“Dude, you done with the shot or what?” he said, startling me out of my thoughts.

I panned the lens away from him. “Don’t rush me.”

He grinned and then stuck out his tongue as I zoomed back in. Seeing that tongue in high definition made me nearly swallow my own. All my girly parts went liquid as I imagined what it would feel like inside my mouth and then travelling down my skin.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were just fucking with me now,” he said. “Getting some evidence to blackmail me with or something.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I said. “What evidence?”

“Who knows—of my nose hairs,” he said, smirking. “Or maybe my extremely large package. That must be it. You needed a tight shot on that.”

“What package?” I said, aiming my camera lower while grasping at the ground for a stick. “I can barely find it.”

Then I flung the twig at him and he knocked it out of the way, laughing.

“Okay, I’m done,” I said, standing up. “Now get the hell out of my shot.”

After a few more snaps, I lowered the camera and headed toward the water’s edge. I sat on a large rock and he joined me on the other side, his one knee up, his elbow resting across it. He no longer looked distressed, only at peace. And it must have had to do with this location, this pond, and his memory.

After a minute more of staring into the water, I said, “How can I get closer to that bridge?”

“Hop in the car, I’ll show you.”

Chapter Ten

Nate

I directed Jessie around the pond using the back roads. She still wouldn’t let me drive, even though I knew exactly where we were headed. Maybe she liked being directed, bossed around even— though she could be quite dictatorial herself. That thought alone made the front of my pants stretch tight.

Being back in this town sucked. But having Jessie here anchored me somehow. That stormy place inside of me had been reduced to a drizzle.

Seeing my childhood home, where some of the most brutal fights between my parents occurred, really got to me.

And then when I saw that boy standing in that driveway, damn, that had unleashed a flurry of emotions. I imagined me at that age. How innocent and vulnerable I had been. I thought all dads got that angry and used their fists.

But it was so natural to be in that car with Jessie. She didn’t react or push me to talk. She just let me be. I had been so close to her and could’ve easily closed the distance between us. Call me crazy, but I think she might have let me. Instead, I stared into her eyes and nearly got lost in them. No way had I ever done that with a girl. I didn’t even stick around long enough to truly notice their eyes.

Jessie obviously guessed something was up, and I was okay with that. In fact, I almost told her. All of it. But the only person currently in my life who had figured some things out was Bennett, because he had a shit life growing up as well.

But I needed to avoid attachments, so there was no way I was going to confide in a girl. Maybe I could bend the rule though, since Jessie was a friend and this trip had solidified that maybe she was becoming a good friend. The problem was: I didn’t know how to compartmentalize my wild attraction to her. If I had kissed her, this trip would’ve taken a different turn, to something way more complicated.

I was emotionally raw right now so it wasn’t the best time for me to make that kind of decision. And besides, I never allowed myself to dream. But if I did, they might include someone just like her.

I pushed that way-too-fluffy thought out of my head and gave her a cursory glance. “At the fork in the road, bear left.”

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I envied the relationship she’d had with her parents. Her dad and his damn words. They had stuck with me, lodged somewhere in my throat. I felt them deep, like they were spoken for me. Promise me this. Shit, really?

But Jessie appeared to have had such a good life; how much darkness could she possibly have inside her? Or maybe her father’s point had been that we all had some measure of it, just on different levels. And my levels ran too fucking deep.

When she neared the bridge, she stepped on the brakes and pushed the gear into park. “Up close, it’s way taller and wider than I had imagined.”

She was already out of the car and shooting before I could get one foot out the door. She was so excited and I loved watching her in action. I didn’t understand a lick of what she was talking about as she went on about settings and camera angles, but her eyes got this quiet intensity to them that made her even more gorgeous.

The light was filtering through her caramel brown locks and even the blue tips gave them a softer glow. Against the angular cut of her hair, black eyeliner, and colorful tattoos, her face was absolutely angelic. Her full cheeks and lips were perfectly pink and sometimes, like right now, I couldn’t help but to imagine how they’d taste.

She asked me about the history of the bridge and thankfully I had brushed up on that information before our trip.

“There’s also a plaque posted up there that’ll tell you when it was commissioned and built,” I said, pointing to its spot on the bridge. “You might want to get a shot of that.”

I’d even double-checked facts with my mom who had grown up here, so I was ready for her.

Had my maternal grandparents still been alive and living in this town, I would have even considered visiting them. But unfortunately, I only had a few early memories of them. The only family left on my mom’s side was her sister—Kai and Dakota’s mom—and they only talked occasionally by phone.