Page 54 of Chocolate Cherry Cabin

“Maybe one of these old-timers has a flask and we can turn this iced tea into something adult.”

“Are you suggesting illegal public drinking?”

“Where’s your sense of adventure? Have we already exhausted it?”

She peered into her plastic cup, then took a sip. “Well, you know me. If it won’t send me to jail then it’s not worth it.”

“You enjoyed your one and only night in the clink?”

The high school horse dare. Of course he remembered that. Her one attempt at rule-breaking and she’d relied on a four-legged beast to help her get away with it.

“I wasn’t in there all night.” She hesitated, then added, “I saw you across the street when I was released.” She hadn’t actually been arrested, but wasn’t allowed to leave the station until her parents had claimed her and she’d made a plan to make amends, as well as fix the damage.

“I saw you, too.”

“You were smirking.”

“Because the perfect Hannah Murphy had done something that surprised me.”

“That’s not why.”

“And because...” He was smiling up at the sky and she had a feeling it was at her expense.

“Riding a horse through the school is not funny,” she said, quoting her mother.

“But it was, wasn’t it?”

Hannah thought of her friends. The laughter. The memories. The adrenaline at doing something out of the ordinary, and breaking rules. Despite the fallout, she didn’t actually regret it. “It was kind of fun.”

“Want to go paint our names on the water tower?” Louis asked, the wind ruffling his hair as he tilted his head in the direction of Sweetheart Creek. “Relive some of our youthful energy?”

“No,” she said definitively.

“Did I ever tell you that story of that guy—whose cousin was he? Yours? He’s from Blueberry Springs, way up north.”

Hannah shrugged.

“Anyway, he fell off their water tower.”

“And so you’re suggestingwedo that? Is this some sort of twisted Romeo and Juliet death pact thing?”

“No, not fall off it. I like adventure, but the kind I can walk away from.” He watched her for a beat. “Come on, you must have heard the story. He was trying to impress a girl.”

“Oh my gosh!” Hannah squealed, the memory coming back. “I do remember hearing that.” She reached across the table, squeezing his arm as details came back to her. “From Daisy-Mae! She knows the story. She knows the girl he was trying to impress. Mandy something. She paintedhisname up there a few years ago and got busted like he did. She didn’t fall off, though.” Hannah released Louis’s arm. “I heard they got married.”

“I tell ya, pranks are the new I-love-you’s of the dating world.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes.

“What? Come on, that was almost funny.”

Hannah took another sip of her iced tea. This whole day felt special—something she would always remember, and not just because it was their first official date. She lowered her cup to hide the tremors that were starting in her hand.

“Why were you really smirking at me?” she asked, realizing he hadn’t fully answered her earlier question.

He shrugged, scooping up a bit of fish from his takeout tray and popping it in his mouth.

“You can’t get out of answering by stuffing your face.”

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