Gift From The Bad Boy

I turned around and looked below. The ground dropped off sharply, and a thin patina of high branches hid the ground from view. It was a completely blind jump. But it was one I knew. I slid off the rock and landed with a gentle thump on the other side.

When I’d regained my feet, I dusted off my hands on my pants and turned to look back up at the way I’d come. Then I held my breath and listened close as I waited for this girl—my wife and the mother of my child—to come careening through the treetops.

Chapter Twenty-One

Carmen

I bit my lip as I climbed up the boulders. Ben had disappeared on the other side, but I was too focused on the climb to feel nervous now that I couldn’t see or hear him. I dug my fingers into one little outcropping of rock, then lunged up to grab the next. I found a good rhythm as I moved inch by inch up the face of the dusty stone.

My legs were aching from holding me up by the time I reached the top. I sat down with a satisfied sigh. When I looked back over to see how far I’d come, I was pretty impressed with myself. It’d been a while since I’d done something so adventurous and outdoorsy. I’d forgotten how good it felt to tackle a physical challenge like that.

Turning to the other side, though, was a whole different story. Thin, flat tree branches with broad leaves crisscrossed over each other, forming a canopy I couldn’t see through even a little bit. “Ben!” I called.

His voice came back muffled. It didn’t sound like it was that far below me, but I felt nervousness start to creep its way into my system nonetheless. “I’m right here, Carmen,” he said.

“How do I get down there?”

“You have to jump.”

“Jump? Are you crazy? I have no idea where I’m landing!”

“I’m right here. I’ll catch you.”

I swallowed. My throat was dry all of the sudden and I noticed my hands were shaking. I couldn’t remember why I’d agreed to go on this crazy walkabout in the first place. Ben hadn’t even told me what it was he was showing me, for crying out loud. This was the last time I’d be following him blindly into the wild, I was sure of that. Never again.

I squinted and tried to find a gap in the leaves to peer through, but there was nothing. They didn’t look too strong or thick and I wasn’t afraid of getting whacked in the head with a stiff branch. But the nervousness pumped through me anyway. This was miles outside of my comfort zone.

“I don’t know,” I said fretfully.

“Carmen,” Ben called back. “Do you trust me?”

That was a serious humdinger of a question. Did I trust him? There was more baggage attached to that than I could wrap my head around. Who knew four little words could have so many implications?

I trusted him not to murder me in my sleep. I guessed that was a start. We’d spent enough nights under the same roof for me to feel pretty certain that he wasn’t about to slip a knife between my ribs when I wasn’t looking, just to get rid of me. He’d even taken to sharing the bed with me after I’d called him out for complaining about the kink in his neck he’d earned from too many consecutive nights on the couch. After that, he’d agreed to sleep alongside me, though he still refused to even come close to making physical contact.

I trusted him to make me laugh, too. There was something about that wild grin of his that made me feel a little wild myself. It felt good to relax in his presence, to let him sweep me away in the little eddies of conversation I loved getting lost in with him. He knew how to poke and prod until I was almost annoyed with him, but then he’d look at a new piece of furniture or a dish I was cooking for the first time, and turn on me with such a look of wide-eyed surprise and amazement that I couldn’t help but flush with pride. It wasn’t the kind of look I was used to receiving. My mother had made me feel that way, but she’d been gone for long enough that I’d almost forgotten what it felt like to have someone be impressed with something I’d done or made.

But did I trust him? It was more than those things. It was more than safety or giggles. It was the way I found him staring at me sometimes. Like I was a mythical creature he’d never seen before, only heard about. It was a bizarre look, and if anyone else had looked at me that way, I might’ve called the cops and reported a stalker or a psychopath. But on Ben, it was the opposite. I wanted to curl up inside that look, bathe in it, let it rinse over me and nestle me in its warmth. I couldn’t explain why I felt that way or what it was about him that made it feel so special. I just knew it did.