Chapter 19 Brynn
Nineteen feet. Pathetic.
The exhilaration of my brisk morning mountain run had awakened something in me, and when I found myself just on the other
was finally going to meet its match. I would claim victory over the failures of my past as I scaled the tree’s mighty branches
and surveyed the majestic landscape. Adelaide Springs and all the challenges awaiting me would appear smaller and smaller
beneath me the higher I climbed. And if that wasn’t darn near poetic, nothing was.
Frost and Keats would have been quick to abandon poetry in favor of self-preservation if a squirrel had skittered past on
a branch right by their faces too.
Now here I was, nineteen feet in the air, practically paralyzed by an unexpected wave of fear that this climbing attempt wasn’t going to turn out any better than the last. I weighed my options, and I really didn’t care for either one of them.
I could call Orly, of course, but he was with Mrs. Stoddard.
I could still remember the way she’d fussed at me the last time I had tried climbing this tree.
And the only other phone number I had was sure to lead to a lecture, too, but I really didn’t see what choice I had. At least
Sebastian wouldn’t have state-of-the-art film equipment on him.
Although I wouldn’t put it past him to track some down, just for the occasion.
After wrapping my right arm around the tree, clenching a thick branch with my hand, and stabilizing my running shoes between
the trunk and some burl, I lifted my left wrist to my mouth and ordered Siri to call Sebastian Sudworth.
Except I hadn’t saved him in my contacts.
“Do you mean Sebastian Stan?”
I rolled my eyes and then briefly contemplated letting that call go through. An Avenger would surely pull off a better high-stakes
rescue than a guy who’d lost more Pulitzer Prizes than he’d won, right?
I sighed. Ultimately, it was all about proximity.
At first, as the squirrel grew more courageous and began freely staring at me from four feet away, I couldn’t think of how
to make the call work. But once I remembered my most recent text had been from non-Avenger Sebastian, I knew I could at least
get Siri to reply.
Thanks for your text. Would love to discuss more. Have some time now?
I waited a few seconds for a reply, but when one didn’t come, I realized I would have to go ahead and be honest. Better for
it to be a marathon rather than a sprint toward total mortification.
I’m stuck in a tree at the Fielding farm. Is it still the Fielding farm? The big pine on County Loop 42. If you can help get me down, I promise to sit quietly for three whole minutes and allow you to make fun of me however you see fit. Please?
His response came almost immediately.
Make it five minutes and you’ve got a deal. Be right there.
Not even a minute later I heard a motor start up with a rumble, interrupting the deep-throated craw-craw of the two ravens flying overhead. They seemed to share the curiosity of my squirrel friend, who was stuffing his cheeks
with his eyes glued to me, like I was the horror film he couldn’t tear himself away from. I turned my head as much as I dared,
and though I couldn’t see through the surrounding trees, I was able to gather that the vehicle was getting closer. Just another
minute or so later, I saw the orange-and-white Ford Bronco turning onto the farm’s property.
I braced myself. Yes, for the quickly approaching moment when I would have to release my death grip on the tree, but mostly
for the inevitable period of humbling myself to simultaneously accept both his help and ridicule.
“Whatcha doin’ up there?” he asked from the ground.
I wasn’t scared of heights. That wasn’t the problem, so I didn’t have any trouble looking down at him. “Oh, nothing. Just
hanging out.”
He laughed softly and created a visor over his eyes with his hand. “You’ve actually got some decent footing for the first
six or seven feet. It’s more stable than it probably looks from your vantage point.”
“And after the first six or seven feet?”
He squinted up at me. “Yeah, after that you’re going to have to jump.”
My eyes flew open. “I won’t be able to jump!”
“Oh, come on.” He unzipped his jacket and pulled it off, then threw it onto the ground behind him, where the direct sunlight had melted away the snow and revealed brown patches of mostly dead grass.
“It will only be about ten or twelve feet at that point. Not enough to kill you. I’ll even move my coat over to cushion the fall. ”
He wasn’t wearing his glasses today, and I was able to see the mischievous twinkle in his squinting eyes, even from that distance.
“Okay... you were joking.”
“Of course I was joking, Brynn. You’ll be fine. You’re just going to have to trust me a little.”
Huh. Well, if I didn’t want the squirrel to win, I was going to have to try.
With footwork so deft I would have made an Edward Cullen “spider monkey” reference if not for my hesitance to open myself
up to more ridicule, Sebastian jumped up and grabbed on to a branch three feet over his head. Then he pulled himself up like
he was doing chin-ups on the branch, revealing surprisingly impressive biceps for a man wearing a Weezer T-shirt, ascended
a few more feet as easily as if he had found a marble staircase I hadn’t been able to see, and then his face was at my knee.
His hand was on my hip.
“Okay, you’re going to need to rotate around and face the tree.” He tapped on my left hip to indicate the direction.
“But I won’t be able to see where I’m going.”
“That’s what I’m for.”
“But you can’t see either.”
He groaned and let his forehead fall against my knee for just a second. He was probably wishing it was a wall he could bang
against. “Yes, you’re right, but I’m not the one who’s stuck.”
“I’m not stuck, exactly...”
“Oh, you’re not?” His hand left my hip and grabbed on to a branch. “Then I’ll just be going—”
“Wait!” Dang it. “Fine. I’m a little stuck. Not because I’m scared, though. I want you to know I’m not scared. I think I just got in my head a little too much, and—”
“Hey, Dr. Phil, this is fascinating stuff, but do you think we could possibly climb down from the 150-year-old state-protected
tree before we dive too deep into psychoanalysis?”
“Fine,” I said again, but this time I grumbled it. “But that little Dr. Phil jab counts against your five minutes.”
“Worth it.” He smiled at me and placed the palm of his right hand on my left hip again.
It was so warm out that I had left the inn in only my high-rise lululemon running tights and my adidas by Stella McCartney
cropped hoodie, and when I was running, with the sun getting higher and higher in the sky, that had been plenty. But I’d been
in the tree for a while now, and no sunlight was getting through the thick, piney branches. As I turned against his fingers,
it took everything in me to focus on the task at hand rather than how nice the warmth of his touch felt through the thin material.
And how self-conscious that made me.
Soon my abdomen was pressed up against the tree, and I was having to put equal effort into holding on to the bark as my fingers
got colder and not thinking about the view Sebastian had as he looked up from just below.
“Good. Okay, now I’m going to guide your foot to the next knob.” He grabbed my ankle, bare between the tights and my no-show
socks, and I responded to the pressure he placed, first on one foot and then the other. “Good job. We’re going to do that
same thing a few more times.”
And we did. It was easy, and he never once led me astray, and by the time his right hand rested on the cold, exposed strip
of skin at my waist, my squirrel friend had scampered off above, and the warmth of Sebastian’s chest was against my back,
and his breath was dancing against my ear.
“I’m sorry you had to come help me,” I breathed. “This . . . Well, this is pretty humiliating.”
His breath against me stopped, as did the heaving of his chest, and if not for the pounding of his heartbeat against my shoulder
blade and the slight twitching of his fingertips against my skin, I might have wondered if he had abandoned me.
“There’s no reason to feel humiliated,” he finally whispered. “I’m pretty impressed, to be honest.”
I scoffed, still humiliated, whether he thought there was reason to be or not. “Impressed? That I can get stuck in a tree?”
“That you tried to climb it at all.” His rhythmic breathing resumed as he moved into action again. “Now the next part’s going
to be a little trickier. The branches and knobs are plenty big, but we’ll have to step down together. Just try to stay in
step with me and you’ll be fine.”
I didn’t know why he thought that part would be trickier. It was the easiest thing in the world, like staying in step with
a shoe once you had strapped it onto your foot. His hand pulled away from my abdomen for a moment. Just long enough for him
to ask, “Is this okay?” as he wrapped his left arm completely around my waist, and I nodded. And then my knee bent as his
bent. My foot stepped as his stepped. My hips pivoted as his pivoted. My lungs breathed as his did.
“I fell out of this tree about twenty-five years ago,” I confessed as we continued our descent.
“You fell? How high up were you?”
I turned my chin to the right to try to get some perspective, but I hadn’t realized his face would be right there. A perfectly
scruffy five o’clock shadow at ten in the morning, unruly tufts of brown hair poking out from under a Real Madrid Club de
Fútbol cap, and dazzling green eyes reflecting back at me the sun and the shadows bouncing off the pine needles.
So much for perspective.
I cleared my throat and faced the bark again. “A little lower than this. Of course I was a lot smaller than I am now. It sure
seemed higher then.” And yet then I’d been fearless, just chasing the freedom.
“Were you hurt?”
“I was, actually. My stylist complains every single time about the scar on the back of my head and how it makes my hair grow
in weird there.”