“There are fucking snakes out here.” A drop of water hit her cheek. “Ugh!”
“Oh shit, I’m sorry, Kia.” Sullivan sounded earnest. “This is my special place, and I was excited for you to see it. I wasn’t thinking.”
Kia’s frustration softened. If this mud bowl really was Sullivan’s special place, Sullivan had terrible taste in special places, but it was kind of sweet that she’d taken Kia here.
“I can’t jump over that.” Kia pointed to the water.
“Do you trust me?” Sullivan asked.
“After this? No.”
“Sorry.” Sullivan shrugged, looking suddenly shy. “I took search and rescue training. I can carry you over it.”
“And drop me.”
“No. I promise.” Sullivan held open her arms as though preparing to receive a large basket. “Okay?”
Kia would regret this.
Sullivan stooped a little. Then Kia felt one of Sullivan’s arms under her knees and the other around her back. Instinctively Kia draped an arm around Sullivan’s neck. Then Sullivan lifted Kia in her arms, leaning back a little so Kia’s weight rested against her chest. It was epically sexy. Sullivan walked through the water and set Kia down gently on the other side, like relocating a lost baby bird to its nest. She kept a hand on Kia’s lower back until Kia got her balance. And it was the hottest, most romantic gesture Kia had witnessed in real life. As soon as Sullivan put her down, shemissed the warmth and safety of Sullivan’s arms.
“I won’t race ahead.” Concern flickered in Sullivan’s eyes.
“Maybe we can work on our communication and coordinate better next time?”
“Of course.”
The path seemed drier with Sullivan beside her, and soon they were stepping into the forest behind the wetland. The path widened, so they could walk side by side. Kia glanced at Sullivan, who managed to look glamorous stepping over roots and rocks with her laid-back confidence.
“Do you really love this place?”
“Just wait.”
“What am I waiting for?”
Sullivan looked a little chagrined.
“You really will like it. At least your followers will.”
Sullivan smiled up at the canopy of trees. Kia’s eyes darted to Sullivan’s mouth—a mouth that she had watched for countless hours. Expressive lips parting to show beautifully white teeth, curving into an electric smile that Kia had found so mesmerizing. Sullivan looked like a hot REI commercial with all her gear. Had she ever made love to a woman in a tent? Or under the stars? That could almost make Kia want to go camping.
The path turned.
Sullivan announced, “We’re here.”
Kia had been too busy trying to turn the heat down on her thoughts. But her brain wasn’t a gas range where you could turn it off in a second. It was an old coil stove where the coils stayed hot for an inconveniently long time after you’d decided you were done with it. She hadn’t noticed the sound of water growing louder as they approached, but here was a small waterfall. Maybe ten or twelve feet. Ferns surrounded the small pool at its base. It madeKia think of a scene in a snow globe. A perfect, peaceful place set apart from the rest of the world. A place that should be protected in a glass globe so no one could touch it without loving it the way Sullivan obviously did.
“I used to come here when I was a kid,” Sullivan said. “They hadn’t put in the path, so I had it all to myself.”
“How’d you find it?”
“My grandpa showed me. He knew every inch of the Bois.”
Kia tried not to think about what she’d need to do to this mud pit to run in electricity and plumbing, pour concrete pads for the trucks, put in an accessible playground, ADA bathrooms… at one point she’d thought about a small stage. Fuck. She’d have to pave the whole thing. Sullivan would kill her. If Mega Eats didn’t get them first. Nina had sounded so confident, but what if…? Before Kia became the kind of influencer who spent her time doing promotional videos for her sponsors, she’d been the kind of person who spent afternoons fishing on the banks of dirty creeks listening to people talk about the unexpected disasters that had shaped their lives.
There was so much to think about, and none of it went together. She was excited about Taste the Love. She was worried about Mega Eats. She was lusting after Sullivan. She felt terrible about what she would have to do to Sullivan’s precious Bois, but she was definitely going to do it, because Taste the Love was her dream. But wasn’t part of the dream about Lillian and Izzy coming back to Portland, and all of them going out to brunch together and throwing prom parties in the winter when everyone needed an excuse to dress up? But Lillian hadn’t said they were coming back, not anytime soon. Was Kia putting her life savings and her investors’ money (not to mention risking Mega Eats’ wrath and Sullivan’s) for a dream of home that you couldn’t buy? She staredat the waterfall.
“You okay?” Sullivan set down her backpack.
