Page 16 of Yours and Mine (Friends with Benefits)

I strained my eyes, trying to see what he was looking at, but the dense trees were pretty much it. That was, until something crunched in the distance, and I concentrated harder. My gaze flew from Nick’s wide eyes and shocked face back toward where he was looking, and then I saw it: a black bear, about a hundred feet from us.

Chapter 4

We slowly loweredthe basket of wood. Nick took my hand and we started backing away, toward the clearing we saw. I prayed inside that it led to a road, so we could wave someone down, or maybe it signaled a house in the forest we could hide out in. Anything other than the bear’s habitat would be welcome. Why hadn’t I taken my bear spray? Why hadn’t Nick?

So far, the bear was oblivious to our presence; that is, until I stepped on a larger branch and it snapped, and the bear’s attention turned our way.

“Whatever you do, don’t run, Jo.”

“Easy to say, hard to do,” I whispered, but kept backing away, a bit more quickly than before. The bear stood on its hinds, stretching his full length up to the sky. That thing looked like it had undergone some sort of a growth mutation. “Holy shit. I think it thinks it’s found dinner.”

“Don’t say that. Keep walking and make noise, lots of noise. If it gets closer, curl into a ball! Cover your head and neck with your arms!”

“I don’t think it wants to play ball.” I heard the vibrations in my voice, clearly remembering the same instructions we’d been given by our teachers and the park guide. My legs were trembling and my heart — was it even there? It was beating so quickly I couldn’t even count the thumps in my chest.

“It’s for your safety.”

The bear growled, inspiring the hairs on my arms to stand tall. Now with my whole body on high alert, I was afraid I’d have no control over my legs if it turned out that they wanted to run. I could already picture the bear’s teeth sinking into my skin like a hot knife through butter.

“Nick, if you get us out of here alive, I will kiss you.”

“Well, that gives me all the reason I need to make sure we get safely back to camp, then.”

Was he saying that he wanted to kiss me? It didn’t matter now, and I had no mind to think about what he’d said, because the bear set its front feet down on the ground and stomped in the same spot a few times, challenging our invasion.

“Get out of here!” Nick yelled.

“I’m not tasty!” I screamed.

“Tasty?”

“Yes, I don’t taste good. You wouldn’t want us for dinner!”

“I don’t think he can understand, Jo!”

We both kept yelling out our conversation, but the bear didn’t appear to be fazed; in fact, it seemed more interested than before.

“It doesn’t matter what we do, Nick! I think he’s getting ready to charge!”

The bear let out another growl and headed straight for us.

‘Don’t run,’ they said? Well, whoever said that wasn’t being chased by a bear. Fortunately the clearing we’d seen earlier was just behind a stretch of bushes a few feet away. We pushed through the mesh of leaves and branches. Thorns scraped the sides of my arms and my legs, but I didn’t stop until I got through to the other side where our situation became even more daunting than before. Couldn’t a girl ever get a break?

We were standing at the edge of a cliff. Below, it looked like there was nothing but space. Strike that. There was a river far, far, far, far away; barely visible. Or maybe it was the sweat that was blurring my vision. The sound I thought I’d heard earlier, of passing cars, was actually raging whitewater. I turned to see Nick’s reaction, asking with my eyes what we should do next. He had a cut just above his left brow, which was bleeding down his cheek, staining his shirt red. The way the blood was streaming down, you’d think someone had slit his throat.

Get that image out of your mind, Jo!

The bear’s roar behind us shook the trembles out of my body.

Holy shit!If there was one thing I was certain of, it was that the bear was now closer than before.

“Come on, climb down.”

“Where?”

“Doesn’t matter, just down.”

“He won’t get through the shrubs, will he?”

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