Chapter 19 #2
“I haven’t booked the tramway yet,” I told her as she pulled back onto the road. “Because that’s really the only thing that needs a booking. We can work around that, I guess. Also, we have to check in at the motel, which opens at one. I don’t know about you, but I really need a shower.”
Dove grinned at me before glancing back at the road, then took a breath.
“Okay, well, I was just thinking that, um, maybe we could do the tramway at sunset. Liv says there’s a restaurant at the top…
we could have dinner and then come back down.
” She cleared her throat and frowned at the road ahead. “Like, maybe a date or something.”
I blinked once, my eyes snapping back to the rearview, where Liv sat with a satisfied smirk stretched across her face, still staring intently at her nails.
My stomach danced.
“A date?” I asked. No composure in my tone, and my words came out a little too pitched.
“Yes, Ellis,” Dove said with a grin. “A date. You know, two people, mutual attraction, food, romantic tension. Ring any bells?”
Dates were awkward. I hated dates. My mind was immediately ripped back to the coffee date with Katie and how horrible that whole event had been. Dates were pressure.
Date.
The word rattled around in my brain like rocks in a jar.
Granted, Dove was not Katie. I knew Dove. Katie had been a stranger, and Dove certainly knew a lot more about me than Katie ever had. I’d already eaten with Dove a dozen times—hell, I’d slept beside her multiple times. Jesus, we had already kissed.
This should feel easier.
But it didn’t.
Because this was a date.
Dates carried unspoken expectations, breaths between moments of awkwardness as people searched for things to say to make themselves seem cooler or more interesting than they actually were.
Dates were like auditions for relationships.
They carried weights that weren’t visible, but you could certainly feel them—
“Breathe,” Dove murmured, her hand connecting with my leg across the console. The noise in my mind seemed to dim almost instantly as I turned to look at her, trying to ignore the thrill that raced through me from the contact.
“Sorry,” I murmured, my cheeks feeling hot.
I was conscious of Liv in the back seat, mindful of her watchful eye over every interaction, every judgment she might be having. Every judgment she had likely had over the past year of being stuck to me.
“Don’t be,” Dove said softly, a smile on her face as she kept her gaze on the road—one hand on the wheel, the other still on my leg. “We don’t have to call it a date. We can just get dinner at the top. The views will be amazing, and you could make some cool videos.”
“It’s totally a date, though,” Liv muttered quietly from the back seat, a snigger on her breath.
I swallowed as I tried to find some more of that courage and excitement I’d been feeling moments before. Tried to hold on to that sense of possibility and plans. To allow myself to want a date. To allow myself to take Dove and keep her for myself.
As we drove deeper into New Mexico, the desert blurred into orange.
Dove’s hand remained on my leg, that cool, patient smile still dancing softly on her lips.
And despite the rush of feeling in my chest and the fight-or-flight that rose within me, I opened my mouth—against all better judgment—breathing in selfishness.
“It’s a date.”
The trail was quiet.
There were hardly any people as we walked along the dirt path, our feet crunching over gravel and the sound of something far off, whistle-like, crying into the sky. The boulders that rose up around us stood like proud ancient sentinels, their volcanic skin scorched black by time and sun.
It was humbling to see the secrets of the past etched into these stones—symbols of spirals, snakes, hands, and stars, all clustered together as if trying to tell some story.
Or maybe not telling a story at all.
However, the farther we walked, the more it felt like I was stepping into someone else’s.
Albuquerque had seemed bigger when we arrived, bigger than any of the previous stops we’d taken on the road. The city sign had flashed past the window in a blur of sun-bleached green and white.
The air flowing through the half-down windows was dry, tugging at the loose strands of Dove’s hair as she drove, singing along to a song with Liv. We still had an hour before check-in, so we’d decided to head straight to the petroglyphs, see those, grab lunch, and then head to the motel.
I’d booked our tramway tickets for this evening and reserved a table at the restaurant at the top. All the comments on TikTok said to get to the tramway at least thirty minutes before departure to get a spot with a good view.
Already I was mentally timing and planning everything, with that familiar, nagging reminder in the back of my mind. I could plan as much as I wanted, but with Liv around, there was no point.
I was looking forward to motel check-in, desperate for a real shower. I felt uncomfortable, not clean enough, and I wanted to wash my hair. Any bathroom at the motel would be a vast improvement over the one at the campground this morning.
Plus, hiking under the sun hadn’t helped much. I could feel sweat everywhere.
I glanced at Dove walking ahead of me, the sun lighting her chocolate-brown hair and making it look molten. Her space buns were nearly falling out now. Every now and then, she glanced back at me, caught my eye, and there was a softness in hers that had my breath catching in my throat.
The way her lips curled into that gentle smile transported me back to the tent. To how they had felt on mine.
That kiss echoed through every inch of my body, but as the sunlight of today shone over the secret of last night, doubt began to creep in.
And it was loud.
I hadn’t been with anyone since Alexis, and we’d still been in school then.
Sure, we had fooled around—we’d made out a lot—but we had never done anything below the waist. I mean, it had felt like we were getting to that point, and then my heart happened… and once I let Alexis go, I hadn’t bothered to pick things up with anyone else. Hadn’t allowed myself to be so selfish.
I hadn’t thought I’d even be here to ponder over this stuff.
To worry about sex.
Because there had never been a time when it felt like I would have that.
But now there was. And I was here—on some wild, halfway-across-the-country haunted road trip with Dove.
Magnetic, free, captivating Dove, who kissed me last night like she’d done it a million times before, who moved with a confidence that said she was familiar with discovering another person’s body, and who looked at me like she could see all of me at once.
And I was—I was this clumsy mess of inexperience and nerves. I felt stupid. Virginal. Suddenly so far out of my league that I stopped walking entirely.
As if in sync with my steps, Dove twirled around and paused. Liv kept going, lost in her own world.
“You okay?” Dove asked, walking the few steps between us and stopping in front of me. A light sheen of sweat covered her forehead, and a few strands of hair were stuck to her skin.
I nodded—too quickly. “Yeah. Totally.”
Dove smiled at me, her brown eyes bearing heavily into mine. “Bad liar, Ellis Langley.”
I bit my lip and turned my gaze out over the valley, suddenly feeling so young and na?ve. So new. So far behind on life. Once again, I was alarmingly reminded that my first judgment of Dove had been so wrong it was almost laughable by now.
I’d thought so much of myself when I’d compared us, and had been forced to eat my own humble pie regularly.
“You kind of glow in the sun, you know,” Dove murmured.
I turned back to her just in time to feel her brush a piece of hair from my cheek, tucking it behind my ear. The contact sent shivers of delight down my spine, her fingers soft and warm against my temple.
“I noticed it back at the car museum,” she added. “At first, I was annoyed at how effortlessly good you looked all the time.”
My breath caught, and a surprised laugh escaped me as I looked into her eyes. “Effortlessly good?”
“Oh yeah,” she said softly, that dazzling grin on her face as she toyed with the hem of my T-shirt. The space between us was nearly nonexistent now.
I swallowed.
She gave my shirt a gentle tug, and I moved forward willingly, shelving all the fears that had been swirling in my mind.
When her lips met mine in a soft, tentative kiss, something inside me steadied.
Her lips tasted like sun and salt, and the fingers that had been toying with my shirt brushed lightly against the skin of my waist.
Jesus, I liked kissing Dove Marley.
When she pulled back, she smiled, that mischievous glint shining in her eyes with something softer lingering behind it.
“That was to give you a break from whatever mental crisis you were going through,” she murmured, tapping me lightly on the nose.
A choked laugh escaped me, and the tension that had been clinging by a thread in my chest finally evaporated as I searched her eyes.
“Thank you,” I whispered.
She shot me a wink and took my hand, giving it a gentle tug. “Anytime.”
We walked hand in hand, and soon we spotted Liv up ahead, paused in front of some drawings, standing still. As we neared her, Dove gestured with her free hand to a marking.
“Okay, that one totally looks like a uterus,” she said. “Do you think people mapped their cycles?”
I snorted a laugh, and Liv cracked half a smile.
“I wonder if they knew how long these would be here,” I murmured, tugging out my phone and preparing to capture some content. Dove let go of my hand, and it immediately felt cooler—more bare—as she did.
“Do you think they knew that hundreds of years later, people would still be looking at their drawings?”
Dove adjusted her sunglasses. “No idea,” she murmured. “Maybe it didn’t matter, though, really. Maybe they just wanted to leave a mark. Have evidence that they were here, that they existed.”