Page 75 of Trip Me Up

I trusted Niall to do a lot of things—write compelling fantasy stories, forget to turn on his phone, and kiss like it was his job—but I wasn’t sure about his oversized, overcoated, over-toothed dog. But because I’d come to some sort of upside-down world where I went to the family home of a man I’d known for two weeks and spent my day off walking around a farm instead of working on my dissertation, I extended a hand. When the dog didn’t snap it off, I stroked behind his ear. He closed his eyes and pushed his head against my palm.

“You’re friends now. Let’s go,” Niall said, taking my other hand.

Cool, pine-scented air brushed against my cheeks as Niall pulled me toward the trees. We passed a few patches of snow, melting under the sunshine. The dogs zig-zagged ahead of us, sniffing out the trails of other animals.

Niall pointed at a faded red barn. The outline of the state was painted in white on one side with the wordOhioin script above a red and blue banner. On the front, a square was painted like a quilt in red, blue, and gold, cheery against the soft blue winter sky. “We’ll go see the animals later. I want you to see the creek in the morning light.”

Beyond the barn, brown fields stretched to another faraway tree line. “What do you grow here?”

“Soybeans and corn to sell. Hay for the livestock. Mom has a kitchen garden where she grows vegetables for the family. And the animals aren’t pets. We sell the alpacas’ wool, the goats’ milk, and eggs when the chickens are laying. Sometimes we trade with the other families. The Turners keep bees for honey, and they raise hogs. We try to be self-sustaining when we can.”

I almost never thought about where food came from. I’d pictured Niall as some sort of gentleman farmer from a Jane Austen movie, spending his days writing in an oak-paneled library while the farm took care of itself. Not on this farm.

“But this,” he said, stepping under the canopy of the forest, “is my favorite part of the farm.”

By the time we’d reached the second tree, the sounds—the distant roar of a tractor, the rumble of pickup trucks on the road at the end of the driveway, the screaming of hawks—muted. When we reached the third tree, the sunlight had faded to dusk. The sharp scent of growing things and dark decay filled my nostrils.

“Before the European settlers came, the whole area was like this—wooded. You saw how much has been cleared on the drive up from the airport.”

“City, then subdivisions, then farmland. I didn’t know it used to be forest.”

“Only small pockets remain. We’re lucky they left this.” He stroked the trunk of a tree. “Come on. I’ll show you the best spot.”

Water burbled nearby, and Niall headed toward it. The trees leaned together and nearly touched overhead, but a few rays of sunlight penetrated the canopy to sparkle on the clear water of the shallow brook below. Rocks lined the stream bed, and a few had tumbled in from the sides to serve as natural crossings.

A Fiat-sized flat-topped boulder bent the brook around it. Niall hopped up and extended a hand to me. I gripped it and clambered up the side, my muddy boots slipping, to stand beside him. The dogs lapped from the stream below. Thorin lay down in it, cooling his belly.

“During the Ice Age, receding glaciers carved out this stream and left this boulder.” He set down the bag and shook out a blanket. He sat on it and leaned back on his hands. “When I was a kid, I used to come here and imagine woolly mammoths lumbering by, back when it was all ice and snow.”

I sank down beside him, imagining the giant hairy beasts. “You came here a lot?”

“Almost every day. Even in winter.”

In my mind, a lanky, teenage Niall tossed pebbles into the water. “How long has your family lived here?”

“Generations. Mom moved to the city for college, where she met my dad.” He stared into the water.

“When his business started to take off, he traveled more. California, mostly, but also Asia and the East Coast. He used to come back on the weekends, but then his trips got longer. Mom didn’t want to raise me in California. So she moved back home to the farm.” He smiled, tight. “Even when I was a toddler, I didn’t like being cooped up in an apartment in the city. Anyway, his visits here got shorter and shorter. Then he married, started a new family, and stopped coming at all.”

I found his hand and squeezed it. I knew what it was like to lose a father. Though I didn’t know what it was like to have a bad one. “I’m sorry.”

He shrugged. “He has his life; I have mine. I wish—” He shook his head. “I’m happy here.” He lay on his back, folding his arms behind his head and closing his eyes against the sun.

I leaned over him, casting a shadow over his face. “I can see why. It’s beautiful.”

“You should see it in the—” He opened his eyes. His pupils unfurled, narrowing the green. He curled up and kissed me.

It was slow, tentative. A test. Would I back away? Would the city girl think it was weird to kiss out in the forest with the mud and the birds and the squirrels chattering overhead? This city girl didn’t. When he set his cool palms on my cheeks and gently pulled me down to him, I rested on his chest and returned his soft, lazy kisses. His fingers tunneled through my hair, making my scalp tingle. Soon, the tingle spread across my skin, all the way down to my toes. The forestwasenchanted.

The water splashed, and the breeze rustled through the boughs of the pines. Kissing Niall here, in his special place, the sun warming my back, was nothing short of perfect. Time lost its meaning. So did the space between us. We both wanted solitude, but this shared loneliness was even better than being alone.

He pulled away first. His eyes were almost black, with only the narrowest green ring, like moss on a stone. He winced. “I’m sorry, but I—I have an idea. Would you mind if I wrote it down?”

Huh. Maybe I was the only one who felt the enchantment. I shoved up on my hands. “An idea. That you got from kissing me?”

“Well—” He sat up, too. “This is the home of the wood elves. They speak to me here. And when you’re with me, they speak even louder.”

I snorted. “Fine.” Then something itched at my insides. “It’s not bothering you that I’m here, is it?”

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