I was liking this too much.
Way too much.
The rational part of me understood this, knew how problematic it could be. The irrational part of me, though, told the other part to fuck off.
“Wasp,” Fenway called, a faraway sound in my ear, stirring me from a deep sleep. “Honey,” he said, making my belly wobble. “We’re here,” he added, giving my leg a squeeze.
A low, grumbling noise escaped me as my eyes slitted open, squinting at the afternoon sun.
“I think I have had enough fun,” I whined, pouting at him.
“I’m afraid we can’t reschedule, darling,” he told me, shrugging.
“Why not? We have no plans tomorrow.”
“No,” he agreed. “But I have already paid the people who run this particular tourist attraction to have exclusive access to this place of the day.”
“You… what?” I asked, sitting up, suddenly fully awake. My gaze moved around outside the car, seeing an empty lot save for us and one car with some sort of logo on it that I couldn’t read. “You can’t pay to rent out a public place.”
“Sure you can. People rent out Disney all the time. Churches. Museums…”
“Not entire parks.”
“Yes, entire parks,” he corrected. “Us being living proof of that.”
“But that’s not fair to everyone who planned to come here today.”
“Sure it is. I paid for them to be able to come here tomorrow with no charge. They were all happy to oblige. Or so I was told.”
“But why would we need it to be empty?”
“You’ll see,” he told me, giving my leg one last squeeze before exiting his door, leaving me to slip back into my shoes and follow.
“What is this?” I asked, looking up and seeing nothing but rolling hills of greenery. Beautiful, lush greenery, but seemingly nothing else. No temples, no statues, just natural beauty.
“So many questions.”
“Just one question, actually,” I corrected, brow raising.
To that, he rolled his eyes, reaching for my hand, twining his fingers between mine, and pulling me along.
I was supposed to snatch my hand away.
I was making it too easy.
He wasn’t going to fall for me if there wasn’t some resistance.
I needed to pull away.
But his hand felt good in mine—strong, reassuring, companionable, like we were going on an adventure together.
Which, I guessed, we were.
So I left my hand right there, telling myself that I could find some resistance some other time, that I was just going to enjoy this moment.
From there, we took off on our own, not even stopping to greet the park ranger as we passed, Fenway just giving him a nod that was returned as the man promptly disappeared.
I didn’t know how much this had cost Fenway—I didn’t want to know—but I had to admit there was something about hiking through this park in complete silence that made the experience almost seem, I don’t know, spiritual.
“Fenway?”
“Yes, darling?”
“Um, are we just… taking a hike? Or is there some sort of destination in mind?”
“You haven’t figured it out yet?” he asked, raising his brows.
“Figured what out? What is there to figure out?”
To that, he pulled to a stop. “Listen,” he demanded.
I was going to tell him I’d been doing nothing but listening when I did, in fact, hear it. I guess I had been listening to my own heavy breathing and internal monologue and not the sounds around us after all.
Because the moment he told me to hear it, I did.
“A waterfall,” I declared, smiling.
“Very good,” he told me, eyes bright.
“I love waterfalls,” I told him. “I have to have at least a thousand pictures of my best friend and me at various waterfalls all across the United States.”
“As lovely as all those must have been,” he started, pulling me along again, this time with more enthusiasm, which meant I damn near had to jog to keep up. “I think this one will take the cake,” he told me, suddenly dragging my body in front of his.
Then there it was.
He wasn’t wrong.
It was the best one I’d ever seen.
Not because it was the biggest—it wasn’t—but because there was something about its quiet seclusion, about the way it was technically three waterfalls in one, about the way it was surrounded with the greenest trees and moss I had ever seen.
“Wow,” I whispered, shaking my head, going ahead and leaning back into Fenway when his arms went around my midsection.
“Right?” he asked, lips down by my ear.
“Wait, I’m not done,” I told him when he pulled away, grabbed my hand, started to drag me with him.
“I promise, this will be even better,” he told me, dragging me into a tree-lined path, but not one that was well worn like the rest of them. If anything, this didn’t seem to be an on-the-map path at all, but merely one a select few people knew about.
And, of course, Fenway was one of those people.
The further we walked, the louder the crash of the waterfall got, until it was all that you could hear.