Page 32 of New River Gorge(ous)
Beck sits on the ground, taking shaky breaths as he leans his head against his knees and closes his eyes. I sit next to him, not sure what to do or what to say to him. He’s a legitimate hero—he just saved a woman’s life. But I sense he doesn’t want me to say that to him right now.
Words might have always come easily to me, but this is a situation where words aren’t right. We’ve only ever held hands. This is our first date. And yet…
I don’t let myself second-guess it. I scoot closer to Beck, close enough that our hips touch. Then, I slide my arm around him.
He startles at the touch, but picks his head up and locks his eyes on mine before leaning his head on my shoulder.
As his breaths even out, I’m able to appreciate the view for the first time. I let out a low whistle. The outcrop we’re sitting on is a ledge at the edge of a mountain that provides us with a view of the New River below and the New River Gorge Bridge above. The trees are vibrant green, the majesty and height of the mountains on either side of the gorge on full display.
Beck picks his head up off my shoulder at the sound I made. “Do you like it?” he asks, like I’d be more impressed with the view than by his life-saving actions.
“I like everything I’ve seen today,” I answer with honesty.
He gives a small smile and then stands, extending a hand to me. I grasp it without hesitation. When I stand next to him, he looks at me, then quickly looks away. “I…” He scrubs a hand down his face. “I … uh. I didn’t mean to leave you back there.”
Blinking away surprise at his nervousness, I squeeze his hand tighter with my own and offer the highest praise I can think of. “I thought you were heroic.”
Beck flinches.
17
Dr. Beck
Heroic. It’s a nice word. But not when it’s been sneered at you. Repeatedly.
I can’t help but bristle at words that hurt. Beside me, Brooke drops my hand, stands, and walks farther out on the ledge. She keeps going closer to the edge, and my heart dives.
“Brooke,” I whisper-call, trying not to alarm her. She is on the precipice, and you cannot survive a fall from this height.
Brooke looks over her shoulder with a crinkled brow and a frown, then plops down.
I approach slowly and ease down next to her.
I swallow. “Hero wasn’t a nice word in … uh … Addie’s vocabulary.”
Brooke brings her knees to her chest and wraps her arm around her shins. She rests her cheek on her kneecap and fixes me with a wide-eyed gaze. A wisp of pink-streaked hair escapes her braid, and I impulsively tuck it behind her ear. She startles a bit at the contact, but then chews her lip. I take it as a good sign that she doesn’t smack my hand away.
When she speaks, her response isn’t what I expected. “I don’t really like heights.”
“Ok,” I say. But then, because I’m not skilled at talking to pretty women unless they’re having a medical emergency, I state the obvious. “But you’re sitting at the very edge of a rock ledge that’s hundreds of feet in the air.”
“That’s the point.” She picks her head up and stretches her neck from side to side. “I do things that scare me. And I find I can enjoy them with enough practice.”
I don’t fully understand the lesson, but I know there’s one here. It’s like Aesop and his fables. If only I had ever understood what the fables taught. It’s like Brooke is giving me pieces to a puzzle, but the only picture I have is the one I imagined the puzzle would look like, and the pieces aren’t fitting together.
I do the only thing I can in this situation—give her a single nod to show I heard her.
She smiles softly, then shivers and scoots back from the edge until she’s firmly in the center of the rock formation. “That was enough exposure therapy for me today.”
I can’t help it. I’m a serious man, but there is something so charming about Brooke, with her pink hair and her wide eyes and her gorgeous smile that … I laugh. Not a chuckle, but a real laugh. The kind of laugh that I haven’t let out in four years, three months, elev—
But why bother counting?
Brooke arches an eyebrow and smirks. “Find something funny about my completely rational fear?” she teases.
“Yeah,” I say, walking toward her. “It’s that I was just thinking that I haven’t wanted to meet anyone for a long time, and then it’s my ridiculous neighbor’s granddaughter who swoops in, all gorgeous, and is the first person to make me laugh in over four years.”
“Four years without laughing?” She frowns. “I wasn’t trying to be funny.”
