Page 29 of The Alpha Experiment
A pine needle poked me in the nostril. “Ow!” I batted it away and got a smear of mud on my nose. “Gross.”
Colin had landed us with him taking most of the impact, but my shoulder had hit the ground fairly hard, and it’d have a bruise. Other than that, and the nose thing, I was fine. We lay on our sides for a minute, his arms still around my middle. My heart rate was basically normal.
He rested his forehead against my shoulder blade and started to laugh.
***
The third time I rolled to my feet mildly bruised after Colin tackled me into a pile of dirt and rotting leaves, I lost it a little.
“Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fuckingfuck, this isn’t working!”
I broke off from my impotent shouting at the sky to glare at Colin, who was wheezing with laughter a few feet away, doubled over with his hands resting on his knees.
“You,” I gritted out, “are not helping!”
Colin straightened up at last. “I’m sorry. Seriously,” he said, holding out his hands in some futile attempt at placation. “I’m really fucking sorry. It’s just—you’re jogging along, and I jump you, and we gofwumpinto the ground, and then you get all pissed off and make thatfaceat me—”
He let out another cackle, and I…well, I gave up.
I dropped down cross-legged right there, in the same muddy pile of leaves I’d already landed in once, and put my head in my hands. This stupid goddamn plan hadn’t even managed to get me full of adrenaline, let alone any other, more elusive hormones. I was only breathing hard because I’d been shouting at a bunch of freaking pine trees.
Jesus. What a stupid waste of time.
Sunset had finally crept over the mountain, even though we were high enough that a glow still lit the tree trunks. Nothing but fresh, pine-scented air for miles. An early-waking owl hooted in the distance.
I wished I hadn’t left the granola bars in the car after all. I needed to eat my feelings. I wanted a burger and fries, but honey-flavored cardboard stuff would do in a pinch.
Dammit.
Colin sat down next to me and took a similar pose, his knee brushing mine.
“I’m sorry,” he said, sounding a lot less flippant. “You’re right, this isn’t working. But I didn’t mean to be a dick about it.”
I nudged his knee with mine. “Don’t worry about it.” My anger had drained away with everything else, and now I just felt nothing at all. If I’d been a little less numb, I might’ve even laughed with him, at this point. “Natural reaction.” I did let out a miserable chuckle at that. “At least one of us is having one.”
“So what next?”
I glanced up through my fingers and found him looking at me, brown eyes reflecting a little of the sunset’s russet-gold. “What do you mean, what next? Nothing’s next.”
“No, don’t give me that bullshit,” he said. “Fuck that. So the first experiment failed. You’re the scientist here, right? So what do you do when an experiment fails?”
I blinked at him. “Acknowledge that your hypothesis sucks and get really goddamn drunk?”
“No, dude. I mean, yes, to the drunk part. We’re getting drunk tonight, no question.” I huffed a laugh in response to that. Yep, we sure were. “But no. You redesign the experiment, right?”
“Only if you still think the hypothesis is worth testing.”
Colin’s jaw set into a mulish look that only meant trouble. “We’re testing it again.”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to do this in the first place!” Was he kidding me? First I’d had to talk him into this, and now I couldn’t talk him out of it?
“Yeah, well, you were really convincing.”
I mentally translated that into Colin-ese. “You mean you’re so freaking competitive that you can’t stand losing, even when we’re only competing against ourselves for something you don’t think makes any sense in the first place.”
Colin hopped to his feet, dusted off his ass, and reached down a hand to help me up. “Whatever you say, dude. But we’re testing it again.” His eyes gleamed, and this time it wasn’t the sunset, but some combination of the alpha glow and his own, uniquely mischievous nature. I shuddered. Oh, gods, thatreallymeant trouble. “And next time I have some ideas.”
Ideas. Oh, shit. That didn’t bode well either.
