23. Graham
Graham
Of course, it turns out Serena is deathly afraid of thunderstorms.
“I’m sorry,” she chatters, curled up on my sleeping bag, her entire body shaking. “Does this make you think of me as more of a city girl?”
“No,” I lie, ignoring how my hands twitch to rub her shivering back. This is clearly affecting her. I wonder where the fear of thunder comes from.
At first, I’d thought we could wait out the first wave of the storm and try to make our way back down. It would be dangerous in the dark, but better than sitting here helpless and hoping the rain didn’t bring a mudslide in our direction.
Now, it’s obvious the storm isn’t letting up. Which means she and I are trapped in this tent either until it stops or until morning. Whichever comes first.
Not ideal. When I met her, she was on Ryan’s arm. Definitely not ideal, because she’s interesting.
Gorgeous, sure, but all the girls Ryan brings around are beautiful.
Every time I see him, he’s got a new one on his arm.
He doesn’t discriminate, either—curvy, tall, tiny, blonde, dark, freckled, tanned and speaking any language.
Once, he brought a girl he swore up and down was a plumber.
She spoke Portuguese and couldn’t tell us otherwise, but she was one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.
Far too beautiful to be a fucking plumber.
Serena is like that, but different. I see what Ryan likes about her.
I didn’t at first. At first, when she showed up late, the cloud of dust on the horizon slowly turning into a Chrysler Pacifica, of all things, I’d had a sinking feeling about the day.
Of course, Ryan had talked her up—he tried to get us to hire the plumber, too.
At that moment, before she even put her van in park, I decided I would just have to get through it and hire yet another photographer to get it right.
Maybe reach out to National Geographic, find someone with a real talent for nature photography.
But she surprised me.
Not when we first started, and she was complaining, and trying to kill herself with malaria, low blood sugar, and dehydration.
But Serena surprised me when we got to the grotto, and she froze.
It’s the feeling that makes me want to travel. That feeling, like being human is something bigger than just your body. I saw that feeling reflected in her.
It’s something I haven’t felt in a while. I suppose when you spend most of your life seeking out beautiful places, you start to forget to really appreciate them. I saw myself in her, and that’s right when she took that photo of me.
Before that, I’d thought she was the kind of girl to order plastic eucalyptus from Amazon and drape it around her apartment. The kind of person who books a trip to Yosemite and ends up taking a few pictures the first day and spends the rest of the time in a luxury cabin on her phone.
Serena is a city girl, or, at the very least, she’s not the outdoorsy type. She wrinkled her nose at my backpacker’s food and could barely keep up with me on the hike.
But when she got to the waterfall, she felt so much that I felt it, too. Leaking out of her pores, spilling out onto the floor of the cave. She’s actually the kind of person who appreciates beauty, with a passion for her art that mirrors mine for protecting our natural resources.
Then, right after I started to see her in a different light, she insisted on stripping down to her black bra and panties and plunging into the cold water.
I’d had to grit my teeth to keep from looking. To keep from getting in that water with her, sliding my hand over her hips, learning exactly how she likes to be touched.
Now, another clap of thunder sounds, and Serena jumps. I hear her forcing a deep breath, watch her clutch the blanket tighter around her, despite it being over seventy degrees in here and so humid.
“Hey,” I say, loyalty to Ryan running thin at this point. He’s with a million women—what will it matter to him if I cross the line with just one? Plus, comforting her is far from crossing the line. “You?—”
It’s as if my touch throws open a door for her. Like a cat, Serena turns and practically crawls along my arm until she’s basically sitting in my lap. Now I force myself to take a breath.
“Sorry,” she chokes again, squeezing her eyes shut and burrowing into my chest. “Trust me, I know how embarrassing this is. I’ll discuss it with my therapist later. When I’m not shitting myself.”
“You’d better not be,” I say, thumb sliding over her skin, “if you’re going to stay in my lap.”
She flushes, eyes fluttering open, her gaze meeting mine, and I realize I’ve let my hands fall to her hips. God, when was the last time I felt like this about a woman?
I always feel the need to protect women—people, in general, actually—but there’s something about Serena that hits differently.
Like she doesn’t just need protecting, but attention, light and water, time and nurturing.
There’s something inside her that is begging for connection, and I recognize it because I have that, too.
My face lowers toward hers. I watch her blink, her eyes darting over my face like she can’t take it in all at once. God, the things I could do to her, for her, right now.
Maybe it’s what she needs to calm down. Something to take her mind off the storm.
With my face near hers, noses touching, I ask the thing that’s been weighing on me since I first saw her standing there with Ryan. “Why do you look so familiar to me, Serena?”
I half expect her to say something about us having known each other in previous lives. I’ve certainly been with women who have said far stranger things, and it might help to explain the way I feel about her now.
But, to my utter and complete disappointment, the soft look in her face disappears, and her entire body stiffens under my hands. Then, she says, “I… I meant to say something earlier. I’m actually—I was dating your brother.”
I blink at her, instantly thinking Travis, because now that I think about it, she seems like the kind of woman he might be interested in. A little young for him, sure, but also beautiful, passionate, and intense.
Then it dawns on me that I have seen her before—once, when I stopped by Alex’s place to pick up an old tent he was donating to the organization.
He’d acted like he had something to hide inside the house, and when I peered in through the window, I’d seen her there on the couch.
Why did it take me so long to realize where I’d seen her before?
“Right,” I say, lifting her up and out of my lap. I can’t be any closer to her—can’t be doing this with Alex’s ex-girlfriend. It’s one thing to flirt with Ryan’s girl, especially since he’s got so many of them, but it’s different with my brother.
It’s not like Alex and I are best friends, but we’ve always been closer than he and Travis. As the middle kid, maybe I’ve got a little more understanding of both of their positions.
“Sorry,” Serena says. The good news is that she’s no longer focused on the storm raging around us. The shitty thing is the way she looks at me now, with obvious wanting on her face, even a tiny bit of hurt. Like I’ve turned her down for any other reason than familial loyalty.
“Nothing to be sorry for,” I say, even as I put distance between us. Not her fault, but I’m also not crossing that line with her.
“So,” Serena asks, clearing her throat from the other side of the tent. She might as well be on the other side of the world now. “What was Alex like? Growing up?”
I decide that talking to her about this isn’t crossing the line. Plus, it will help distract her further and keep her from trembling in fear.
So I tell her about Alex’s entitlement, his mother—Priscilla—being our father’s final wife. Since his death, she’s had a lot of fun blowing through every penny of her inheritance. The only thing she hasn’t been able to touch is our trusts.
Quietly, under the hum of rain against the tent, I tell her about Travis’s disdain for our father, how he was ruthless with my older brother, harder on him than on Alex and me.
I surprise myself by wanting to share my past with her, to talk about what it was like to grow up as an Oakley.
Despite Serena smelling like roses and despite the way my body longs to be closer to hers, I draw the line at talking. I keep my hands to myself for the rest of the night.
But when we get down off this mountain, I’ll be calling my brother to find out what the hell he did to lose a woman like this.