Page 5 of Cherry Picked
Hawk made a garbled sound. His foot slipped on some pine needles, and I grabbed his elbow to steady him before he impaled himself on his trekking pole.
“Whoa! You okay?” I smiled down at him. “Maybe we should have postponed our hike. You were just out hiking with the Nature Scouts yesterday, and that’s a lot in this heat.”
“Huh?” He stared down at my hand, and his cheeks turned cherry red beneath his freckles. “Oh. No. I’m fine. Just momentarily distracted when you said, uh… never mind.” He blinked and straightened. “Thanks for the rescue.”
I squeezed his arm before letting him go. “Always, Bird.”
He gnawed on his lip for a long moment. “Just to say… you don’t need to baby me, you know. I’m a grown man.”
I couldn’t help grinning. Hawk was definitely fully grown, not to mention leanly muscled from hiking and hard work. And even if I couldn’t see that truth with my own eyes, I’d know it because he’d repeated it over and over again from the day he turned eighteen. There were very few things that could make Hawk unreasonable or impatient, but growing up as the smallest, quietest brother in his large, boisterous, overprotective family had given him a big-ass chip on his shoulder when it came to being coddled.
Despite knowing this, though, there was something about Hawk—his starry-eyed dreaminess, his passion for the things and people he loved—that had made me want to indulge and protect him from the day we’d met. For some reason, he didn’t seem to mind it as much coming from me as he did from his brothers.
“Not babying you, Bird. Would I have you working full-time at my diner, or up on my roof helping me fix my damn chimney, or planning out our hiking routes every week if I didn’t have full confidence in your abilities? I just like taking care of you. You’re important to me. Nothing wrong with that, is there?”
His expression softened, even as his cheeks went redder. “No. Of course not.” He turned back to the trail, wiping his palms on his shorts. “So, um… What were we talking about?”
I stifled a laugh. Hawk had never managed to stay upset for more than ten seconds as long as I’d known him. “Gloves, I think?”
“Right! Yes. Gloves. I can’t remember if Elizabeth was wearing them at first. But it doesn’t matter because…” He turned back to the trail and resumed his tale, and I tramped along beside him, listening once more.
The July sun was high in the sky now, making the pine-scented air thick and sticky-hot even under the tree canopy. Maybe half a mile up the mountain, if I remembered correctly from the last time we’d hiked here, we’d pass through the tree line, and the terrain would get considerably steeper before we crested the final rise at Balderdash Peak. Two miles down the mountain, at the trailhead, I’d get back in my truck and remember all the other tasks I should be working on. There were invoices to pay at the restaurant, along with shift schedules to finalize, weekly menus to sort out, and stock to order. I needed to plan the final renovation projects on my Victorian money pit of a house. And my mom’s birthday was coming up, so I needed a gift.
But in this moment, I wasn’t racing to get to any of those tasks. There was no need to rush or worry. When I was out hiking with Hawk, there was nowhere else I’d rather be.
“So, when they got out to the garden, and they’d walked a fair distance to be out of view of Mr. Bennet’s book room, Darcy grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and turned her toward him. Then he, uh…” He swiped at a rivulet of sweat rolling down his temple, nearly knocking his eye out with his trekking pole. “He kissed the inside of her wrist.”
“Oooh. And I know how much you love when Darcy takes liberties.” I grinned. “Hey, let’s stop for some water. Your voice is sounding all breathy, and you’re wobbling. Heatstroke can really sneak up on you—”
Hawk shot me a sideways look. “No heatstroke. It’s just… when I say he kissed her wrist, I don’t mean he kissed her likemwah, Jack. I mean he… he ran his lips over her pulse and nuzzled her palm. Full-on, like… tongue-mauling her hand. And—”
“Seriously, Hawk, take this.” I grabbed the water bottle I’d tucked in the side pocket of my backpack and held it out to him. “You’re gasping. Heatstroke…”
Hawk took the water bottle obediently, but he didn’t open it. “It’snotheatstroke! I’m trying to explain…” He exhaled sharply. “See, things ended up getting really fraught. So fraught I thought they were going to anticipate their vows right there in the Longbourn rose garden. But they didn’t. Because virginity and all, you know?”
“Yeah. They made a big deal about that stuff back then for no good reason.” I rolled my eyes. “The whole concept of virginity as a social construct is weird. I mean, if you’re attracted to someone and you care about them, what’s the problem?”
“Right.Right!” The words came out in a squeak, and I was tempted to grab him by the arm to force him to stop walking and rest. “I’m so glad you agree with me about this! Because in the next chapter, they end up on this madcap carriage trip to Gretna Green in search of Lydia and Wickham, which meant they had to stay at inns along the way and pretend to be married for propriety’s sake, and this author used the ‘only one bed’ schtick, which you know is my kryptonite, and the whole time, they’re like, so perfectly suited to one another that the only thing missing is that they’re not having sex, and I was ready to throw my book at the wall and scream, ‘Dear god, what are you people waiting for?’You know?”
“Uh-huh. Totally.” I kept my eyes trained on the pinecones on the ground—slippery fuckers—and on Hawk’s hiking boots. Hawk wasn’t watching where he was walking at all now. Someone was gonna fall off the trail if he wasn’t careful.
“And then it hit me thatIwas Elizabeth. Elizabeth wasme. A-and… long story short… What I’m trying to say is…” He sucked in a deep breath and blurted desperately, “Jack, will you please pop my cherry?”
“Whaaa—ooof!” My boot slid out from under me, and I lurched sideways.
Hawk spun toward me in surprise, but when he moved to catch me, he caught me in the side with his trekking pole, tangling us together. Time slowed, and for a single moment, I stared into his shocked brown eyes… and then I hit him with the full weight of my body and sent the two of us tumbling into a pile of jagged pinecones just as Conrad and Greta Pilkner rounded the bend coming down the slope.
“I didn’t mean… right this minute,” Hawk said in a pained gasp.
Okay, maybeIwas the one suffering from heatstroke. In fact, I had to be. Because there was no way my Hawk, with his wide, innocent eyes and sunshine smile, could possibly have said anything about—
“Cherries?” Conrad shouted in his usual overly effusive manner. “Hawkins, did you say you two were popping cherries? I thought cherry season was over this far north!”
Greta tutted and pulled at her husband’s shoulder to whisper something in his ear.
“Ohhhhhh!” Conrad shouted again. “Thatkind of cherry popping.” He chuckled. “Well, then. Nice weather for it, boys!”
I glanced down at Hawk. His face was ten serrano peppers on the Scoville scale, and he had pinecone scratches all up his arm. He struggled to pull his pole out from under my leg and ended up elbowing me in the jaw.
