27. Frankie
TWENTY-SEVEN
Frankie
I doubled over, gasping for breath for what felt like the ninetieth time this hike. We’d started this as a group but everyone was out of sight by this point. Everyone aside from Harrison. I’d tried to force him to go on ahead, but he wouldn’t hear of it.
“I hate hiking,” he’d said, waving off my comment as if it were ridiculous.
The rest of the group had been twenty feet in front of us for a while. Then it was thirty, then forty. Now they were out of sight.
Oliver was definitely at the front, arm in arm with Elise. The thought made me more nauseous than the hike. I grabbed my water bottle and took another sip.
“We’ll still get there before sunset,” Harrison said, squinting toward the direction of the end of the hike.
“Thank God. I was so worried,” I said, still bent over.
The corner of his mouth lifted. “It’ll be worth it at the end. At least, that’s what Lila always says.”
“She seems like a glass-half-full type of gal.” I straightened up and took one big inhale through my nose before starting on the hike again.
“She definitely is.” Harrison was gruff and covered in tattoos. It would be a lie to say I hadn’t been intimidated by him at first. But the way he watched Lila, always making sure she was okay and not overexerting herself, the way he couldn’t stop his eyes from lighting up anytime he looked at her or anytime her name was brought up—it immediately made me feel comfortable around him.
I was still confused as hell about how this was Oliver’s best friend though. The two couldn’t be any more different.
“She and Oliver probably have a lot in common,” I said.
“They’re exhausting together,” Harrison admitted. “I finally got a break when he left for Key Ridge.” Even as he said those words, it was obvious he missed his friend.
“I can imagine that,” I joked, then quickly backtracked. “I mean, it’s not like I know him that well or anything. He just seems like the type.”
Harrison and I made brief eye contact before I ripped my gaze away to focus on my feet. The view at the end better be worth it because my only view going up was the ground. If I looked up for even a second, I stumbled.
“Look.” Harrison let out a sigh. “I’m going to be straight with you. Oliver told us everything.”
That halted me in my tracks.
“What?” I asked shakily.
“He told us that you two have been hanging out and that he likes you. He said you wanted to keep it a secret, but you should know that Oliver cannot keep a secret to save his life.”
I gripped my backpack straps, feeling silly and unsure of what to say next. Of course it had been a stupid suggestion. I should have realized that as soon as I said it, but once it was out, I couldn’t take it back .
“I feel like an idiot,” I admitted.
Harrison didn’t look apologetic, he simply shook his head. “Don’t. Oliver isn’t the best communicator. I’m not surprised he’d land himself in a situation like this.”
“But I’m supposed to be the good communicator.” I tilted my head back and groaned. “This is probably the worst first impression I could possibly make.”
Harrison shrugged. “I like you so far.”
“You do?” I asked skeptically.
He’d been hanging back with me on the hike, but we’d mostly walked in silence. He wasn’t much of a talker, and I wasn’t much of a pusher. If someone wanted silence, who was I to deny them that?
“You’re relaxed. You aren’t trying to be anyone but yourself. Oliver brings around a lot of girls.” He winced as soon as he saw me cringe at his words. “Shit, forget I said that. My only point is, let’s just say I’ve seen my fair share of girls who’ve tried to fake an interest to get his attention. Pretend to be this bubbly girl that loves to snowboard or rock climb. It gets old.”
I blew out a breath. “He took me snowboarding and I pretended my wrist injury was worse than it was just to get off the mountain and stop falling on my ass.”
To my genuine shock, Harrison let out a low chuckle. “See? I like that. That’s the kind of shit I would do.”
“Well, I probably ruined it all. I’ve been acting like a weirdo all week, and now he’s up at the front talking to his dream girl.”
Harrison squinted. “Who? Elise?”
I nodded. “She’s stunning and perfect for him.” I waved my hands in the air, not even caring that I sounded insecure. “They’re about to go work at the same place all summer. It’s practically destiny. ”
Harrison paused before staring up ahead. “I don’t know about all that. What I do know, is he wouldn’t stop talking about you the entire drive up here.”
“Probably about what a basket case I am.”
“Maybe a little,” he admitted, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “But it was mostly about how he needed things to stop being weird between the two of you. You’ve got him majorly stressed out. I’ve never seen him like that.”
We walked in silence for a bit before Harrison continued.
“We’ve been best friends for almost our entire lives. The way he grew up…he didn’t exactly have a lot of people in his corner.”
“I know,” I whispered. “He told me about his parents—what it was like growing up with them.”
Harrison’s eyes widened a little at that. “He never talks to anyone about his parents.” He sighed before continuing. “He might try to come across as this chill guy who doesn’t have a care in the world, but he’s the most loyal person I’ve ever met. You can always count on him when it matters. Don’t let his act fool you.”
“I don’t,” I said, meaning it. Oliver was a lot more to me than some free spirit.
Guilt twisted inside my stomach. I hadn’t wanted to make him stressed out about us. This was all wrong. We should be savoring our short time together. He should be the one back here, giving me a hard time while I struggled on this hike. We should be cuddled up by the fire together later tonight. I’d gone and messed it all up.
Our hiking boots hitting the dirt path was the only sound other than the distant chatter of the hikers in front of us.
“Do you think I’m too late to fix it?” I asked quietly.
“I think as far as Oliver is concerned, you’d probably never be too late to fix it.”
“We did it,” I gasped when we reached the clearing.
The rest of the group stood with their backs to us, looking out at the vast view. The sun was only inches from poking itself behind the tallest mountain range.
“Nice,” Harrison said. “I knew we’d make it.”
“Did you?” Oliver’s voice startled me as he stood from a nearby rock at the end of the trail and walked toward us. “Because I was five minutes away from heading back there and making sure one of you didn’t get attacked by a mountain lion or something.”
“We did our best,” I said, breathless from the hike and also from Oliver looking down at me with those piercing dark-brown eyes.
“Let the record show I could have gone a smidge faster,” Harrison said, backing away from us toward Lila and the rest of the group.
“Traitor,” I called after him.
He smiled before he turned and wrapped an arm around Lila’s shoulders.
Oliver watched his best friend retreat before returning his gaze to me. “You two seemed to have gotten along okay.”
“Yeah. We did,” I panted, wanting nothing more than to wrap my arms around him and breathe everything about him in. But a divide existed between us. One of my own making.
“Can we talk?” he asked, his expression unsure but inviting all the same.
“Please,” I said.
He loosely grabbed my hand and tugged me along next to him. We walked away from everyone else to the other side of the ledge. A fallen log lay facing the view like a bench. We sat on it, and he faced me instead of the beautiful view .
“Why are you trying to avoid me?” he asked.
Goosebumps pricked along my neck. “Getting straight into it, huh?”
“Aren’t you the one who says I need to do that more?”
“Right, of course.” Nerves bundled inside me, and I ran my hands along my leggings to calm them.
“Look at me,” he whispered.
When I met his eyes, they were staring at me intently.
“I’m sorry. This is such a mess.” I offered him a weak smile. “I guess I started to panic.”
His eyes widened. “Because of me?”
“Kind of?” I inhaled, letting the chill in the air ground me. “I like you, Oliver.”
“I like you too,” he said, not missing a beat and causing fireworks to go off in my stomach as a result.
“And we’re both leaving soon—I mean, assuming I get this job?—”
“You’ll get it,” he interrupted.
“It’s confusing,” I blurted out. “I know this is temporary and nothing about us makes any sense, but all I can think about lately is how sad it’s going to be to say goodbye to you. And I don’t know, I guess that freaked me out. I didn’t want to get any more attached than I already was.”
“So you stepped away,” he finished, blowing out a breath.
“Yes,” I admitted.
“Well, I’m going to be blunt. That sucked.”
“For me too,” I added hurriedly. “I’ve been miserable all week. Then on this trip, all I want to do is be close to you. But seeing you with Elise and how perfect you two would probably be together stung. It’s such a reminder that we don’t fit at all.”
His eyebrows scrunched together. “Elise?”
“Yes, she’s like the female you.” My eyes dropped to my hands but jerked up again at the sound of Oliver’s laughter .
“Lila was right,” he muttered.
“What?” I croaked out.
He shook his head. “She said you were jealous. I told her there was no way.”
“Jealous is a strong word,” I said, even though that was the exact emotion I was feeling earlier today.
His fingers grazed my chin before he forced me to tilt my face up again. “Elise is just a friend.”
“For now.”
“I think her girlfriend would beg to disagree with you on that.”
My lips formed a soft “O.” “Girlfriend?”
“They’ve been dating a few years now.”
“Oh.” I felt even stupider than I had before.
“And you seriously think I would flirt with some girl right in front of you?” He narrowed his eyes, looking disgusted at the thought.
I shrugged helplessly. “We’ve never defined anything or set labels or?—”
“We might be confusing, but we’re sure as hell exclusive, I can tell you that much,” he said forcefully.
His words made me snap my mouth shut, and I instantly melted.
“And what makes you think I want the female version of me, huh?” he asked.
“So they can keep up with you.”
“You’re wrong. All I want is you.”
My heart raced as he leaned into me.
“I like dragging you on things you don’t want to go on. I like that you challenge me in ways that have nothing to do with my physical ability. I’ve genuinely loved every second we’ve spent together, and they still aren’t enough. ”
I tried to mentally ignore his use of the big “L” word, but my heart couldn’t seem to let it go.
“Can we stop being weird with each other?” he begged. “I’m sorry that I can’t offer you more than right now. Trust me, the past few weeks I’ve been wishing that I was some hedge-fund, Wall-Street-type guy who could just move with you to New York and get some job and fit right in. But that’s not me. You’d never ask me to change, just like I’d never want you to change. We might not have forever, but can we stop wasting the time that we do have?”
His words simultaneously excited me and broke my heart. They were the best things he could have said in the moment, yet part of me still wished he could come up with some grand plan. Some miracle that would allow us to be together despite every obstacle in our way.
“What do you say?” he pleaded.
“I say, I’m done pushing you away.”
His mouth covered mine in an instant. His lips were warm and inviting against mine. I hated that I’d tried to deny myself this. With my career-obsessed self, maybe I wouldn’t get another feeling like this for a very long time. Oliver was special.
We rejoined the rest of the group and watched the sun disappear behind the mountains, resulting in an explosion of color. Oliver pulled me into him and held me close the entire time.
The hike back down wasn’t quite as strenuous as the hike up. Oliver stuck with me the whole way, making sure my headlamp was attached properly and forcing me to grab his arm so that I didn’t trip over anything.
“You really are terrible at this,” he said with a laugh when we finally reached the bottom, at least fifteen minutes behind everyone else. They’d already formed a circle around a crackling fire and I could see marshmallows being passed around.
“You know what I’m not terrible at? Sitting my ass around a fire.”
Oliver grinned and planted a kiss on top of my head.
When I went to go find my camping chair, he stopped me and sat down in his before pulling me into his lap.
“You’re not getting away from me the rest of the weekend,” he said into my hair.
“Get a room, you two,” Mattie said, smiling at me when I looked up at her. She was sitting next to Giles, leaning into him.
“How about a tent?” Oliver asked.
I chuckled and swatted his chest.
This felt so unbelievably right.
“Looks like you set up that extra tent for no reason,” Oliver said to Giles, wrapping his arms around my waist and hugging me to him.
“I helped set it up,” I insisted.
“No, she didn’t,” Giles said, and we all laughed.
Lila launched into a story about the last time she and Harrison had gone on a hike when they were stuck together in Greece. I listened, captivated.
“I love this,” Oliver whispered into my ear so that only I could hear. There he went again. Tossing out that “L” word so casually.
“You were right about camping,” I said.
“Oh? Say that again.”
I giggled as he pinched my side. “You were right. I’m glad I came.”
“Now we just have to sit out here for an appropriate amount of time before we can go back to the tent. It’ll be chilly tonight, but if we strip naked and get into the same sleeping bag, we should stay warm.”
“Huh, that sounds convenient for you,” I teased, turning my face so that I could see the playful glint in his eyes.
“Well, I am the expert. You really shouldn’t argue with me.”
“It’s not like we can do anything with everyone’s tents right here,” I whispered.
He lifted a finger. “I put our tent at the far end of the site, by the river. Wanted to make sure we had a little privacy.”
I looked to where he pointed, and he was right. The tent was all by itself.
“Why’d you put it all the way over there when we weren’t even planning to share?”
He let out a snort at that. “Please, Frankie, give me some credit. I was never going to let you sleep on your own.”
I rolled my eyes but my smile widened.
The rest of the evening wound down and soon we were all headed to our designated tents.
The hike and the emotional warfare I’d been having with myself had me absolutely exhausted.
Oliver led me to the tent, my fingers threaded loosely in his. I hadn’t had anything to drink tonight, but I felt buzzed. High on life, or whatever the saying was. I could do this every weekend with him. Getting lost in a new place. Seeing the beauty of nature. I had been all wrong about camping.
The evening got even better when we climbed into the tent and Oliver’s wandering hands slowly traced circles all over my body.
When he kissed my stomach, I gasped, wanting more. Never would I have thought that I’d want to sleep with a man on the ground, but Oliver made this feel like the most comfortable thing in the world. Happiness didn’t even begin to cover it.
We continued exploring each other, slowly stripping ourselves of our layers in the process. When he finally slid inside me and started moving, my hips eagerly went up to meet his. It felt familiar. It felt whole. I had to bite back my moans of pleasure as I wrapped both of my legs around his waist.
I’d never get sick of this—that I was sure of.
After we both tumbled into our shared ecstasy, Oliver rolled over and tucked me into his side. Everything surrounding us was cold, but he was warm as I nestled into his body.
Perfect.
The only word I could think of.
Perfect… and momentary.
Despite the bliss I was in, a hot tear formed in the corner of my eye as Oliver pressed his face against the top of my head and we both drifted off to sleep.