Page 41 of Fight

In every interaction she’d had with him, he’d always been a little slick, but he’d laid it on really thick during their drive to the trailhead at the base of Dalak. It had definitely been a little difficult to respond to that amount of douchebaggery before her coffee had officially set in, so she had pissed him off right from the get-go.

She'd ignored her instincts, however, and moved forward with her plan. She had convinced herself that she was ridiculous and overreacting. It was just a walk, anyway. And Daniel had never been anything but nice to her, right?

She had no way of suspecting that he was a secret psychopath who would abandon her in the woods as soon as she became the slightest bit inconvenient and uncooperative.Idiot, she scolded herself again.

“Lena.” The rain’s voice was getting louder now and she lifted her head up to look out into the storm. She couldn’t see very far ahead of her through the thick wall of rain and the dark, but if she looked very closely, she thought she saw an orange blur with a bouncing light that seemed to be moving toward her.

“Lena!” The voice was definitely coming from the orange blur and not the rain.Crazy hermit lady, indeed.Was it Daniel?

“I’m here!” she shouted, and the blur started moving more quickly toward her, it was running now and she could see a light bobbing up and down through the rain and darkness.

It wasn’t Daniel, she finally figured it out as the blur took a more human shape, and the light from the flashlight bounced back on his face.It was Jake.

“Lena!” he called again with relief in his voice as he started to run towards her.

“Jake! I’m here!”She moved onto her knees and started waving her hands like a windmill in the rain. He scrambled through the mud, slipping and falling once before quickly catching himself.

She saw when he reached her that he was obviously soaked and covered in mud. His orange rain coat was mud-streaked, as were the green cargo shorts he wore, and his hiking boots were caked up to the ankle. He must have taken quite a few falls on his way up the path.

There was deep worry in his face as he knelt down next to her and wrapped his cold hands around her face. The curls at the end of his over-long hair stuck to his forehead as his hazel eyes looked her up and down quickly as if inspecting her for injuries or damage.

“Are you okay?” he shouted above the rain, his voice thick with worry.

She nodded her head vigorously. “I’m okay,” she said loudly with an effort to be as reassuring as possible. “Just wet and freezing.”

He seemed to accept this answer as he pulled off his giant backpack. “I have a tent,” he shouted as he pointed to his backpack.“I’m going to set it up.”

“I’ll help you,” she called out as she crawled out of her hermitage through the mud on her hands and knees.

“Your ankle?” he questioned, pointing down at her mud covered legs.

“It’s fine.”She shook off his question.“What can I do?”

He nodded as he set down his backpack next to hers under the blanket. Reaching into the backpack, he pulled out a thick tube.

Through the rain he pointed his flashlight to a flattish, elevated surface a few yards away from where Lena had built her hermitage. It was deeper into the copse of trees and the thick, heavy raindrops seemed to be a bit less intense as they walked deeper into it.

He set his flashlight on a high rock and as they set up the tent, she followed his pointed and shouted directions.They were able to make quick work of it and before long the small gray and blue domed tent was neatly assembled.

The tent had a little overhang over the zippered entrance that Jake strung a rope across diagonally. While he worked on this part, Lena stood off to the side waiting for him to finish.This was when she noticed that her teeth had started clattering and her heart was beating quickly and irregularly. She crossed her arms over her chest and her whole body seemed to tense as she started to shake uncontrollably. The little ball she’d made of her body under the wet blanket must have been keeping her warmer than she’d realized. She started bouncing up and down to both warm and distract herself.

Once Jake finished with the front of the tent, he went back to Lena’s hermitage for both of their backpacks, and quickly dumped the contents of both of them inside the tent.

Finally, he looked up at her again. Noticing her shivering, he came over and rubbed his hands up and down her cold, rubbery arms.“We need to take these clothes off!” he shouted.“We’ll hang them on the line!” He pointed to the rope he had strung up across the tent's overhang.

She hesitated at stripping down in the middle of the woods in front of Jake, of all people.

Reading her hesitation, he took a step closer.“It’s dark,” he pointed out. “And I'll turn around,” he assured her. “It’s going to get colder and we shouldn’t be in these wet clothes. As soon as you get them off, run inside the tent and wrap yourself in one of the blankets I unloaded.”

She nodded. Jake turned around and immediately pulled his wet shirt over his head. Even in the depths of her freezing, wet despair, she couldn’t help but appreciate the sight of his bare muscular back shadowed in the darkness. The drops of rain hitting it created little streams down the muscular slopes and divots.

Shaking herself out ofthatreverie, she turned around, toed off her sneakers, peeled off her socks, and quickly pulled off her wet tank top and leggings. When she peaked over her shoulder, she saw that Jake had already taken off his clothes and was standing in black boxer briefs with his back turned, waiting for her to finish undressing and get in the tent.

Tiptoeing through the mud so as not to fall, Lena hung her clothes on the rope and crouched inside the tent. She scuttled over the wet floor and immediately grabbed a lightweight blanket to wrap herself in as she huddled in the corner.

Now that she was inside the much quieter tent, she could hear the incessant clattering of her teeth. The rain was making loud spattering sounds on the roof, but all in all, it was calm and pitch dark inside. Better yet, it was dry-ish. Her hair was still in the same top bun that she’d wrapped it in that morning, but clumps and strands stuck to her face and neck. She pulled it out in an effort to wring some of the water out of it, running her fingers through it choppily.

Jake entered the overhang and hung his own clothes on the line before he crawled in with the flashlight and zipped the door closed behind him. He pointed the flashlight toward the door so that it cast a dim light over the tent.

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