Page 92 of Bloom

Setting my mug down, I rest my cheek on my kneecaps. “How’d you know I was here?”

“Lucky guess.” Fingertips, still warm from the residual heat of his own drink, graze my skin as Hunter tucks a wet strand of hair behind my ear. “Don’t think this is swimmin’ weather.”

The sentence ends weirdly. Too sharply. Like it was cut off a word too soon, and it makes a rock settle in my gut.

Inhaling cold air to soothe a sudden bout of nausea, I close my eyes. With one sense deprived, the others heighten, the palm on my nape becoming unignorable, the thumb tracing the curve of my neck inciting more goosebumps than the brisk dip in the creek did. I listen to the wind whispering through the trees, theclink of one ceramic handle hitting another, the rustle of fabric as Hunter shifts.

When something tickles my nose, I frown. I open my eyes, and the frown wilts before I can catch it, an instinctive smile blooming in its place because I can’tnotsmile. Not when there’s a flower an inch from my face, a single daisy that must’ve been plucked from the arrangement on the Jacksons’ windowsill.

“I’m tryin’ too, Caroline,” Hunter says quietly, twirling the flower between his fingers. “Tryin’ to look out for you. Tryin’ not to make shit worse, not to hurt your feelings. I don’t wanna fuck things up. I don’t wanna lose my friend. I don’t wanna not be there when you need me because you think you can’t call. That would—”

“—kill you?”

A fleeting smile is quick to morph into a serious, straight line as Hunter ducks until his forehead presses flush against mine. “I like you. I really fuckin’ like you. Don’t think I told you right before. Think you heard the other shit louder. So, I’m tellin’ you again; I like you. Kissin’ you wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t an accident. But it was unfair, and so was walkin’ away like I did. Sayin’ everything I said, assumin’ things.” He nudges me gently. “I’m tryin’, okay? Not doin’ a very good job, and I’m sorry about that, but I am.”

It’s the antithesis to yesterday. To my flustered, screeched confession. Hunter doesn’t ramble; he knows exactly what he’s saying, exactly what he’s admitting. He’s clear and concise and yet still, it’s not enough. It doesn’t set my mind at ease. It doesn’t eradicate my confusion—if anything, it adds to it. It makes me wonder what I’m supposed to do with all that, where we’re supposed to go from here.

But he’strying. And I am nothing if not a girl who takes what she can get.

Breaking eye contact alleviates some of the pressure on my chest. I don’t move away though, and I feel his relief in the way his posture slumps, hear it in his long exhale, as I rest my head against his shoulder. “I’m sorry for yelling,” I whisper against the curve of his neck, feeling him shiver and shivering in return when he slips an arm around my waist. “Can we pretend that didn’t happen?”

“No way.” The fingers splayed across my hip pinch slightly. “I like you yellin’ at me. Like you being honest. Tellin’ me shit. Maybe you can do it some more. Over—”

At the first crack of thunder, we both jerk upright. What feels like only a second later, the sky opens and rain starts to fall, fat droplets that pelt us unrelentingly. We scramble to our feet, mine barely touching the ground before I’m all but carried to the horses, barely allowed time to haphazardly pull on my jeans before I’m lifted onto Aster’s back.

The storm descends so quickly, so ferociously, that I can barely see Hunter mounting Gaia through the thick sheets of rain. “I don’t think it’s safe to go back,” I have to yell over the racket.

I don’t hear Hunter swear so much as I guess he does, Gaia dancing in agitation beneath him. Squinting at the horizon, I see nothing, but I have an idea. Digging my heels in to start Aster forward, I pat Hunter’s shoulder on my way past. “Follow me. I know a place.”

By the time we make it to the building I just about remember how to get to and Hunter pries open the boarded-up entrance, we’re soaked to the bone. Wracked with uncontrollable shivers, we stumble inside, the sound of chattering teeth echoing aroundthe empty building along with the horses’ indignant whinnies. Working quickly, I loop Aster’s lead rope around a barely standing beam and slide the saddle off her back, rooting through the bag attached until I find the horse blanket folded inside and throw it over her body.

Despite the state of our new surroundings, I sigh with relief. The dilapidated structure might have cracked walls and a holey roof, but it’s better than nothing. I truly can’t find it in me to care, not about the filthy ground, nor the threat of rodents and rattlesnakes, not with the chill of my sodden clothes making me shake.

I know I need to take them off—logically, I know that. I just can’t. Like, literally, I can’t. When I try to unbutton my jeans, my shaking hands won’t cooperate enough to grab the freaking tiny button. My top peels off easily, but the sports bra underneath is so skintight, sopping wet from the rain and my impromptu swim, there’s no way I’m getting it over my head by myself, and I’m not about to ask for help. Not when Hunter is already halfway to naked, shirtless and unzipping his jeans with ease, and I can barely look at him, let alone formulate a request to get me naked along with him.

This is a nightmare. An honest to God, bona fide nightmare. Trapped in this barn, this old freaking barn that I know for a damn fact harbors a few creatures I’d rather not think about and is all but falling apart at the seams, with two horses that smell like wet dogs and a naked man, while a thunderstorm rages outside.

A naked man Ilike, whoknowsI like him because I told him. Yelled it at him, actually, while lamenting over my past, unsuccessful relationship—myonlyrelationship. And the naked man likes me too. And soon, I’ll also be naked, unless I want to risk hypothermia, which I’m not sure you can actually get in ninety-degree weather, but God knows if anyone can do it, it’s—

“What is this place?”

The internal rambling stops. Momentarily, my mind goes blank, everything chased from it as the dark hair sparsely covering a bulky torso dominates my stream of consciousness. I might gulp a little. I definitely gawk a lot—there’s just so much to gawk at. But in the grand scheme of things, I think I recover remarkably quickly.

Reluctantly meeting a smug, knowing gaze, I tell Hunter, “This is Hell.”

He quirks an amused, curious brow. “Hell?”

“We used to come here a lot.” Fifteen-year-old me loved coming here. I thought it waswhimsical, with ivy climbing the walls, buttercups blooming in the random crops of grass sprouting from the ground. On sunny days, the cracked roof would let in haphazard streaks of sunlight, illuminating the dirt floating in the air so it looked like it was sparkling. Back then, Lux had a thing for fairytales, and she swore up and down this place was straight out of one of her books.

For a long, hot summer, it was our oasis. The Jacksons came here to escape their grandparents; I came to escape my dad. Our nickname for the place was born of irony, coined by Lux. Felt like heaven, looked like hell, that was the joke, and it’s still apt—years of neglect have taken even more of a toll, leaving it in even more of a state of disrepair, but it still holds that same element of… well,serenity.

As I stare at the rafters, I feel Hunter come up beside me. “Why’d you stop?”

“A family of rats moved in. And where there are rats…”

“There are rattlesnakes,” Hunter finishes.

“Plus,” I add, shrugging. “I fell through the loft floor and broke my ankle.”