw in the quick-dry camp towel. He moves from hop-steps to straight-up hopping, these bizarrely energetic, powerful, one-footed leaps, and it’s all I can do to shakily scurry alongside him.

The finish line flag grows more defined, Burke Forrester coming into view along with more crew around him. And when Enemi and Zeke run up to him, arms thrown into the air, we have front-row seats to their victory celebration.

“We were so close,” I say for Finn’s ears only, my voice already more of a whimper. We’re really less than a minute’s walk away. Maybe a little more as we slow to hop-steps again.

Finn presses a kiss to my temple. “I know. I’m so sorry, Nat.”

I want to drop these heavy bags we no longer need, just throw my arms around him and cry into his chest. Let him comfort me in our loss. But I also want to finish this thing with some dignity, and without either of us saying it, I know he wants that too.

When we finally get to the finish line, I expect Zeke and Enemi to step aside, if not to be humble in success then at least to get a better view of Burke telling us we’re losers. But they stay put, and if I’m not mistaken, they don’t look so over the moon just yet. They look antsy, expectant. Like they’re still waiting for the final verdict.

Seems a little weird, but I don’t remember at the moment how the show normally does this. If they always wait for both the final two teams to arrive, stand them together to say what everyone already knows—who got there first and who goes home with nothing. It’s harsh, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else.

I make sure Finn is steady, still not putting much weight on his injured ankle, before unclipping our packs and letting them both drop to the ground. That’s a relief, at least. I don’t have to carry one of these big-ass backpacks ever again if I don’t want to. It’s not the massive college scholarship that would change my life, but cold comfort is still comfort, right?

Free to do so, I nestle into Finn’s side. As his arm tugs me close, I wrap one of mine around his back. I reach up and put my other hand on his chest, right over his pure, beautiful, fiercely beating heart.

“Co-EdVenturers,” Burke Forrester begins, that higher-than-on-TV voice doing its best to be low and serious. “You’ve come so far on this journey, on foot and in your hearts…”

He loses me there. I tune out the platitudes, close my eyes, and listen to Finn’s heartbeat. Deep breath in, slow exhale. Think about the positives again.

It works fine enough, but tears still build up behind my shut eyelids and slowly make tracks down my cheeks. We were so. Close.

“What the FUCK?”

The eardrum-shattering scream interrupts my peaceful, almost meditative state. I jump and feel Finn’s whole body tense and stiffen. When I whip my head to the side, Enemi’s face shows nothing but rage. I think her eyes are actually shooting lasers at Burke Forrester. Next to her, Zeke is stunned, a hand frozen in his hair, pushing the strands in all directions.

I look to Burke, seeing if he’ll give me any clues as to what I missed here.

“Zeke, Alli. I’m sorry,” he says. And now I’m hearing my own heartbeat in my ears, my pulse quickly picking up. Is he saying what I think he is? “Per the rules of our competition, it isn’t only about making it here first, but correctly completing all parts of the challenge. When one of the s’more recipients did not eat the entire s’more, Alli threw what remained into the woods, in violation of the challenge’s instructions. As such, your team has not won Wild Co-EdVentures.”

While Enemi sputters like a malfunctioning cassette tape and Zeke gapes at her, apparently learning alongside the rest of us what she did, Burke angles himself toward Finn and me.

“Finn, Natalie,” he begins, a grin spreading across his orange face that I could actually kiss right now, if this is real. “As you successfully completed all parts of the challenge and made it here as a team, on top of an amazing performance throughout the whole season of Wild Co-EdVentures, you are the winners! Congratulations!”

I don’t have time to scream, cry, or even really think before Finn is kissing me. It’s a kiss I feel everywhere, from my fingertips at the nape of his neck down to my toes pressing grooves into the soles of my hiking boots. In every inch of my messy, emotional, beautiful insides.

It’s a kiss that shows everyone else what we already knew—that we won long before we got to the finish line.