11. Ivy
eleven
Ivy
Silver Bell looks like it did last time, which is to say like something out of an old photograph that decided to stay standing.
Weathered buildings lean at angles that shouldn't work but somehow do.
Grass has reclaimed most of what used to be the main street.
The mountains rise up behind it all, indifferent to the fact that people once thought this patch of dirt was worth building a town around.
“So this was a real town,” Nolan says, turning in a slow circle. “Like, people lived here.”
“Couple thousand, at the peak,” Trevor says. “Silver Bell mine opened in the 1880s. Whole place sprang up around it. Store, saloon, hotel, the works.”
“School too,” Dani says.
Cassidy's more interested in whether the place is haunted than in its actual mining history, which she brings up twice before Trevor tells her everywhere in Montana is haunted if you ask the right person.
Tessa gets her phone out. “Group photo. Before the ghosts get camera-shy.”
We cluster in front of the old general store, or what's left of it, everyone shuffling into some rough approximation of a photogenic arrangement. I end up next to Beck, close enough our shoulders touch. Tessa snaps a few. I don't think much of it. It's just one more photo in a summer full of them.
After that, the group scatters. Nolan wants to see everything, dragging Cassidy and Trevor toward the old hotel. Tessa, Dani, and Reid head for the saloon, arguing about which building was the most important one.
I look toward the trail that climbs past the last of the buildings, up toward where the mine itself used to be. “I want to see the mine trail.”
Beck falls into step beside me without discussion.
“This building's ancient,” I say, nodding at a leaning storefront as we pass it.
“I lived in Germany,” Beck says. “This isn't ancient.”
“Fine. Montana old.”
The trail climbs steadily once we leave the main cluster of buildings, rockier, less maintained, weeds and scrub reclaiming ground that hasn't seen regular foot traffic in decades.
Old mining debris scattered here and there, peeking out from overgrown weeds.
Rusted equipment nobody bothered hauling out.
Timber framing collapsed into itself. The mine entrance, when we reach it, is gated shut, iron bars sunk into rock, keeping curious hikers and unstable tunnels appropriately separated.
“Probably for the best,” Beck says, peering through the bars into the dark. “I don't love the idea of a hundred-year-old tunnel.”
“You jump out of airplanes for a living.”
“Different kind of risk. I know what a parachute's going to do. I don't know what that tunnel's going to do.”
We follow the trail a little farther, up toward a rocky overlook that gives a decent view back down over Silver Bell and the valley beyond it. The path gets steep enough that Beck goes ahead of me over one rough section, then turns and offers a hand.
I could manage without it. I take it anyway.
He pulls me up easily, and lets go once I'm steady.
A little farther on, the trail narrows again, loose rock underfoot. He reaches back a second time. I take his hand again without thinking about it. He gets me past the rough patch, and this time, once we're both on solid ground, neither of us lets go right away.
His hand is rough in the way hands get from years of tools and ropes and gear, calluses along his palm.
I'm aware of every point where his skin touches mine, and my heart rate has picked up in a way that has nothing to do with the incline.
Just before he lets go, his thumb brushes once across the back of my hand.
It's brief. It's probably nothing. I spend the next several minutes trying to decide if it was.
The overlook, when we reach it, is worth the climb. Silver Bell spreads out below, small and quiet, the whole valley stretching gold and green beyond it. We sit on a flat rock, close enough our arms brush.
“You come here a lot?” Beck asks.
“Every summer, at least once. Reid and I used to sneak up here as kids and pretend we were finding the mine's hidden treasure.”
“Find any?”
“An old boot. Reid was convinced it belonged to a ghost.”
“Did you believe him?”
“I was nine. Of course I believed him.”
He laughs. I like the sound of it out here, no crowd, no music, just the two of us and the wind moving through the grass below.
We talk for a while. Nothing important. Something Nolan said yesterday that still doesn't make sense.
Whether Trevor actually knows anything about Silver Bell's history or is just confident enough nobody questions him.
The quiet of a place like this, abandoned but not entirely empty, still holding onto whatever it used to be.
Eventually the conversation runs out. Not because there's nothing left to say but because something else has started taking up the space where words usually go.
Beck's looking at me. I'm looking at him.
Neither of us moves to fill the silence.
It stretches out, comfortable but charged at the same time, the wind the only thing still talking.
I reach up to brush hair out of my face.
Beck's looks at me differently. “Hold still,” he says. “You just wiped dirt on your cheek.”
I hold still, though it's harder than it sounds, this close to him, close enough to see the small scar through one eyebrow I've never noticed before.
He reaches over, thumb brushing gently along my cheekbone, clearing away whatever I'd smeared there. His hand doesn't pull back. It stays, warm against my jaw, his thumb resting just below my cheekbone like he forgot what he was supposed to be doing with it. I stop thinking about the dirt.
His eyes move from mine to my lips and back again, like he's asking permission without using any words at all. My heart is doing something complicated and fast, and I don’t try to slow it down. I know what's about to happen. I have every opportunity to move away. I don't.
Beck leans in slowly, giving me time to change my mind, and then he kisses me. It's soft. Careful. Barely a kiss at all. More like a question he's asking with his mouth instead of his voice. Then it's over, and we're just looking at each other, close enough I can still feel his breath.
Did we really just do that?
He doesn’t look like he regrets it. I know I don’t.
He kisses me again, and this one isn't a question.
His other hand comes up to frame my face, thumbs brushing along my jaw, and I forget, for a while, that we're sitting on a rock above a ghost town.
I forget anyone else exists at all. It's just Beck, and the warmth of his hands, and the fact that I've been waiting for this a lot longer than I let myself admit.
When we finally pull back, I ask, “Did you get it?”
He blinks. “Get what?”
“The dirt on my face.”
He studies my face. “I think I made it worse.”
His hands, it turns out, hadn't been much cleaner than mine after an afternoon of climbing around a mining site. I can only imagine what I look like now.
“You're supposed to fix problems, not create new ones.”
“In my defense, I was distracted.”
I laugh, and he laughs too. For a minute it's just that, easy and light, the same way most things between us have been the past few weeks. But underneath the laughter, something more serious settles. We both know it.
“We should probably talk about Reid.”
Beck sobers. “Yeah.”
“Not because I need his permission or want his blessing. It's not about that. But he should hear this from us. Before he hears it from Tessa. Or figures it out on his own.”
Beck nods, thinking it over. “He's never told me to stay away from you. Not even a joke about it. Doesn't mean I know how he's going to feel about this, though.”
“No,” I agree. “It doesn't.”
Maybe Reid won't care at all. Maybe he'll be surprised, or a little strange about it for a few days. Maybe he'll be completely fine and we're worrying over nothing. I genuinely don't know. From the look on Beck's face, neither does he.
“I'll talk to him,” Beck says.
“You don't have to do it alone.”
“He's my friend. And I kissed you.” Beck says it simply, like there's nothing else to consider. “I’ll tell him.”
We sit here a while longer, the valley stretched out below us, quiet except for wind and birds and the occasional distant shout from Nolan discovering something new down in the ghost town.
Eventually we'll have to walk back down, rejoin the group, pretend for the rest of the afternoon that nothing's changed.
But something has. Beck kissed me. I kissed him back. And soon, one way or another, my brother and everyone else is going to find out.