Page 28 of Wild About You
“I didn’t know you had a tattoo.”
His words aren’t what I expect, and I look down at the interlocking star and heart on my ribs as if I didn’t know it was there either. “Oh. Uh, yeah. It’s from my grandma’s signature.” A soft, self-deprecating laugh bubbles up. “God, I’ve talked about her a ridiculous amount since I’ve been here. I’m not, like, obsessed with my dead grandma. I just thought it was pretty and—”
Finn’s fingers brush over the ink for only a second, and I can’t hide my gasp in response. My eyes flick up to find his, serious and intense as they’ve ever been, but with something warmer there too. “It is pretty.”
Harper’s voice is closer this time when she says, “I take back the divorced parents thing.”
I didn’t even register the light splashing sound heralding her approach, but now she’s almost even with Finn, with a look of amused speculation on her face. I whip around to stop displaying my backside like a museum exhibit, and Finn grips my elbow to keep me steady.
He clears his throat. “We probably shouldn’t stay in here too long. You have goosebumps everywhere.”
Harper snorts before ducking her head underwater, so I can’t even give her an innocent look. Never mind the fact that I’m pretty sure these goosebumps Finn is concerned with aren’t an indicator of the onset of hypothermia.
I take a bracing breath and nod, avoiding eye contact with either companion. “I’d better start enjoying it, then!”
With that, I plunge down into the creek, dunking my head under for a second before reemerging above my shoulders. The first thing I see when I open my eyes is Finn’s rueful smile, and it’s devastating. The three of us float there for a while with teeth chattering, making fun of ourselves for choosing this little ice bath. Finn stays closest to me, probably thinking I’m a fall risk.
I wonder if he feels as much of this…something as I do. Something that surely has to do with the real conversations we’ve finally been having, the moments of connection and understanding. But it’s also this instinctive, unstoppable pull of everything in me toward everything in him, a recognition of attraction clicking into place. It clicked for me, at least. And I don’t know if it can be unclicked. Like a seat belt of sexual awareness that I can’t take off.
Okay, yeah, I must have hit my head in that fall.
I am just…not going there with Finn. There’s no way! Yes, there’s been a sneakily hot bod lurking under all that khaki. I mean, are those the kind of fit, solid-muscle thighs that hiking gives you? Because if that’s the case, maybe I should go ahead and plan on doing the rest of the AT. His biceps aren’t overly bulky but definitely indicate he’s lifting something other than books and tent poles on the regular, too.
Oh my God, I must be stopped. I splash some cold water on my face, now grateful for the abundance of it at my fingertips. Through the drops coming off my eyelashes, I see Finn stand and take a few steps away, water coursing down his torso in rivulets as he looks out across the creek. Ugh.
This changes nothing about how I see my partner, nor how I’ll treat him. If anything, the hotter a guy is, the more skeptical I am of him. My dating history might make that look like a lie, but all the dating High School Natalie did is what bred the skepticism. College Natalie knows better, at least about this one thing.
As I turn my head away from the view, I find Harper’s eyes on me, too much knowing behind them. I narrow my eyes at her then lean back to dip my hair once more. The chill makes my scalp tingle. Much to my surprise, I feel pretty clean and refreshed as I stand up, shivering in the air that felt scorching not so long ago. Finn looks back to me, and the way his eyes stay trained on my face seems deliberate.
“Ready?”
“Yep!” I chirp, turning quickly so I can make a beeline for my towel and dry clothes. But his hand grasps my elbow, pulling me to a stop.
“Let’s take it slow. Your water shoes suck,” he says by way of mildly rude explanation.
“Well, excuse me for going the five-dollar-bargain-bin route on this one item. I didn’t expect to be doing much creek bathing—or any at all,” I huff, but I don’t try to shake off his grip. In fact, I want to trap his hand there, keep it tucked against my side for the foreseeable future. He guides me all the way to the rock where my stuff is waiting. The way it evokes helping a little old lady across the street should really kill off any lingering sexiness around the experience, but somehow it doesn’t. We both just need to put our clothes back on, I tell myself. That’s all.
But it might not be all, unfortunately. On shore, I commence working a palm full of shampoo into my creek-wet hair, then flip my head over to rinse with a cup Harper fills for me with more creek water. When I straighten up and wring out the brown and purple mop, Finn is leaning against a tree watching, a bemused little grin pulling at his features.
“Not a word,” I warn.
He holds his hands up, palms out. “I didn’t say anything.”
“You didn’t have to, Dad,” Harper snarks.
From there, it’s a hilariously acrobatic process of drying off and changing into dry clothes behind my towel, which Harper holds up for me, involving a lot of flailing limbs and elastic snapping into place by way of a new sports bra, underwear, and shorts. Finn turns his back to us for most of it, thankfully. It’s another ordeal for me to comb the tangles out of my confused tresses, then don a tank top. I half expect Finn to have gone back to camp by the time I’m done, but he waits. Idly perusing his surroundings like he could do it all day, because he’s just the kind of freak who would watch the trees and sky to entertain himself even if he had other options.
It’s not unattractive. Nor is the fact that when we return to camp and pack our things away, and I’ve found an open seat by the campfire, he approaches me with an ice pack in hand.
“For your, uh, side,” he says, his ears looking a little red, but it could just be the firelight. When I stare, gaping, at the plastic bag with ice cubes, he explains further. “I filled it up from the cooler. I thought it could help with the bruising.”
I shake my head and find my words. “Right. Wow, thanks, Finn.”
Taking the bag from his hands, I shift in my camp chair so I can wedge it partly under myself, covering the area of my hip and butt that’s aching. I look back up at him and his eyes flit from my hip to my face…and he smiles. A real one, small, but with a rare flash of straight teeth and accompanying crinkles forming around his eyes. My heart skips a damn beat.
* * *
As the sun sets, some of us munch on s’mores while others set up yet-unassembled tents and begin to turn in. One of the producers staying here for the night breaks out a guitar and starts to play, and, well, one thing leads to another until Evan and I are leading everyone in show tune sing-alongs. Even when this earns an eye roll from Finn across the fire, it feels like a good-natured one—confirmed when he ends it with a wink at me that I feel all the way to my toes.