Page 27 of Gripp

Gripp felt himself moving in slow motion. There was no way she would survive crashing down to the ravine nearly one hundred feet below.

FIFTEEN

APRIL

April didn’t want to show Gripp how nervous she was about swinging from the vine. She wasn’t overwhelmed with anxiety but merely felt a normal amount of fear due to this being a new experience. The rapids below bellowed in her ears, and she kept envisioning herself snapping her neck, smacking her skull against the rocks, and dying instantly.

But she loved this adventure with Gripp despite the fact they were being chased. It was great fodder for her writing, like any experience was when you were a person who wanted to capture it all with words.

When she flung herself forward, she made sure her fingers were gripped tightly around the vine. But she didn’t give herself enough of a running start, and when she felt her toes curl around the tip of the cliff, her heart nearly came up her throat.

She was tough, but she thought maybe, she wasn’tthattough. She saw the look in Gripp’s sweet honey eyes as he reached for her, missed, then reached again with his other arm. She saw the life ahead of them that she would miss and the dream that had barely been touched.

But Gripp was able to catch the hem of her shirt with his left hand and pull her onto the cliff. She hammered into his chest, which wasn’t terrible at all. The momentum pushed them both back into a tree, the hollow sound of Gripp’s back smacking into it powerful enough to shake the ground.

The vine snapped backward loudly into the tree they had borrowed it from. Her thundering heart drowned out all other sounds as she pressed her face into Gripp’s chest.

“You okay?” he asked.

He held her by the shoulders as she looked up at him. His expression was a bit amused but also concerned. It made her heart flutter.

Her breath hitched in her throat as she tried to center herself.

“Jane nearly ate shit there,” she said.

The concern on Gripp’s face vanished, and he smiled, moving a hand through her hair. It was a compassionate gesture that made her body swoon.

“Good thing Tarzan is here, then,” Gripp replied.

April wanted to lean against his body for the rest of the day, curl into his warmth and just feel his hands all over her. The thought was so seductive and comforting.

But she stood against him and looked away. They needed to get out of there, despite the fact that she wanted to jump him and ride him until they both saw God.

There was also a potential threat nearby that she had to keep reminding herself about.

“Thank you,” she muttered, then looked back at the river.

Gripp cleared his throat and pushed away from the tree, checking his pack too. His eyes burned on her, stunning eyes that made her melt like chocolate in the sun.

He pulled out a compass from his pack, then faced the opposite direction of the ravine. “We don’t have much daylight left,” Gripp said, gazing at the afternoon sun. “I think we can stay for the night, at least, with a friend of mine who lives around here.”

April smiled and nodded. Gripp put the compass away, then gazed back at her, a handsome smirk across his beautiful lips.

“Ready to charge on, badass?”

Her face flushed hot, but she played it off by slipping her tongue over the ridges of her teeth. “I was born ready,” she replied.

They carried on with very little interference. Once they had a good stride going, her body settled, and her attraction calmed. But she had very little time to contemplate her feelings because Gripp shattered the silence.

“So I’m guessing no one in your family writes like you do?”

April walked beside him, watching her feet as she stepped along the trail.

“No, not at all,” she responded. “I wasn’t ever interested in what they were into, which really pissed off my parents. I felt like politics was a lot of talking with very little action.”

Gripp nodded, listening intently as they moved forward.

“But that’s not why I did it. I honestly wanted to know more about the world, the world that was outside my own, even one that made me a little uncomfortable. There’s no growth without discomfort.”

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