Page 59 of Perfect on Paper

“What, already?”

But apparently he didn’t mean home, because he’d unbuckled himself before I’d gotten the question out. Then he opened the door, letting in an icy gust of air and rain, before launching himself outside and slamming the door shut. “Brougham!” I called, but there was no way he could’ve heard me.

There wasn’t much to the lookout. Just space for a few cars, a low barrier made of interlocked logs, and a couple of trees. Beyond that was just the sharp drop-off.

I wasn’t going out there. There was nothing out there except a hell of a lot of water, and freezing cold wind, and regrets.

Through the rain-soaked passenger window I watched Brougham, now drenched, make his way over to the nearest tree and inspect it.

Why?

Whyanythingwith Brougham, truly?

Against my better judgment, I yanked out the car keys and stumbled outside to join him.

The rain hit me with gale force, no buildings or valleys to protect us from the worst of it. My hair whipped around my face in wet tendrils, and my denim jacket was waterlogged and heavy within seconds, making my shoulders feel as though they weighed a hundred extra pounds.

Brougham, for reasons known only to him, had started climbing the goddamn tree. With the grace of someone naturally athletically talented, he pulled himself up branch by branch.

“What are youdoing?” I asked. I hadn’t meant my voice to be filled with quite so much despair, but there it was.

“I’ve never been on a mountain in a rainstorm before,” he called back.

“It’s athunderstorm,Brougham! You know, the kind withlightning?”

“The storm’s ages away, don’t be a wuss.”

“What thefuckis a ‘wooss’?” I stood at the base of the tree, hugging myself against the rain and frost.

“Scaredy-cat.” He hauled himself onto a thick branch, jiggled into a comfortable sitting position, then leaned forward to see me through the leaves. “You coming or not?”

I let out an exasperated sigh and looked around. There was no one, nothing, not even a bird. Just us, and Ainsley’s car.

It’d be awkward if I didn’t, now, wouldn’t it?

I shot Brougham a look of pure disdain and started the painstaking process of hauling myself up a damn tree, on a damn mountain, during a goddamn lightning storm.

Branch by gradual branch, with the grace of someone so naturally athletically untalented I couldn’t successfully cross monkey bars, I dragged myself up. When I got close enough, Brougham stretched out a hand to help me climb the last few feet. Warily—and more than a little worried about the weight-bearing properties of this branch—I lowered myself to sit.

“You did it,” Brougham said. He was grinning at me, properly. Nothing fake or forced about it.

I couldn’t help but grin back. “I hate you. Why couldn’t you just watch from the car like a normal person?”

“Because now I can say I’ve done this.”

“We’re soaking!”

“We were already soaking.”

I opened my mouth, then caught myself. He wasn’t exactly wrong.

The wind howled with a special kind of fury up here, and the leaves rustled back and forth with it, small branches hitting against my head rhythmically. The air smelled washed clean. Rain and the now-familiar musk of Brougham’s cologne. In the far distance, the storm had grown close enough that we could make out the first rumblings of thunder. And the lightning show flickered on.

“Didn’t you ever do this as a kid?” Brougham asked, turning to look at me. His face was shiny and wet, raindropssplashing on his skin and pouring down his hair, over the bridge of his brow.

“Can’t say I did, you weirdo.”

Brougham turned back out to the storm and swung his legs out. “New memories, then.”

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