Page 7 of Untamed Mountain Man

I felt the heat of his stare on me. It tripped me up a little, but I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and summoned the courage to blurt it out.

“I sent an email to a group of friends about someone we used to be friends with. I accidentally included her on the email. I have no idea how it happened to this day. For a while, I was the target of a whole lot of hate. Eventually, it went away.”

“Yeah, mine never went away,” he said. “But it sucks all the way around.”

“It probably won’t make you feel any better, but from that point on, I felt like crap every time I saw that person. I can tell by the way she looked at me that she never forgot. I doubt I’ll go back to any of the reunions, and I’m weird about commenting on classmates’ social media posts, because what if she replies? What if…?”

My voice drifted off there. Yeah, I probably had issues if this was getting to me this much six years later. It was nothing compared to what Beau dealt with.

“We should both probably worry less what people think of us,” he said.

I smiled and nodded. “You’re right. I’m not at that dinner right now because I feel guilty about winning a competition. How messed up is that?”

“I could take you back now,” he said. “I’m kind of enjoying this, but I definitely don’t want to keep you from your dinner.”

I shook my head. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be right now.”

It started as needing to get away, but I hadn’t even thought about those people until now. Until we started talking about how we shouldn’t worry about what people thought of us.

I took the last bite of my burger and closed the container, setting it in the bag at my feet. Beau reached over and grabbed it, and in the process, his hand briefly touched my knee.

He jumped back like he’d been burned. “Sorry. I guess you can hand that to me, and I’ll put it in the back.”

With trembling fingers, I reached down and grabbed the handles, lifting it and handing it over to him.

Please touch my hand. Please touch my hand. Please touch my hand.

That went through my mind, over and over. I longed for his touch. But instead of grabbing it at the handles, he grasped thetop of the bag to the left of them. I shoved my disappointment to the back of my mind.

“So, what do you do for fun?” I asked, settling back in my seat and staring out over the water.

“Not much these days. I guess I’m all work and no play. I stay up in the mountains to avoid running into townspeople.”

“There aren’t townspeople at the lodge?”

He shook his head. “Most of them come this way if they want something to eat. Or they go to the diner. I didn’t even go up to the ski lodge until I was much older. My parents always said it was too touristy.”

“Only in the winter.”

“Yeah, but they pretty much shut down the rest of the year. At least they used to. I hear they’re working to bring in tourism year-round.”

I frowned. “At a ski slope?”

“I guess there’s stuff they could do.” He shrugged. “Spring is just around the corner, so we’ll see.”

“You don’t play sports or work out?” I asked.

“I guess if I had to name something I do for fun, it’s this.”

Sit in a car, eating burgers? I sure hoped it wasn’t hanging out in parking lots with women. Wasn’t this something similar to the parking teenagers did? They’d drive somewhere, park, and make out. Nobody I’d known did that growing up, but I’d seen it in movies from past decades, and I assumed it still happened somewhere.

“Spend time outside,” he said. “Even in the cold.”

“Ever done a polar plunge?”

I couldn’t believe I’d asked him that question. He definitely didn’t look like somebody who’d do it as part of a challenge. He was so tough, I could see him jumping in just to swim, not even bothered by the subzero water temperatures.

“No,” he said. “What is it?”

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