Page 62 of How to Kiss a Hawthorne Brother
What if this is all one-sided, and Brody isn’t feeling any of the same sparks I am? He can handle not dating for a couple of months. Which is about how long I first told him I was going to be here.
I gave him a time limit. A deadline. And he isn’t looking for anything beyond that.
“You can still date while I’m around, Brody. You don’t have to spend all your time with me.”
He smiles. “I know. But I want to.”
My mind is a jumbled mess. Every time I think I’m starting to figure out what I want, something happens to shake me back up again. The idea of London sounds appealing because I reallywouldlove to have a job with more stability than what I havenow. But I’m not sure I want to live in London. I’ve lived my entire life believing I’d never want to live in Silver Creek, but then I spent half my morning imagining what it would be like if I did, making mental lists of articles I could pitch that would keep me here.
But I can’t stay in Silver Creek if I’m going to interfere with Brody finding the happily-ever-after I know he wants. Unless that happily-ever-after is withme. A tiny thrill shoots through me at the thought. Could he want that too? The more I think about it, the more Idon’tthink I made up the attraction in his eyes when he helped me down from his truck. But physical attraction isn’t all that matters.
The scariest thought of all pops into my head next. What if he does want it, we try, and I fail? What if my efforts to keep a career going locally aren’t enough, and I only make it a year before I have to start traveling again? What if I’m not really built for a slower, stabler life and pretending like I am winds up breaking us both?
Maybe it wouldn’t happen, but maybe it would.
Am I truly willing to risk our friendship on a maybe?
“You okay over there?” Brody asks. “I can almost hear you thinking.”
“Sure. Just enjoying the view.”
The view reallyisamazing. Lush green trees and loamy earth and dense thickets of rhododendron line either side of the road. I roll my window down and breath in, the familiar smell of the forest tickling my nose.
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. But the longer we drive, the longer I breathe in the clean mountain air, the more certain I am about one thing.
I’ve missed this.
I never thought I would say it, and it only complicates things that I’m saying it now.
But I’ve missed . . .home.
Chapter Seventeen
Kate
The Pulliam Creek Trailis a pretty easy hike, but when we leave the main path and head down to the narrows, I understand why Brody double and triple checked that I had good shoes to wear. The descent is steep—so steep there are ropes tied in between the trees for us to hold onto. At one point, it’s easier to turn around and lower myself down the trail backward. Which of course makes me super excited about the return trip, when we’ll be climbing up instead of down.
“The craziest thing is that during the Green Race,” Brody says, “spectators have to make this hike down to Gorilla if they want to watch. So just imagine this trail with two hundred people hiking down at once.”
“Um, that feels terrifying,” I say, though as soon as we reach the water, it makes sense why people are willing to do it. The river is gorgeous.
We follow the trail as it snakes along the edge of the water, the gorge cutting up steeply on either side. The river is full of massive boulders, some large enough for a dozen people or more to stand on at once, creating narrow channels of water and steepdrops. I recognize what I’m seeing from the videos of the Green Race I watched online but seeing it in person is an entirely different experience. And thinking about Brody paddling through these rapids in a kayak? It leaves me speechless.
“Oh hey, there’s Griffin,” Brody says, pointing off the trail to where Griffin and several other kayakers are maneuvering their boats out of the water.
“What are they doing?”
Brody tilts his head toward the river. “They’re portaging around Gorilla,” he says. “Walking their boats around the rapid instead of running it.”
“Do people do that a lot?”
“With Gorilla? All the time. It’s brutal to run. Unless you have people setting safety at the bottom, which can be an ordeal, it’s risky. Too risky for most kayakers.”
We say hello to Griffin, and Brody introduces me to everyone else, all friends of his, then we follow them down trail so we can watch them get back in the water. We can’t see much from our vantage point, but I still hold my breath when I see them disappear over a rapid. This kind of kayaking is very different than the baby rapids I ran on the Lower Green.
“This is crazy,” I say to Brody as we walk back toward Gorilla.
He only grins. “It can be.”
