Page 122 of Tiger's Quest
“You mean something to me now.”
“Right, but I’m not talking about friendship.”
“Kishan—”
“Is there no possibility, not even the smallest chance that you could ever let yourself love me? Don’t you feel anything for me at all?”
“Of course I do. But—”
“But nothing. If Ren wasn’t in the picture, would you consider being with me? Could I be someone that you could come to care about?”
I put my hand on his cheek. “Kishan, I already care about you. I already have feelings for you. I already love you.”
He smiled and leaned in a little closer. Alarms started going off in my head, and I jerked back and felt like I was falling. I grabbed his arm and held on for dear life.
He steadied me and studied my face. He surely noticed my look of panic and probably recognized that it wasn’t due to losing my balance. He bridled his emotions, leaned back, and said quietly, “I’d never let you fall, Kells.”
I wasn’t handling this well, but the best I could give him was, “I know you wouldn’t.”
He let me go and rose to make our breakfast.
The stairs were narrower now and wound around the outside of the tree. The trunk was much smaller too. It took us only about thirty minutes to circumnavigate it at this height. After a few frightening hours of stairs that narrowed more and more, we came across a woven rope that dangled from what looked like a tree house.
I wanted to continue up the stairs, but Kishan wanted to climb the rope. He agreed to go up the stairs with me for another half hour, and, if we didn’t find anything, we’d come back to the rope. It was a moot discussion anyway because, not five minutes later, the stairs became just knobby bumps on the side of the tree trunk and then disappeared altogether.
As we started back to the rope, I said, “I don’t think I have the arm strength to climb up that high.”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ve got enough arm strength for both of us.”
“What exactly do you have in mind?”
“You’ll see.”
When we got to the rope, Kishan took the backpack from me and put it on. Then he beckoned me forward.
“What?”
He pointed at the ground in front of him.
“What are you going to make me do?”
“You’re going to wrap your arms around my neck and twist your wrists into the top loop of the backpack.”
“Okay, but don’t try anything funny. I’m very ticklish.”
He lifted my looped arms around his neck and picked me up, which brought his face very close to mine. He raised an eyebrow. “If I did try something, I canpromiseyou, it wouldn’t be to get a laugh.”
I laughed nervously, but his face was intense, serious. “Okay. Let’s go already,” I mumbled.
I felt his muscles tense as he prepared to leap but he looked down at me and his gaze drifted to my lips. He ducked his head and pressed a warm, soft kiss on the side of my mouth.
“Kishan.”
“Sorry. I couldn’t resist. You were trapped and for once you couldn’t turn away from me. Besides, you’re very kissable. You should be happy that I restrained myself as much as I did.”
“Yeah, right.”
With that, he leapt in the air. I let out a squeal at his sudden move. Calmly, he started climbing the rope. He pulled us up hand over hand, stepping onto limbs when he could, sometimes keeping one hand on the rope and one on a branch for balance. Kishan was always careful not to injure me. Other than the bouncing, the swinging hundreds or maybe thousands of feet into the air, and the stomach dropping leaps from branches, I felt pretty comfortable. In fact, it was a little too comfortable being pressed up against him.
