Chapter Eleven

Chapter Eleven

I was off a week later, so part of me had expected to get to sleep in, take it easy, maybe go do one of the touristy things in the area. Or maybe do one of my mom’s easier hikes. Since I was going to be around for the near future, I wasn’t in as big of a rush to get them all done. My lungs needed more conditioning anyway. I figured I had at least until October.

Maybe. What had happened in the middle of the night a week ago might have made Mr. Rhodes change his mind about how long he’d let me stay. I didn’t know him, but I knew there was no way he was over that shit yet.

The bat, though, hadn’t come back. My brain, on the other hand, was in denial because I still couldn’t sleep throughout the night without waking up, paranoid.

That’s why I was awake when the sounds outside started up.

Resigned that I wasn’t going back to sleep, I rolled up and got out of bed once another glance at my phone confirmed it was seven thirty and instantly peeked out the window.

There was a dull, repetitive sound coming from out there.

It was Mr. Rhodes.

Chopping wood.

Shirtless.

And I mean shirtless.

I’d expected something nice beneath his clothes from the way he filled them out, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of . . . him. Reality.

If I wasn’t already pretty sure that there was dry drool on my face, there would have been five minutes after seeing all . . . that through the window.

A pile of foot-long logs were tossed around his feet, with another small pile that he’d obviously already chopped just to the side. But it was the rest of him that really drew my attention. Dark chest hair was sprinkled high over his pectorals. The body hair did nothing to take away from the hard slabs of abdominal muscles he’d been hiding; he was broad up top, narrow at the waist, and covering all that was firm, beautiful skin.

His biceps were big and supple. Shoulders rounded. His forearms were incredible.

And even though his shorts grazed his knees, I could tell the rest of his downtown area was nice and muscular.

He was the DILF to end all DILFs.

My ex had been fit. He’d worked out several times a week at our home gym with a trainer. Being attractive had been part of his job.

Kaden’s physique had nothing on Mr. Rhodes though.

My mouth watered a little more.

I whistled.

And I must have done it a lot louder than I’d thought because his head instantly went up and his gaze landed on me through the window almost immediately.

Busted.

I waved.

And inside . . . inside, I died.

He lifted his chin.

I backed away, trying to play it off.

Maybe he wouldn’t think anything of it. Maybe he’d think I’d whistled . . . to say hi. Sure, yeah.

A girl could dream.

I backed up some more and felt my soul shriveling as I made my breakfast, making sure to stay away from the window the rest of the time. I tried to focus on other stuff. You know, so I wouldn’t want to have to move out from shame.

Was I tired? Absolutely. But there were things I wanted to do. Needed to do. Including but not limited to getting away from Mr. Rhodes so my soul could come back to life.

So an hour later, with a plan in mind, a sandwich, a couple bottles of water, and my whistle in my backpack, I headed down the stairs, hoping and praying that Mr. Rhodes was back in his house.

I wasn’t that lucky.

He had a shirt on, but that was the only difference.

Darn.

In a faded blue T-shirt with a logo I couldn’t place, he was standing off to the side of the pile of wood that he’d stacked at some point under a blue tarp. Beside him was Amos in a bright red T-shirt and jeans, looking an awful lot like he was either begging or arguing with him.

At the sound of the door closing, they both turned.

He’d caught me checking him out. Act cool.

“Morning!” I called out.

I didn’t miss the funny face that Amos made or the way he glanced from my backpack to his dad and back. I’d seen that expression before on my nephews’ faces. I wasn’t sure anything good ever came from those faces either.

But the teenager seemed to make a quick decision because he jumped right into it. “Hi.”

“Morning, Amos. How are you?”

“Fine.” He pressed his lips together. “Are you going hiking?”

“Yeah.” I smiled at him, realizing just how tired I was. “Why? Do you want to go?” I teased, mostly. Hadn’t his dad said he wasn’t an outdoorsy person?

The quiet boy perked up in a subtle way. “Can I?”

“Go?”

He nodded.

Oh. “If your dad is fine with it and you want to,” I told him with a laugh, surprised.

Amos peeked at his dad, smiled this super sneaky smile, and nodded. “Two minutes!” the teenager yelled at ten times the volume he normally spoke at, surprising me even more, before turning on his heel and disappearing up the deck and into his house.

Leaving me standing there blinking.

And his dad standing there blinking too.

“Did he say he’s coming with me?” I asked, in almost a daze from pure surprise.

The older man shook his head in disbelief. “I didn’t see that coming,” he muttered more to himself than to me from the way he was still staring after the door. “I told him he couldn’t hang out with his friends since he’s still grounded, but if he wanted to be around an adult it was okay.”

Oh wow. I got it now.

“Damn, he got you,” I laughed.

That had his attention turning toward me, still looking like he’d gotten scammed.

I snorted. “I can tell him no after all if you want me to. I swear I thought you said he didn’t like doing outdoor things. That’s why I asked.” I’d feel terrible retracting the invitation, but I would if it really bothered him. “Unless you want to come too. You know, so he’s not totally getting away with it. I don’t mind either way, but I don’t want you to feel weird with me hanging out with your son. I’m not a creeper or anything, I swear.”

Mr. Rhodes’s gaze slid toward his front door again and stayed there like he was thinking very deeply about how the hell he was going to get out of the loophole he’d unknowingly given someone who was supposed to be grounded.

Or maybe he was wondering how to tell me that he was absolutely not okay with me taking his child for a hike. I wouldn’t blame him.

“It might be torture for him hanging out with me for a couple hours,” I told him. “I promise I’m not going to do anything to him. I’d invite Jackie, but I know she and Clara are going shopping in Farmington. I wouldn’t mind the company.” I paused. “But it’s up to you. I promise I’m only attracted to grown men. He reminds me of my nephews.”

Those gray eyes moved in my direction, his expression still thoughtful.

The kid burst through the front door, with a stainless-steel bottle looped through one finger and what looked like two granola bars in his other hand.

“You don’t care if he goes?” was the quiet question that came at me.

“Not at all,” I confirmed. “If you’re okay with it.”

“You’re only going for a hike?”

“Yes.”

I saw him hesitate before letting out another one of his deep breaths. Then he murmured, “I need a minute,” just as Amos stopped in front of me and said, “I’m ready.”

Was . . . was Mr. Rhodes coming too?

He disappeared into the house even faster than his son had, his movements and strides long and fluid considering how muscular he was.

I needed to stop thinking about his muscles. Like yesterday. I knew better already, didn’t I? Subtle, I was not.

“Where’s he going?” Amos asked, watching his dad too.

“I don’t know. He said to give him a minute. He might be coming too . . . ?”

The kid let out a frustrated sigh that made me side-eye him.

“Change your mind?”

He seemed to think about it for a second before shaking his head. “No. As long as I get out of the house, I don’t care.”

“Thank you for making me feel so special,” I joked.

The teenager looked at me, his quiet voice back. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’m just messing with you,” I told him with a grin.

“He said I couldn’t go out with my friends so . . .”

“You’re hanging out with chopped liver?” I could only imagine the kind of relationship he had with his dad if he wasn’t used to being picked on. “I’m messing with you, Amos. I promise.” I even nudged him with my elbow quickly.

He didn’t nudge me back, but he did give me a little shrug before asking quietly and hesitantly, “Is it okay? If I go with you?”

“One hundred percent okay. I like the company,” I told him. “Honestly. You’re pretty much making my day. I’ve been pretty lonely lately. I’m not used to doing so many things by myself anymore.” The truth was, I’d been surrounded by people almost twenty-four seven for the last chunk of my life. The only alone time I ever really got for just myself was . . . when I’d go to the bathroom.

The boy seemed to shuffle in place. “You miss your family?”

“Yeah, but I had another family. My . . . ex-husband’s family, and we were always together. This is the longest I’ve ever gone by myself. So really, you’re doing me a favor coming. Thank you. And you’ll help me stay awake.” I thought about it. “Is it safe for you to do physical activity already?”

“Yeah. I had my checkup.” The same gray eyes as Mr. Rhodes’s roamed my face briefly, and he seemed to have to blink again. “You look tired.”

Remind me never to word something in front of a teenager that could be turned into an insult. “I haven’t been sleeping that great.”

“’Cause of the bat?”

“How do you know about the bat?”

He eyed me. “Dad told me about you screaming like you were gonna die.”

First of all, I hadn’t been screaming like I was going to die. It had just been about five screams. Max.

But before I could argue with him about semantics, the front door opened again and Mr. Rhodes was out, hauling a small backpack in one hand and a thin black jacket in the other.

Wow. He wasn’t fucking around. He wanted to tag along.

I eyed the kid next to me as he let out a sigh. “You’re sure you want to come?”

His gaze flicked toward me. “I thought you said you’d like the company?”

“I do, I just want to make sure you’re not going to regret it.” Because his dad was coming too. To spend time with him? To not leave him with me alone? Who knew?

“Anything’s better than staying home,” he muttered just as his dad made it to us.

All right. I nodded at Mr. Rhodes, and he nodded at me.

I guess I was driving.

We loaded into my car with Mr. Rhodes taking the front passenger seat, and I backed out. I glanced at them both as sneaky as possible, feeling a little bit of pleasure at having them come with me . . . even if neither one of them talked much. Or I guess really liked me.

But one of them was desperate to get out of the house and the other wanted to either spend time with his kid or keep him safe.

I’d hung out with people who had worse intentions. At least they weren’t being fake.

“Where are we going?” the deepest voice in the car asked.

“Surprise,” I answered dryly, peeking in the rearview mirror.

Amos had his attention out of the window.

Mr. Rhodes, on the other hand, twisted his head to look at me. If I didn’t already know he had been in the Navy, it would have been confirmed in that instant. Because I had zero doubts that he’d mastered the glare he was shooting my way on other people.

A lot of them, more than likely, from how good he was at it.

But I still grinned as I glanced at him.

“Okay, fine,” I conceded. “We’re going to some falls. You probably should’ve asked before you got in the car though. Just saying. I could be kidnapping you.”

He didn’t appreciate my joke apparently. “Which falls?” Mr. Rhodes asked in that stony, level voice.

“Treasure Falls.”

“That one sucks,” Amos piped up from the back.

“It does? I looked up pictures, and I thought it looked nice.”

“We didn’t get enough snow. It’s gonna be a trinkle,” he explained. “Right, Dad?”

“Yes.”

I felt my shoulders deflate. “Oh.” I thought of the next falls on my list. “I already did Piedra Falls. What about Silver Falls?”

Mr. Rhodes settled into the seat, crossing his arms over his chest. “Is this four-wheel drive?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

“Damn it,” I groaned.

“Your clearance is too low. You won’t make it.”

My shoulders deflated even more. Well, this sucked.

“What about a longer trail?” the older man asked after a moment.

“That’s fine with me.” How much longer was long? I didn’t want to chicken out, so I just agreed. I couldn’t think of one on my mom’s list off the top of my head that we could do, but my plans were ruined already and I was going to take advantage of the company. I knew how to be by myself, but I hadn’t been lying to Amos about being lonely. Even when Kaden left for a short tour or for an event, someone would be at the house, usually the housekeeper I’d said we didn’t need but his mom had insisted on because it was beneath someone of Kaden’s reputation to make his own food or clean his own house. Ugh, I cringed just thinking about how snobby she’d sounded back then.

“I’ll get you directions,” my landlord explained, dragging me out of my memories with the Joneses.

“Works for me. Work for you, Amos?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

All right then. I drove the car toward the highway, figuring Mr. Rhodes would give me directions once I got there.

“You used to live in Florida?” Amos asked suddenly from the back seat.

I nodded and stuck to the truth. “Then Nashville, and I was back in Cape Coral—that’s in Florida—for the last year before coming here.”

“Why’d you leave there to come here?” the teenager scoffed like that was mind-blowing to him.

“Have you been to Florida? It’s hot and humid.” I knew Mr. Rhodes had lived there, but I wasn’t about to drop that knowledge bomb on their asses. They didn’t need to know I’d been creeping and stalking.

“Dad used to live in Florida.”

I had to pretend like I didn’t already know this. But then his word choice sank in. He’d said his dad not him. Where had he lived then? “You did, Mr. Rhodes?” I asked slowly, trying to figure it out. “Where?”

“Jacksonville.” It was Amos who answered instead. “It sucked.”

In the seat next to me, the man scoffed.

“It did,” the teenager insisted.

“Did you . . . live there too, Amos?”

“No. I just visited.”

“Oh,” I said like it made sense when it didn’t.

“We visited every other summer,” he went on to say. “We went to Disney. Universal. We were supposed to go to Destin once, but Dad had to cancel the trip.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Rhodes turn in his seat. “I didn’t have a choice, Am. It wasn’t like I canceled the trip because I wanted to.”

“Were you in the military or something?” I asked.

“Yeah” was all he gave me.

But Amos didn’t leave me hanging. “In the Navy.”

“The Navy,” I confirmed but didn’t ask more about it because I figured if Mr. Rhodes hadn’t even been willing to tell me what branch, he wouldn’t want to tell me more. “Well, it’s not too far of a drive. Maybe one day you can go.”

In the seat behind me, the kid made a noise that sounded an awful lot like a grunt, and I regretted opening the subject again. What if he didn’t take him? I needed to shut the hell up.

“Is it true your mom got lost somewhere around here in the mountains?”

I didn’t wince, but Mr. Rhodes turned around again. “Am!”

“What?”

“You can’t ask stuff like that, man. Come on,” Mr. Rhodes snapped, shaking his head incredulously.

“I’m sorry, Aurora,” Amos mumbled.

“I don’t mind talking about her. It was a long time ago. I miss her every day, but I don’t cry all the time anymore.”

Too much information?

“I’m sorry,” Amos repeated after a second of silence.

“It’s okay. No one ever wants to talk about it,” I told him. “But to answer your question, she did. We used to go hiking all the time. I was supposed to go with her, but I didn’t.” That same pang of guilt that I had never gotten over, that slept in my gut, safe and warm and tremendous, opened an eye. As much as I didn’t mind talking about my mom, there were some specific things that were difficult to bring out into the world for everyone to know. “Anyway, she went for her hike and never came back. They found her car, but that was it.”

“They found her car, but how could they not find her?”

“Your dad might know more details than I do. But they didn’t find her car for a few days. She had told me she was going to do one hike, but Mom would always change her mind last minute and decide to do something that wasn’t on a trail if she wasn’t in the mood or if there were too many people on the trailheads. That’s what they thought happened. Her car wasn’t where she had said she would be. Unfortunately, it rained a lot in those days, and it washed out her footprints.”

“But I don’t get how they didn’t find her. Dad, don’t you have to do search and rescue a few times a year? You always find people.”

Beside me, the big man shifted a bit in his seat, but I kept my gaze forward. “It’s harder than it sounds, Am. There are almost two million acres of the San Juan National Forest alone.” Mr. Rhodes stopped talking for a second like he was watching his words. “If she was a strong hiker, in shape, she could have gone just about anywhere, especially if she wasn’t known for staying on trails.” He paused again. “I remember the case file said she was a good climber too.”

“Mom was a great climber,” I confirmed. She had been a fucking daredevil. There was nothing she had been scared of.

We used to go to Utah every chance possible. I could remember sitting off to the side when she did some kind of climb with her friends and being amazed by how strong and agile she was. I used to call her Spider-Woman, she was so good.

“She could have gone anywhere,” Mr. Rhodes confirmed.

“They looked,” I told Amos. “For months. Helicopter. Different search and rescue teams. They did a few more searches for her over the years, but nothing ever came of it.” Remains had been found before, but they hadn’t been hers.

The silence was thick, and Amos broke it by muttering, “That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does,” I agreed. “I figure she was doing what she loved to do, but it still sucks.”

There was another rush of silence, and I could feel Mr. Rhodes eyeball me.

I looked over and managed to smile a little. I didn’t want him to think Amos had upset me—not that he probably genuinely cared.

“Which trail did she do?” Amos asked.

Mr. Rhodes gave him the name, shooting me a side look like he remembered bringing it up during our tutoring session.

There was another pause, and I glanced at the rearview mirror once more. The boy looked thoughtful and troubled. Part of me was expecting him to drop it before he spoke up again. “Are you doing the hikes to find her?”

Mr. Rhodes mumbled something under his breath that I was pretty positive had a couple curse words in there. Then the meaty palm of his hand scrubbed up and down the center of his forehead.

“No,” I answered Amos. “I don’t have any interest in going there. She had a journal with her favorites. I’m hiking because she loved to, so I want to do them too. I’m not as athletic or as much of an explorer as she is, but I want to do what I can. That’s all. I know we had a lot of fun, but I just want to . . . remember her. And those were some of the best memories of my life.”

Neither one of them said anything for so long, I genuinely started to feel a little awkward. Some people were uncomfortable with the idea of grief. Some people didn’t understand love either.

And that was okay.

But I was never going to shy away from how much I’d loved my mom and how much I was willing to do to feel closer to her. I’d been on autopilot for so many years that it had been easy to . . . not bury my mourning . . . but to just keep it on my shoulder and keep going.

For so long, right after her disappearance, it had been hard enough to just force myself out of bed and continue trying to live my new life.

Then after that, there had been school, and Kaden, and just go, go, go.

All this while carrying my mom’s memory and legacy with me, covering it up with distractions and life until now. Until I’d dusted all that other stuff off to focus on what I’d buried for so long.

And I was thinking about all this when Mr. Rhodes said in his rough voice, “What’s on her list?”

Of hikes? “Probably too many. I want to do them all, but it depends how long I stick around.” Which was longer now than I had expected a couple weeks ago since he’d invited me to stay. If I kept being a good guest, then who knew how long he’d rent the garage apartment out to me.

Wishful thinking. Then I’d have to decide whether to rent or buy a place, but all that depended on how things were going here. If I had enough of a reason to stay . . . or if this would turn out to be another place with no roots to hold me down any longer. “She did all of them when we lived here, but I know for sure she had Crater Lake Trail on there.”

“That one’s difficult. You can do it in a day though if you pace yourself and start early.”

Ooh. He was offering suggestions and information? Maybe he had gotten over the incident with the bat.

I threw out another trail in Mom’s book.

“Difficult too. You have to be in good shape to do that one in a day, but I’d say spend the night or be prepared to be sore.”

I winced.

He must have noticed it because he asked, “You don’t want to camp?”

“Honestly, I’m a little scared to camp by myself, but maybe I’ll just do it.”

He grunted, probably thinking I was an idiot for being scared.

But whatever. I’d watched a movie about an immortal Sasquatch that kidnapped people in the wilderness. And hadn’t he said there were millions of acres of national forest? Nobody could really know what was out there. When I’d go camping with my mom a million years ago, it had just been fun. I’d never worried about some ax murderer possibly coming up to our tent and getting us. I’d never even worried about bears or Sasquatches or skunks or any of that.

Had she?

I named another one.

“Difficult.”

Exactly what I’d read online.

“Devil Mountain?”

“Difficult. I don’t know if that one’s worth it.”

I glanced at him. “She had a couple of funky notes for that one. Maybe I’ll put that one at the bottom of the list if I get bored.”

“Didn’t we take a UTV up that one when you first moved back here?” Amos asked.

When you first moved back here. Who the hell had Amos lived with? His mom and stepdad?

“Yes. We got the flat tire,” Mr. Rhodes confirmed.

“Oh,” the boy said.

I rattled off more names of trails off the top of my head, and fortunately, he said those were intermediate hikes so they seemed more doable. “Have you done any of those?” I asked Amos just to include him.

“No. We don’t do anything since Dad works all the time.”

At my side, the man seemed to tense.

I was blowing it.

“My aunt and uncle, who raised me, worked all the time. I pretty much only slept at their house. We were always at the restaurant they owned,” I tried to soothe, thinking back on all the things that had driven me crazy when I’d been his age. Then again, it didn’t help that I’d been so heartbroken over my mom at the same time.

But looking back on it now, I think they had kept me occupied on purpose. Otherwise, I probably would have just stayed in the room I’d shared with my cousin and moped the whole time. And by moped, I really meant cried like a baby.

Okay, I’d still cried like a baby but in bathrooms, in the back seat of whatever car I was in . . . pretty much anytime I had a second and could get away with it.

“Do you go hiking a lot for work?” I asked Mr. Rhodes.

“For searches and during hunting season.”

“When is that?”

“Starting in September. Bow hunting.”

Since everyone was asking questions . . . “How long have you officially been a game warden?” I asked.

“Only a year,” Amos offered up from the back seat.

“And you were in the Navy before that?” Like I didn’t already know.

“He retired from it,” the boy answered again.

I acted surprised like I hadn’t put it together. “Wow. That’s impressive.”

“Not really,” the teenager mumbled.

I laughed.

Teenagers. Seriously. My nephews roasted me all the time.

“It’s not. He was always gone,” the kid went on. He was looking out the window with another funny expression on his face that I couldn’t decipher that time.

Had his mom tagged along with them? Is that why she wasn’t around? She got tired of him being gone and left?

“So you moved back here to be with Amos?”

It was Mr. Rhodes that simply said, “Yes.”

I nodded, not knowing what to say without asking a million questions that I would more than likely not have answered. “Do you have more family here, Amos?”

“Just Grandpa, Dad, and Johnny. Everybody else is spread out.”

Everyone else.

Hmm.

I’d like to think that the ride to the trailhead wasn’t the most awkward trip of my life, what with no one saying a word for the majority of the trip.

Well, with the exception of me pretty much “ahhing” over just about everything.

I had no shame. I didn’t care. I’d done the same thing on the other hikes I’d done, except I hadn’t seen all that many animals on those occasions.

A cow!

A baby calf!

A deer!

Look at that huge tree!

Look at all the trees!

Look at that mountain! (It wasn’t a mountain, it was a hill, Amos had said with a look that was almost amused.)

The only comment I’d gotten other than Amos’s correction was Mr. Rhodes asking, “Do you always talk this much?”

Rude. But I didn’t care. So I told him the truth. “Yeah.” Sorry not sorry.

The drive alone was beautiful. Everything got bigger and greener, and I couldn’t find it in me to mind or even notice too much that my passengers weren’t saying anything. They didn’t even complain when I had to stop to pee twice.

After parking, Amos led us over the deceptive-looking trail that started from a decent parking lot, giving you the illusion that it would be easy.

Then I saw the name on the sign and my insides paused.

Fourmile Trail.

Some people said there wasn’t such a thing as a stupid question, but I knew that wasn’t correct because I asked stupid questions all the time. And asking Mr. Rhodes if Fourmile Trail was actually four miles, I knew, was a stupid question.

And part of me honestly didn’t want to actually know I was going to hike four times the amount I was used to. I didn’t exactly look out of shape, but looks were deceiving. My cardio endurance had gotten better over the last month of jump roping but not enough.

Four miles, f-u-c-k me.

I glanced at Amos to see if he looked alarmed, but he gave one look at the sign and started.

four miles and four waterfalls, the sign read.

If he could do it, I could do it.

I’d tried to talk twice and had ended up panting so bad both times that I immediately stopped. It wasn’t like they were excited to talk to me. As I wound my way behind Amos, with his dad taking up the rear, I was just glad to not be alone. There had been a handful of cars parked in the lot, but you couldn’t see or hear anything. It was beautifully quiet.

We were in the middle of nowhere. Away from civilization. Away from . . . everything.

The air was clean and bright. Pure. And it was . . . it was spectacular.

I stopped and took a couple of selfies, and when I called out to Amos to stop and turn around so I could take a picture of him, he grudgingly did it. He crossed his arms over his thin chest and angled the brim of his hat up. I snapped it.

“I’ll send it to you if you want,” I whispered to Mr. Rhodes when the boy had kept on walking.

He nodded at me, and I’d bet it cost him a couple years off his life to grind out a “Thanks.”

I smiled and let it go, watching every step as one mile turned into two, and I started to regret doing this long hike so soon. I should’ve waited. I should’ve done longer ones to lead up to this.

But if Mom could do it, so could I.

So what if she was way more fit than me? You didn’t get in shape unless you busted your ass and made it happen. I just had to suck it up and keep going.

So that’s what I did.

And I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me feel better that I could tell when Amos started slowing down too. The distance between us got shorter and shorter.

And just when I thought we were going to the end of the fucking earth and these waterfalls didn’t exist, Amos stopped for a second before turning to the left and hiking up.

The rest of the hike went by with me having a huge smile on my face.

We finally walked by other hikers, who called out good-mornings and how-you-doings that I answered when the other two didn’t. I took more pictures. Then even more.

Amos stopped after the second waterfall and said he’d wait there, even though each one was just as epic as the last.

And surprising the shit out of me, Mr. Rhodes followed behind me, still keeping his distance and his words to himself.

I was real glad he did because the path after the last of the four waterfalls got undefined and I turned in the wrong spot, but fortunately he caught sight of the path better than I did and tapped my backpack to get me to follow him.

I did—looking at his hamstrings and calves bunching the whole incline upward.

I wondered again when he got a chance to work out. Before or after work?

I took more selfies because I sure as hell wasn’t going to ask Mr. Rhodes. And when I turned as he kept hiking upward, legs stretching as he made his way up the loosely graveled trail, I aimed my camera toward him and called out, “Mr. Rhodes!”

He looked, and I snapped the picture, giving him a thumbs-up afterward.

If he was irritated with me taking a picture, too bad. It wasn’t like I would share it with anyone but maybe my aunt and uncle. And Yuki if she scrolled through my pictures one day.

Amos was exactly where we’d left him, shaded by trees and boulders, playing a game on his phone. He looked way too relieved to be leaving. His bottle of water was mostly empty, and I was just about finished with my own, I noticed.

I needed to get a straw, some tablets to purify water, or one of those bottles with a built-in filter. The shop carried all of that.

I was too busy trying to catch my breath on the walk back that none of us said anything then either, and I took the tiniest sips along the way, regretting like a motherfucker that I hadn’t brought more.

What felt like an hour later, something tapped my elbow.

I glanced back to find Mr. Rhodes just a few feet behind me, holding his big, stainless-steel water bottle toward me.

I blinked.

“I don’t want to have to drag you out when you start getting a pounding headache,” he explained, eyes locked on mine.

I only hesitated for a second before taking it; my throat was hurting and I was beginning to get a headache. I put it to my mouth and drank two big gulps—I wanted more, I wanted all of it, but I couldn’t be a greedy asshole—and handed it back. “I thought you finished yours too.”

He slid me a look. “I filled it back up at the last waterfall. I have a filter.”

I smiled at him a lot more shyly than I would have expected. “Thank you.”

He nodded. Then he called out, “Am! You need some water?”

“No.”

I looked at his dad, and the man just about rolled his eyes. At some point, he’d put a cap on his head too, just like his son, pulled low so I could barely see them. I hadn’t seen his jacket, but I’d bet he’d rolled it into his pack at some point.

“Will you drag him out too or would you carry him?” I joked quietly.

I was surprised when he said, “He’d get dragged too.”

I grinned and shook my head.

“He’s used to the altitude now. You’re not,” he said behind me, as if trying to explain why he’d offered me fluids. So I wouldn’t get the wrong idea.

I slowed down my walking, so he was closer before I asked, “Mr. Rhodes?”

He grunted, and I took that as my sign to ask my question.

“Does anyone ever call you Toby?”

There was a pause, then he asked, “What do you think?” in the closest thing I’d heard to a pissy tone.

I almost laughed. “No, I guess not.” I waited a second. “You definitely look like more of a Tobers,” I joked, glancing over my shoulder with a grin, but his attention was down on the ground. I thought I was hilarious. “Would you like a granola bar?”

“No.”

I shrugged and turned back forward. “Amos! You want a granola bar?”

He seemed to think about it for a second. “What kind?”

“Chocolate chip!”

He turned and held out his hand.

I tossed it at him.

Then I tipped my head up toward the sun, ignoring how tired my thighs were, and that I was starting to drag my feet because each step was getting harder and harder. I already knew I was going to be hurting tomorrow. Hell, I was already hurting. My boots hadn’t been broken in enough for this and my toes and ankles were sore and chafed. Tomorrow, I was more than likely barely going to be able to move.

But it was going to be worth it.

It was worth it.

And I said quietly, filling my lungs with the freshest air I’d ever smelled, “Mom, you would have liked this one. It was pretty amazing.” I wasn’t sure why this one hadn’t been in her notebook, but I was so glad I’d done it.

And before I could think twice about it, I jogged forward. Amos glanced over at me as I threw my arms around his shoulders, giving him a quick hug. He tensed but didn’t push me away in the one-second embrace. “Thank you for coming, Am.”

Just as quickly as I hugged him, I let him go and turned around to go straight for my next victim.

He was big and walking forward, his face serious. Like always. But in the blink of an eye, that rabies-raccoon expression was back.

I got shy.

Then I held up my hand for him in a high five instead of a hug.

He looked at my hand, then looked at my face, then back to my hand.

And like I was ripping out his nails instead of asking for a high five, he lifted his big hand and lightly tapped my palm with his.

And I told him quietly, meaning every word, “Thank you for coming.”

His voice was a steady, quiet rumble. “You’re welcome.”

I smiled the entire way back to the car.