Chapter 13
Chapter
Thirteen
Nell woke with her arm stretched across the bed.
The sheets still held Ryder’s warmth, but he was gone.
The bedroom door stood open and coffee scented the air.
A pan scraped against the stove in the kitchen.
Nell found the T-shirt he had worn yesterday near the foot of the bed and pulled it over her head before following the sounds down the hall.
Ryder stood at the stove in his boxers and Nell’s blue apron. The apron was too short for his broad chest. He had a spatula in one hand and a skillet of scrambled eggs in front of him.
Nell stopped in the kitchen door. “That’s a good look for you.”
He glanced over his shoulder. His gaze scanned up her bare legs to the hem of his shirt. The spatula stopped moving. Then he said, “You too.”
She smiled and walked into the narrow kitchen. He turned away from the stove long enough to put his free hand on her hip and kiss her. His thumb slipped beneath the hem of the shirt and stroked her skin as the eggs hissed behind him.
“Breakfast,” Nell reminded him.
Ryder returned to the pan. “I had it under control until you came in here dressed like that.”
“You put on my apron, and I’m the problem?”
“That’s right.”
Nell poured coffee while he divided the eggs onto two plates and added toast. They then carried everything to the table by the windows. Sunlight broke through the thin clouds and glowed on the wood surface. Morning traffic passed below.
Nell glanced at the Portland guide on the end of the table. Colored slips of paper marked more pages than she had managed to visit. “What do you want to do today?” she asked.
“Where have you not been yet?”
“I keep meaning to visit Forest Park.” Nell examined the guidebook. “There’s a lawn near the trailhead where we can eat afterward.”
They dressed and made sandwiches together. Ryder’s hand settled at her waist when he passed behind her, and Nell kissed his shoulder while he packed apples into the cooler. They added chips, cookies, bottles of water, and a folded blanket. Ryder carried the cooler, and they left the apartment.
They reached the Lower Macleay trailhead shortly after eight.
Ryder took one of the spaces around the small turnaround at the end of the street.
In front of them, the lawn opened beneath the green steel supports of a bridge.
A covered picnic pavilion and the small restroom building stood near the beginning of the paved trail.
A family filled water bottles while two runners stretched beside the path, and leashed dogs strained toward the trees.
They got out into the cool morning, the low sun reaching across the lawn while the bridge kept the trailhead in shadow.
Ryder grabbed a daypack and locked the doors.
They then followed the runners onto the paved path beneath the bridge.
A hundred yards in, they stopped at the large trail map while the runners continued toward the trees.
Ryder traced the route on the map. “Lower Macleay to the Stone House, then Wildwood up to Pittock. We come back the same way.”
“Five miles.” Nell studied the climb marked beyond the Stone House.
“We can turn around there if the trail’s slick.”
She tapped Pittock Mansion. “I want to see the view.”
“Pittock it is.”
They followed the runners up the path. The first stretch was paved and gentle.
Balch Creek moved beside them, shallow water curling around dark rocks beneath the trees.
The air cooled as the canyon narrowed, carrying the smells of damp earth, wet stone, and the forest. Douglas firs and bigleaf maples crowded the banks, with sword ferns spreading beneath them.
The clear blue sky showed through breaks in the canopy, and shafts of morning sunlight caught on moss and leaves.
Traffic still hummed across the bridge behind them, but the sound diminished as they followed the creek into the canyon.
Somewhere ahead of them, a dog’s tags jingled briefly.
Then there were only the sounds of running water and the occasional murmur of a family of hikers behind them on the trail.
The pavement ended. The trail had changed to packed dirt, and roots crossed the trail in raised knots.
Sword ferns massed along the sloping creek banks, arching over moss-covered rocks and fallen limbs.
Ryder stopped where sunlight reached the creek through an opening in the canopy.
He lifted his camera and framed the water where it curled between two moss-covered rocks.
Nell leaned against his arm to look at the screen.
“That’s pretty,” she said, kissing his cheek.
A burst of quick, tumbling notes rose from the undergrowth near the creek. Nell stopped to listen more closely. A songbird sang again, pouring out a long, intricate phrase from somewhere beneath the ferns.
“Pacific wren,” Nell said. “My dad called them our western cousins.”
Nell’s dad, Daniel, had been happiest outdoors. He had taken her through the redwoods and along the northern California coast, teaching her the names of birds and native plants, how to read the weather and tides, and how to recognize the tracks animals left behind.
He had never tired of her questions. Nell liked repeating each new fact back to him, adding everything else she knew about the subject.
Her dad listened with great seriousness and called her Professor Nell.
She had been eleven when he passed, but sometimes a bird call could make her feel like she’d lost him just yesterday.
Around the next bend, the golden retriever whose tags Nell had heard stood investigating a patch of ferns. It tried to greet her as they passed, but its owner apologized and drew it onward.
The canyon opened at the junction of Lower Macleay and Wildwood, and the Stone House stood between the trails.
It was more ruin than building: two tall basalt gables connected by broken walls, the roof and every trace of wood long gone.
Doorways and empty window openings exposed a concrete floor scattered with leaves.
Moss softened the stone, ferns grew from cracks near the foundation, and graffiti interrupted the older greens and grays. Nell had looked it up after they chose the hike. It was nicknamed Witch’s Castle after the forest had begun making the ruin look much older than it was.
Ryder ran his hand over the rough edge of the stone. “I keep expecting this to feel strange.”
“The ruin?”
“Going on a date with my best friend after waking up in her bed.”
Nell stepped into him, caught the front of his shirt, and rose onto her toes to kiss him. His surprise lasted only until her mouth opened beneath his. Then one arm closed around her waist and his other hand slid into her hair, angling her head as he kissed her more deeply.
She knew the solid warmth of his hugs and the familiar weight of his arm across her shoulders.
She was still getting used to this. The flex of his fingers against her scalp, the slow stroke of his tongue over hers, the hand settling at the base of her spine and pulling her hips firmly against his.
Heat gathered low in her body when she felt him hardening between them.
Last night had changed everything. Ryder lifted his mouth far enough back for them to breathe.
“Still strange?” she whispered.
“Not even a little.”
Past the Stone House, the Wildwood Trail began to climb in earnest. Switchbacks carried them higher through Douglas firs, maples, cedar, and hemlock. The damp air stayed cool, but heat gathered beneath Nell’s shirt.
They moved single file, trading the lead as the trail climbed.
At the top of one long turn, Ryder lowered the daypack and handed Nell a bottle of water.
While she drank and tied back her hair, he stripped off his flannel and knotted it around his waist. He drank after her, his face flushed from the climb and damp curls pushed back from his forehead, then stowed the bottle and shouldered the pack.
“Still glad you picked the long route?” he asked.
Nell looked down the slope they had climbed. “Ask me after we reach the top.”
The final switchbacks brought them to the Pittock trailhead, where the dirt path met a paved parking area crowded with cars.
After miles of creek and forest, the sudden presence of pavement, directional signs, and visitors in street clothes felt almost disorienting.
Ryder and Nell followed the walkway rising beyond the lot.
The original Pittock estate had covered forty-six acres.
Henry Pittock and his daughters had been avid hikers, and the family had left the back portion of the property wooded and threaded with trails.
Those woods had eventually become part of Forest Park, which was why Wildwood led directly onto the grounds of their former home.
The forest opened onto broad lawns, curved garden beds, and clipped shrubs.
Above them stood the sprawling French Renaissance chateau of pale stone, curved wings, tall chimneys, rows of windows, and a red clay-tile roof.
Visitors crossed from the parking area toward the house while others followed the lawn to the viewpoint overlooking Portland.
Nell and Ryder walked to the eastern view. Downtown spread below them, softened by the clouds. But the river caught a strip of pale light.
“My office is down there,” Nell said.
“Can you find it?”
Nell followed the river toward downtown, then traced the streets she knew from her commute. “I can see the top of the garage. The office is behind that taller building.”
She had spent three weeks learning the city from street level, one wrong turn and lunch stop at a time. Ryder slipped an arm around her waist. Nell rested against him while the wind cooled the sweat at her temples, and they looked out over the city.
The hike back was faster. They passed the Stone House without stopping and followed the creek, holding hands wherever the trail was wide enough. Packed dirt eventually gave way to pavement, and traffic on the bridge and voices from the trailhead reached them before the lawn came into view.
Ryder carried the cooler from the truck to an empty picnic table beside the lawn.
He set it on the tabletop, and they unpacked lunch together.
He handed Nell a turkey-and-provolone sandwich layered with lettuce and mustard on thick sourdough.
The first bite was salty, sharp, and satisfying enough that she finished half of it before reaching for the kettle chips Ryder had opened between them.
After five miles on the trail, neither of them felt obligated to make conversation while they ate. Across the lawn, the pavilion cast a broad patch of shade over its picnic tables, and the green supports of the bridge framed the entrance to the trail.
Nell leaned against Ryder’s shoulder while he held the camera between them and moved through the photographs. The creek flashed between stones. The Stone House opened into the trees. The city stretched out before them from the top of the hill.
“These are really nice.”
“It’s a good memory of a good day,” he said, kissing her forehead.
Nell couldn’t agree more.