Chapter 6 #3
Unless it was all defensive.
Because she was doing what she had to do to stay hard...
Of course, that implied that she felt soft for him and was trying to hide it, and that might have more to do with his ego than anything else.
Her wanting him didn’t mean that she liked him. Though, she had just said that she did like him.
But even if she was attracted to him, it didn’t necessarily connect to any kind of romantic feelings. He’d hooked up enough in his life to know that.
And Lila was just like the rest of them.
She probably viewed sex much the same way they all did.
Or much the same way they all had.
Before Cody and Walker had fallen in love with their respective partners.
And good for them. He was happy for them. But it didn’t mean the rest of them had changed their outlook on things.
Not to that degree.
“You’re amazing, do you know that?”
He hadn’t meant to say that, not out loud, not in context with everything else that had been running through his mind and his body over the last hour.
But it was good that she hear that. It was good that she know that.
She didn’t turn to look at him, rather she kept her back to him, reached up and gripped the straps on her backpack. “I don’t know if I like you being this nice to me.”
“Don’t worry. It’ll fade. We’ll get back to our regularly scheduled programming.”
Then she did turn to him and smiled just a bit. He had to believe that was true. That they would get back to who they were and how they were soon enough.
That they would forget this little blip on the radar. Unspoken, of course.
She was never going to know that he’d felt some things that he really wished he hadn’t. That he had looked at her a little bit too long when she had stripped down at the water.
He had another memory just then. At a barbecue a few months back, when she had been hassling him, and there was something about the way the sun had lit up her face.
And all he could think was that she was a little terrorist. But he couldn’t look away from her either.
And the part of him that had been captivated, he’d just cut off completely. Hadn’t put a name to any of it, hadn’t let it linger inside of his head, none of that.
He wasn’t going to let it linger now.
They started that punishing hike down the path.
“I can’t wait to take horses on this,” Lila said, skipping ahead and punting a rock out of the middle of the previously cleared path.
“Yeah, that will be a lot more fun than hoofing it every single day.”
“When we get further in, we could ride,” she said.
“We could,” he agreed. “But then we have to hassle with setting up a high line and packing in food and supplies for them too.”
“Yeah, but the horses can pack in their own stuff. And some of ours.”
“When we get in deeper, we can definitely discuss that,” he said.
“It might be practical to make a base camp once we hit fifteen miles. One that just stays there.”
“Yeah. I definitely think that we should get a more comprehensive logistics plan going.”
“Agreed.”
There. They had managed to string so many sentences together now without having a fight.
They were being very mature. They weren’t bringing any of the past hostility or drunken weirdness into the moment and he thought that made them both exceptionally good.
They opted for silence as they hiked the trail, which now took them about three hours to make it through.
“I think we should leave the camping gear here. We’re only going to be able to push in another mile, so getting back to it will be relatively quick.”
He agreed. Hiking was one thing, hiking and cutting branches, smoothing ground, that was quite another. And it was incredible how much time it took to cover such little ground, and how little time it took to walk back over the part they had just created. And it was satisfying.
They left their packs there on the side of the trail and grabbed their equipment.
Lila put her hair up in a ponytail, and grabbed hold of the machete, looking fierce. And she was fierce. There was no doubt about that.
It was impossible not to admire the strength in her arms as she hacked away at branches, and he followed up with a saw, making sure everything was rounded off.
Then it was time to clear that same ground, dig and level it out where they needed to, take out dangerous obstructions.
They were always going to leave some, because this was an endurance ride, and not something that was meant to be completely simple.
But anything that might injure a horse or a rider did need to be removed.
Accidents could happen. Of course. Like Lila falling face first out of the van yesterday.
But it was best to mitigate risk that you could see with your own two eyes.
Lila stopped moving, and swore, pulling her phone out of her pocket. Then she answered and put it to her ear. “Hello?”
She frowned. “No. I need the delivery to be done by this afternoon. I’m not sure how there was a miscommunication about that.”
She paused to listen to whatever the person was saying on the other end of the phone. “No. When I sent the updated orders yesterday, I’m sure that I put in the right date.”
She put the phone on speakerphone, and pulled it away, scrolling through some things. “I have the confirmation in my email. And we need the linens delivered this afternoon.”