“Tell you what.” I slid my arms around her waist. “I think we have to just commit. And I want to take Scarlett down.”
She put her arms around my neck. “Let’s do this.”
With our bodies pressed close, we started side-shuffling across the field. After a few steps, we picked up the pace, and pretty soon we were going at a good clip. Leah Mae laughed and her hair blew in my face, but I didn’t care. We covered the distance across the field and made up a good portion of the space between us and Scarlett and Dev.
The first obstacle was a maze of old tires. They were set right up against each other, so we had to pick our way through them. We hopped in and out, still moving more or less sideways so we could both see where we were going.
Scarlett and Dev were still in front of us, as were Cassidy and Bowie. I heard a screech behind us and risked a quick look. Sierra Hayes—a girl who still wore her hair in a pair of braids, despite being twenty-five—was paired up with Amos Sheridan, and it was not a pretty picture. He seemed to be trying to get her to walk backwards while he did the leading, but she kept tripping over the edges of the tires.
“We’re pretty good at this,” Leah Mae said when we hopped out of the last tire, one leg over, then the other.
“Sure are.”
The next obstacle was a long beam. There were half a dozen of them, all the same length and thickness—barely big enough for two people. Cassidy and Bowie had somehow gotten up one of them faster than Scarlett and Devlin. They shimmied their way down while Scarlett and Devlin got onto the one next to it.
“This looks like it’ll just take some balance,” I said.
“Balance I can do,” Leah Mae said.
We stepped onto the beam, and she wound her arms tighter around my neck, pressing her cheek to mine. It was a lot like dancing. We slid one foot down the length of the beam, far as we could go without falling. Then brought the back leg up to meet it. We got a good rhythm going and it didn’t take us long to get to the end of it. Jumping off was harder, but we managed to land on our feet.
After the balance beams, the course veered to the left, and I saw why. The Bootleg Springs Fire Company had used fire hoses to turn an empty lot into a giant mess of sloppy brown mud.
“Come on, Jameson,” Leah Mae said. “Let’s get dirty.”
Oh lord, there went my dick again. We were squished together so tight, I had to hope she was too focused on the course to notice.
A few pairs had passed us, including Cassidy and Bowie. They didn’t slow down, but went barreling into the mud—and paid the price. It was thick, and Cassidy’s foot got stuck. Bowie kept going and the two of them toppled over into the muck. Scarlett and Devlin went down ahead of us, laughing as they tried to get up and slipped.
“Okay, we got this,” I said. “Together, now.”
Leah Mae and I moved like we had on the balance beam, each moving one leg out, then bringing the back leg in to meet it. Our feet squelched through the thick mud, making sucking and smacking sounds every time we moved. Leah Mae laughed, and the feel of her body trembling with her laughter was just about the sweetest thing I could imagine.
The mud sucked at my foot as I tried to take the next step. I pulled up harder and my foot came free, but my balance faltered.
“Uh oh,” I said, and Leah Mae clung harder to my neck.
I didn’t want to fall on her, so I leaned backward instead. I fell straight back into the mud, sending up a spray of brown droplets. Being tied to me at the waist, Leah Mae fell smack on top of me.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She had a few drops of mud on her cheek.
“Yeah, you?”
She nodded. Her face was so close, and the weight of her body felt good on top of me. But that was not a train of thought I needed to be riding, so I focused on how to get us back on our feet.
“Now I see why this ends in the lake,” she said.
“Yep,” I said. “We’re almost there. Let’s just see if we can get up.”
A few more pairs passed us, but I figured there wasn’t much chance of us winning at this point, anyway. We had to roll around a bit before we found an angle that worked. God in heaven, I was rolling around in the mud with Leah Mae Larkin. By the time we got to our feet, we were covered. Judging by the state of the couples struggling around us—either still in the mud, or hauling themselves out of it—most everyone was falling in.