12. Lila
TWELVE
LILA
“Do you want to read for a while?” If my voice comes out squeakier than usual, Grant doesn’t seem to notice.
I might be freaking out ever so slightly over the idea of sharing a tent with him. He’s been nothing but gentlemanly and kind, and I know he’s not expecting us to get frisky in there. Still…my stomach’s swarming with butterflies that aren’t entirely the happy kind.
“Actually, I wanted to try one last time to show you something fun. If you’re up for it.”
In the fading light, Grant somehow looks more earnest than ever. Like he really, truly needs to help me find something good to take home from this journey. It’s endearing and oh, so sweet. I get the feeling I could say yes to anything he suggested and be perfectly safe as long as he’s right there with me.
“It’s not a night swim, is it?” I tease. “I heard leeches like the darkness.”
“It’s not a night swim, but it does require the cover of darkness.”
“Ooh, ominous. Is it a bird sacrifice?”
That throws him off. “You think I would kill a bird?”
“I was thinking the birds would sacrifice me.”
He grins. “That doesn’t sound like fun. I want to walk a little deeper into the woods and stargaze for a while.”
“Oh. I’ve never done that before.”
“I figured. You won’t get a view like this in the city because of all the light pollution. What do you think? Join me?”
I look out into the trees. In our immediate vicinity, it’s still twilight, but beyond our camp circle, it already looks pretty dark. My mind fills with creatures great and small. Most of them have fangs. “Is it safe?”
“We won’t go far, and I’ll have my bear spray at the ready.”
“That wasn’t a yes.”
He tilts his head down, fighting a smile. “I’ll keep you safe, princess.”
A tremor runs through me, but I tell myself it’s only because of the falling temperature. “I guess I’m up for it.”
He looks me over. “Is this the warmest gear you have?”
I’m in my fleece-lined leggings, long-sleeved nightshirt, and fleece jacket. “You don’t think it’s enough?”
Crouching, he rummages around in the tent before reappearing with something in his hands. “Here.”
He slips a knit beanie over my head. I’ve kept my hair in two braids since the swim yesterday, and after he rights the hat, he runs his hands over their ends. “That should help.”
He pulls a similar hat down on his own head. Now he’s all blue eyes, huge smile, and beard. I kind of miss the dimple, but the beard is winning me over.
“Wait—this is even more stuff you’re not supposed to have!” I whisper-shout it, but I think he gets the point.
“And I regret nothing. You look good wearing my hat. Ready?”
I’m…flustered. Speechless. Delightfully warm.
He grabs a flashlight and zips his tent closed before heading along the path we took to find the mountain views this afternoon. The rest of camp is quiet. Mitchell’s about to climb into his tent as we pass.
“Don’t go too far,” he says like a true camp dad.
Grant acknowledges him with a wave. “We won’t.”
The deeper we go along the path, the darker it gets. Soon, I’m struggling to keep from tripping over imaginary rocks and tree roots. “I can’t see anything.”
Grant stops and takes my hand. I cling to his arm, committing his biceps to memory.
“Sorry. It’s not much farther.”
He’s right—my stomach’s still soaring from the warmth of his hand and the press of his arm when we reach a small clearing. He leads us to a fallen log, and after checking it for anything unexpected, we sit down.
“Do you do this a lot?” I ask.
He flicks off the flashlight and turns to me in the sudden darkness. “Lead women into the forest?”
I nudge him with my shoulder. “Go stargazing.”
He nods—I think. My vision’s still swimming from the aftershocks of the flashlight glare.
“I noticed this spot on our walk. Seemed like a good place.”
“How often do you go on trips like this?” Obviously it’s a lot, if Mitchell’s claiming he’s climbed half the mountains in the country.
“A couple of times a year. I took a lot more when I was younger.”
“How old are you? You keep talking about your younger years as if you’re ready for retirement.”
He turns his face toward me in the dark. I can’t see his features anymore, only shadowy outlines of black on black. “Thirty-six.”
“You’re right, that is pretty old.” I nudge him again because apparently, I can’t stop teasing him. “I’m thirty, so I’m still in the prime of life.”
“No argument there.”
After a minute, he looks up at the sky, and I do the same.
My breath pauses on its way through my lungs. Hundreds—thousands—of stars spread over us like a glittery blanket. A lighter haze shines directly overhead creating billowy, glowing clouds. I don’t have words to describe how beautiful it is.
“Is that the Milky Way?” I ask.
In my peripheral vision, Grant hums confirmation.
“I’ve never seen it before.”
I stare at the sky as though I can drink it in. As though I need to memorize this view so I can carry it with me always. Obviously, I always knew they were out there. I’ve seen stars before. But I’ve never seen anything like this .
Something moves on my face, and I brush it away. It takes me a second to realize I’m crying. I laugh softly at my silly, overdramatic response, but I don’t take my eyes off of the stars.
“It’s so beautiful.” I barely whisper the words, because that’s all I’ve got.
Grant’s hand finds mine in the darkness again and holds tight. “The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”
I don’t know how long we stare in silence. Long enough for me to count three shooting stars. Long enough for my shoulder to sag against Grant’s. And long enough for me to get a really nasty crick in my neck, but it’s worth it.
“Thanks for coming out here with me,” he says. “I can’t remember the last time I relaxed like this.”
I drag my eyes away from the star-studded show above us. “But you do outdoorsy things all the time.”
“I do. But sometimes all the hikes and campouts and mountain climbs are more of a distraction than something I truly experience. ”
“What are you trying to distract yourself from?” I ask softly.
He inhales long and deep. Somewhere in the darkness, crickets chirp. Maybe my question went too far?
But he finally answers. “A few years ago, I had a relationship that ended suddenly. Totally blindsided me. For a while after that—too long, really—I wanted to think about anything else. I climbed a lot in that first year, but I couldn’t tell you much about what I saw or did. I only knew I needed to get out of my head.”
“You really loved her.” I don’t even mean to say it, and I hope it doesn’t sound like I want to pour salt in his wound. But just telling me a few quick sentences about it, I can hear in his voice how deeply this affected him.
Josh started dating again the same week I gave him back his ring. Considering the circumstances, I’m not sure he ever stopped.
“I thought I loved her. Now, I don’t know if that was really love. I think I wanted it to be more than it was.”
I understand that too well. For a while, Josh was everything to me. My favorite obsession who seemed equally obsessed with me. But now, I’m not sure that image of perfection was real love, either. Maybe it’s been tainted by everything that happened afterward. Or maybe my feelings for him were never as deep as I’d hoped they were.
“I’m sorry.” I squeeze his hand that still grips mine. “She sounds like she didn’t know how good she had it.”
I’ve only known him four days, but this is not a man you walk away from easily. I don’t want to say goodbye to him tomorrow, and she dropped him after they were together who knows how long? Impossible.
Even in the darkness, his small smile stands out. “Thanks.”
I turn my face up to the stars. “I didn’t move back to Sunshine because I missed my family. I did miss them, but…I fo und out my fiancé was cheating. The old classic. He sent a text to me that was supposed to go to her. Rookie mistake.”
Every other weekend after he proposed, he would send me to the spa for a massage or to get my nails done. My girlfriends were all jealous of how Josh spoiled me. I thought it was a sign of how much he loved me—I never dreamed it was an excuse to get me out of the house. Until the day I got the message he’d meant to send to her.
She’s gone. We’ve got at least two hours. Get here as quick as you can, baby.
Baby. He’d never called me baby. Not that I’d wanted him to—it’s not my favorite endearment. Even knowing that, I’d stared at the text message for agonizing minutes, desperate to make it mean anything else. My stomach had rolled and a sickness like I’d never known sank deep in my chest, but I couldn’t bring myself to go straight home and catch him in the act.
“At first, he tried to deny it. I was reading it wrong, obviously the message didn’t mean anything. Then, I think he just wanted me to accept it, you know? Like this was part of the package deal with him. ‘All guys do it,’ he’d said. So, I broke things off.”
The break had been coming on for a long time, but I couldn’t just smile and overlook cheating like I had for so much else.
“I was immediately replaced at my job because I was dumb enough to work for him. I moved out of his apartment and had to resort to couch surfing. And to make it even worse, most of my friends sided with him when the dust settled.”
Of course they did. Everybody wants to be on Joshua Brandt’s good side. Tech genius, media darling, one of Seattle’s rising stars. Nobody was going to choose me in that scenario.
Grant’s thumb traces patterns over the back of my hand, grounding me .
“It sounds so stupid, but a few months ago, I had everything . Now, I’m back in my hometown, trying to claw my way into a decent job, and wishing I could live up to the Lila everybody thinks I am. Sometimes I feel like a teacup that nobody realizes has been smashed and broken.”
He lets go of my hand, and for half a second, fear worms its way into my chest. I’ve said too much. I’m too much work. He’s going to walk away and leave me here in the wilderness.
But he wraps his arm around my shoulders, holding me tightly against him. “You’re not broken, princess.”
I stare at the stars and pretend the fresh tears falling down my cheeks are because of the night sky’s overwhelming beauty instead of a very different sense of overwhelm.
“Sounds like he didn’t know how good he had it,” Grant says.
I sniffle but have to laugh, too. “That’s not as comforting as I thought it would be when I said it.”
“He sounds like a complete idiot who didn’t deserve you. I’d like to meet up with him and say some choice words. Is that better?”
“That’s much better.” I lay my head on his shoulder and relax against him. “What are the choice words?”
“‘I am going to punch you in the face.’”
“Eloquent.”
We look at the stars for a while longer. I don’t know why, but my heart feels a little bit lighter. Is that all it takes? Confessing my deepest hurts and humiliations to a mountain man? I’ve been carrying around all this guilt from the breakup, counting it as one more piece of evidence that I’m a fraud. That’s not gone , but right here and now, it can’t touch me.
“This is it,” I tell Grant. “This is the good part of the journey. ”
Even if I don’t get the promotion, this moment under the stars makes the whole trip worth it.
To be clear—I have no idea what I’ll do if I don’t get that promotion. But I wouldn’t trade this moment for anything else.
He holds me tighter, and I swear his lips brush against my temple. “It’s the good part for me, too.”
I don’t know if confessing our past heartbreaks makes climbing into adjoining sleeping bags an hour later better or worse. I shimmy into mine as quickly as possible, trying to make room for Grant to get comfortable, too. The shh-shh of our sleeping bags slipping against each other feels crazy loud in the stillness. We lie down as though it isn’t thoroughly awkward to share this kind of space after knowing each other a handful of days.
Maybe it isn’t awkward. Maybe co-ed stranger sleeping arrangements are normal on long hiking trips. It’s just that none of this feels quite normal. But Grant’s totally unaffected.
That’s a good thing. He’s not making this weird. Somehow, though, him being calm is just amplifying my weirdness. I can’t explain it.
I watch him as well as I can in the darkness. “Are you facing me?”
“This is the side I sleep on.”
“This is the side I sleep on.” We’re lying face-to-face in a tiny tent. Okay…that’s not troublesome at all. “We’re going to breathe on each other.”
This isn’t what I’m worried about, but it’s not like I can just say, Hey, what are the odds we wind up tangled against each other in the night? Or, more concerningly, What if sleeping cuddled next to you is exactly as cozy and comfortable as I imagine it would be, and it ruins all other sleeping arrangements for me forever?
I’ve been doing a lot of imagining lately.
He chuckles softly. “I’m not worried about you breathing on me, princess.”
“I get really bad morning breath.”
“I’ll survive.”
He should really take the threat more seriously, but I guess that’s on him.
“What if I have a nightmare and kick you in the night?”
A pause. “Do you get a lot of nightmares?”
“Mostly about birds.” I chew the inside of my cheek. “If you hear any snoring, just assume it’s all Scott, okay?”
The tiny little laugh I force out edges close to hysterical.
He props himself up on one elbow. “Would you feel better if I slept in your tent?”
“What?” I snake an arm out of my sleeping bag and pull him back down onto his mat. “No, I don’t want you to go.”
He settles back down again. “Then what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.” I snuggle myself deeper into my sleeping bag, grateful for the darkness. “You’re just really unbothered about all of this.”
“Princess.” The nickname comes out in a low rumble. “I am anything but unbothered about sleeping next to you.”
A glowing spark of adrenaline pinballs through my body. Wow .
“Oh. Okay, then.” I duck my face into my sleeping bag, hiding the huge grin he can’t see anyway. “As long as we’re on the same page.”
He exhales a soft laugh. “Goodnight, princess.”
“Goodnight, mountain man.”