Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (22 page)

“This road is closed from November to May,” Jude explained, “and we’re staying in a campground in Canyon Village.” He lowered the volume of the radio. “I prefer camping in non-commercialized places, but this campground is located close to the mountain we’ll climb in two days.”

“We’re not climbing it tomorrow?”

“No, I wanted to show you some of Yellowstone first, take you to the Yellowstone Grand Canyon and hike down to the Lower Falls. The hike up the mountain in two days might wear you out, so I figured our third day here, we could tour the park by car and do some light walking.”

I wished I was more experienced and had a higher stamina, but was also grateful that Jude wasn’t going to push me too hard considering I was still so inexperienced.

After Jude paid our entry fee into the park, he handed me the brochure and pamphlet provided. It was a cartoon of a bison and a human who’d been thrown in the air by the animal.
Warning: Many visitors have been gored by buffalo,
it read.

“Can you wrestle bison, too?” I asked, holding up the flyer.

Jude laughed and I was suddenly aware of how comfortable I was, in many ways, around Jude. When we were just spending time together, it was easy—effortless. As if we’d known each other longer than just a few weeks.

The south entrance into the park was unassuming at first. The two-lane road was surrounded on either side by skinny trees that towered above us. When I looked out my window, I saw trees for miles.

“Those are lodgepole pines,” Jude said. “They’re shade-intolerant, which is why they’re missing branches along the base of the trunk up to the top.”

The trees reminded me of the tree on the cover of
The Giving Tree
, but narrower and straighter. Indeed, there were no branches below the canopies at the tops of all the trees, making them almost look like they were dying.

“See how shaded the road is here?” he asked, and I looked forward at the road. The trees on either side formed a sort of wall, casting a dark shadow over the road.

I nodded. “You know a lot about trees.”

“I took botany in college.”

After he parked, I followed him down a trail toward a large lake.

“Yellowstone Lake.” Jude pointed as we walked down a wooden-planked path. I could see puffs of steam rising up ahead and the smell of sulfur pierced my nose just as we moved past enough people to see the geysers that surrounded the shore of the lake.

“Holy shit,” I said, marveling at the variety of colors and depths of the geysers. “You can see clear down to the bottom.” Their colors ranged from greens to blues, colors that looked like they belonged in the Caribbean and not in the mountains of Wyoming. Across the lake, I could see a mountain range and white, fluffy clouds hanging lower in the sky than seemed possible. The wooden path came down to the water’s edge, where some geysers fed into the lake in a stream of red and orange color. Against the gravel shore, the contrast was sharp.

The lake looked undisturbed, completely still. The lakes I’d been to with my grandfather growing up had always had dozens of boats sliding across the water—but this was so serene, so peaceful. The only noise was the low chatter from fellow tourists and the noise of the cameras as they took photos of the geysers and the steam rising up off of them. The geysers looked like little pools of bright color, all surrounded by shrubs and white rock.

“Trista,” Jude said beside me. His voice was soft, calm. I’d been so distracted by the colors and the sights around me that I’d nearly forgotten he was near me.

I turned. “What?”

His hand came to my waist and my entire body stilled. But his eyes were searching past me. “Look,” he whispered, his lips close to my ear as he used his other hand to turn me toward one geyser in particular.

Just on the other side of the geyser furthest from the path was an elk. Female, judging by the lack of antlers. She stood impossibly still, one front leg angled forward as she observed the crowd that had begun to notice her.

“Wow,” I whispered. “She’s beautiful.”

“She is.” Jude’s eyes scanned the area surrounding her.

“What are you looking for?”

“Her calf. They’re usually born in the late spring, and if she has a calf near her she might become aggressive.” He looked down the path at the people closer to the elk, watching them closely. “Let’s grab a couple photos and then move on,” he said softly.

Out of the camera bag he’d slung over his good shoulder, he pulled his large black camera. I watched as he quickly changed lenses, adjusted the focus through his viewfinder and then aimed the lens at the elk. His hand wrapped around the base of the lens, sliding in and out slowly as I heard the soft click of the shutter.

And then he backed up and I found myself in his viewfinder, the elk over my shoulder.

“No,” I protested, putting my hand up. “Let me take a photo of you—you’re the blogger after all.”

He seemed to ignore me because he didn’t hand his camera over. “Would you mind?” Jude asked, holding up his camera to a stranger who was quietly observing behind us.

Before I knew what was happening, Jude stood beside me, his hand on the railing just behind my back. He didn’t wrap his arm around me or lean in—he just stayed next to me as I heard the shutter click with us both in its focus.

“Thanks,” Jude said with a smile as he took the camera back.

Jude said nothing as we walked back to the car, but he seemed lighter somehow.

When we were thirty minutes from the campground, the sun had slipped off the horizon.

“Do you think we’ll make it before dark?”

Jude nodded. “We’ll want to keep our headlights on while we set up the tents.”

The plural ‘tents’ made me equally relieved and nervous. “And how long will it take to set them up?” I’d brought everything I owned with me, after leaving the apartment so abruptly. The only thing I’d left behind had been Ellie’s box, and I knew I’d have to get it back when we returned home. Jude had promised to bring enough supplies for what we’d need as far as tents and sleeping bags went.

“I’m the tent guy, remember? It’ll take no time at all.”

T
rue to his word
, Jude had our tents set up and sleeping bags rolled out inside of ten minutes before it was too dark to see without artificial light.

As he built the fire in the metal ring, I made sandwiches from the deli meat we’d picked up at the grocery store before leaving Jackson.

It was the first time that day that I realized Jude and I were alone, miles away from Colin and Mila. We’d never been alone for such an extended amount of time, and while I should have felt awkward, I felt settled instead.

Being around Jude was like wrapping in a warm blanket. I hadn’t fully digested all that had happened the day before, with Colin or our breakup. He hadn’t texted me or called me once since I’d left, so it hadn’t been hard to push all of it to the back of my brain.

And as I spread the mustard thin on the whole wheat bread, I glanced over at Jude. He was setting up the camp chairs he’d packed in his long duffle, and he’d thrown a thermal, long-sleeved shirt over the tee he’d been wearing most of the day.

I placed the sandwiches on two paper plates and grabbed a couple tubes of yogurt before joining Jude by the fire.

“Ah,” he said with a grateful smile—his white teeth a flash of light against the fire, “I’ve been wanting a sandwich all day.” He offered me a bottled root beer before taking a bite of his sandwich.

I watched as he rolled up the sleeve of one arm, the waffle-knit pattern stretching and settling against the fold. The trees rose up his arm, curving around muscles, but the tops of the trees disappeared under his sleeve.

“How many tattoos do you have?”

He pulled up the fabric of his pants to make it more comfortable for him to sit and then popped off the lid of his root beer with a quiet hiss. “I don’t know. I haven’t counted.”

I chewed a bite of my sandwich, feeling the chill of the mountain air settling over me. “How long have you been getting them?”

He slouched back into his seat, but angled his body so he was turned to me. “I started when I was seventeen.” He pulled up one pant leg and pulled his sock down so I could see.

“What is that?”

“It was supposed to be a mountain lion, but now it looks like a gecko.” He laughed easily, not the least bit bothered by it.

“That sucks,” I said, echoing his laugh.

He shrugged, nonchalant. “I got it when I was seventeen, tried to hide it from my mom. Go figure that Mila would be the one to tattle on me.” He dropped the leg of his pants and settled once again into his seat. “But I got it too small—and when it’s that small, it can distort easily, especially in a place that moves a lot—like my ankle.”

“Why a mountain lion?”

“I went biking with a few friends in Rocky Mountain National Park when I was sixteen. We were a bunch of dumb kids, not keeping an eye on our surroundings or our ears open for animals. So imagine our surprise when a mountain lion crossed our path.”

I raised my eyebrows, imagining that sight. And just how stunned I’d be.

“One of my horticulture teachers in high school had told me that he crossed bears all the time—but if you crossed a mountain lion, it was probably too late. And that’s all I kept thinking when I saw her—her ears laid back and snarling.
It’s too late.
It was like an echo, but one that gets louder and stronger. One of my friends fell off his bike in shock and I stopped my bike in front of him. And she approached slowly and I pushed away the voice and did what felt instinctual. I placed my bike between her and me, and then spoke firmly to her to go away. We didn’t have spray or sticks or anything. I kicked at the dirt around me, the little rocks. I told my friends to crowd around me. And then we backed away, slowly, her eyes on us the whole time.” He placed a hand over his chest. “I swear, I thought she could hear my heart. It was so loud that I spoke louder, trying to hear my own words over the beat. And then she began following us. My friend whispered his fear, that she would attack us. But then she left and we got the hell out of there.”

“And then you got her tattooed?”

“She taught me to trust my instincts. To push away the mind-numbing fear. To fight the ‘it’s too late’ voice that throbbed in my brain.”

“Ah,” I said, remembering his tattoo, “you’ve got a thing against fear.”

He shook his head, finished chewing the last bite of his sandwich. “I think fear itself is healthy. It’s when you’re drowning in it that it’s not. Fear grounds you, but it can bury you too. Take a little bit, but then push on. And that’s what I did. She was profoundly beautiful and tremendously scary. Which is how every worthwhile thing should be.”

“Is it sad that I’m a little jealous of a mountain lion?” I joked, stuffing the sandwich into my mouth in attempt to eat the words I hadn’t meant to say.

“You shouldn’t be. That’s who you are, to the people who matter.”

The bite got stuck, like a rock, in my throat. And just like that, I thought of Colin. “I don’t know about that.” I said, keeping my eyes to the ring of fire as I winced through the pain of that swallow.

“I do.”

My heart stumbled and I chanced a look at him. As I suspected, he was staring at me. The firelight danced in his eyes, casting a riot of shadows over his face. He was so beautiful himself. Not just in the way his skin molded to his muscles and bones. But deep down—the parts that were instinctively him. But when he spoke words that moved my heart to another beat, he scared the living hell out of me.

“You saved your friends’ lives, you know.” I didn’t know what else to say. But that was what struck me the most. That Jude had stepped in, taken action. And had walked away thanks to his quick-thinking, despite his fear.

“I’d do the same for anybody else.”

I inhaled through my nose, the bite of the charred wood reaching the back of my throat. “Anyone?”

“Anyone.”

His eyes. Good lord, his eyes. He had some kind of power over me with those eyes. I was too afraid to stare, but too afraid to break the stare too. “Stop,” I said breathlessly.

“I won’t.”

The two words hit me in my chest. “I’m afraid of you,” I whispered, over the crackle of the fire.

“Don’t be afraid of me.”

“I think,” I said, sucking in a breath and giving into the shudder that rolled across my chest, “that I could very easily drown in the feelings I have … for you.” I couldn’t believe how honest I was being with him.

“You won’t drown.” It sounded like a promise. One I was very much afraid to hold on to.

I closed my eyes, needing the reprieve from his stare. His words were curling around my heart, gently but firmly. And I wanted to fall into him, to let the inevitable happen. Because that’s what we were: inevitable. But I clung to the fear like it was another limb.

“If you were drowning, would Colin save you?”

The noise fell to a din and I popped open my eyes to stare into Jude’s. “I’ve been drowning for three years.” And my eyes filled with tears.

“I think I need to hug you,” he said, standing and holding a hand out for me. “Can I?”

I looked at his hand, at the creases in his palm as the firelight played a dance over them. And then my eyes rose to meet his and I nodded, stood, and let his arms wrap around me.

He smelled like fresh air and juniper, and I sank into his chest, feeling the familiarity that he came with. Reveling in it.

My lips landed somewhere around his neck, which meant that I was pressed tight—skin to skin—almost kissing him but not. His arms held firm around me, his hands holding open over my back.

“Tell me what you’re feeling, Trista.”

How could I explain this? There was something limitless about the way I felt, like that river of emotion I’d felt when we first kissed kept rising with no chance of stopping.

I didn’t want to be honest, because I was so scared. Where Jude made me comfortable in his presence, when we were pressed tight like this—with no room to escape, I knew I couldn’t tell a lie to his face. So I said the words I hoped would alleviate the burn in my chest.

“I’m not supposed to love you.”

There’s a lot of relief in not making eye contact. I didn’t want to see how his eyes changed, because his body was completely unmoving. I almost thought he didn’t hear me until he spoke near my ear.

“Why not?”

I pulled back, facing him in the dark. I couldn’t see his eyes, just the outline of his face from the fire one campsite away.

“Because,” I said, still holding him but remaining still. “It’s been a day, on my own. I left Colin yesterday, moved out immediately.” I looked at his chest, my eyes tracing the mountains of the emblem on his jacket. “Because that’s what I do—I run.”

“You’re not running now.”

“No, but I want to.”

“Trista,” he said, his voice full of warmth when he said it. I lifted my face. We were inches apart, his hands wrapped around my forearms. He said nothing more, just held me in the silence as my heart beat softly, to a beat that was unfamiliar.

He leaned in, pressed his lips to my cheek. A hand came to my face, holding me as he rested his lips on my cheek. It was so comforting that warmth flooded my face.

And when he pulled his mouth away, I turned my face so that just the tips of our lips touched. A breath shuddered into my mouth from his and it was exactly four heartbeats before I pressed firmer, my hand coming up to his jacket, ensuring he couldn’t pull back.

The kiss was soft, brief. His palms came to my neck, holding me in place as he pulled back just a hair, so that our lips still were connected but we could both breathe in the small space.

He leaned in again, pressing another soft kiss to my mouth. When he pulled back again, my stomach somersaulted.

My fist curled in, holding him closer to me. My heart turned over in my chest with the gentleness of his lips on mine, and I couldn’t bear the thought of us distancing—not yet. Not when I was having the single most romantic kiss of my life.

He leaned in again, this time firmer, his lips more demanding. The growing intensity of each kiss he gave me was driving up the need I felt for him stirring in my blood. And when he tilted his head, sliding the tip of his tongue along my bottom lip, I pressed firmer, tighter, wanting no distance between us.

There were places in my heart I didn’t know existed. Places that pulsed when being offered something good, something of sustenance. A shiver and a coil and then the opening and a greedy suckling of the love that filled in the hollows.

We’re here
, they said.
We’ve been waiting all along
.

I had to stop, pull back, and suck in a breath, to check that my heart was still beating and wasn’t crippling under the weight of what it was being fed.

It was never
just a kiss
with Jude. I knew that now, as he leaned back in, thumbs squeezing my face, and kissing me like it was the last thing he wanted from me.

He didn’t hold back—he gave and gave and gave until I thought I was drunk from it. And when I pulled back again, I didn’t let go. I dropped my head to his chest and whispered the words that made my eyes sting. Such a wave of emotion overcame me that it’d leaked from the sides of my eyes.

“I can’t, not right now. It’s so much, and I’m not ready for you.”

I felt him press a kiss to the top of my head. “I’ll be waiting when you are.”

I’m not sure how long he held me, but I knew that he made me feel better in the simplest way and I was so grateful, so comforted and whole that my heart steadied and the tears in my eyes dried and everything, in that moment, was okay.

I squeezed him, making the hug last a little longer, just so I could remember how it felt to hold him in my arms.

He waited for me to be the first person to pull back and I did so reluctantly. I waited for the awkward to creep in as our bodies separated, but it didn’t. It was just Jude and me and his smile and my gratitude.

“Thank you for the hug,” I said as I sat back in my chair. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had offered a hug and I’d wanted it that desperately.

The kissing had just been more. And I wasn’t ready to tackle that just yet.

“There is a lot of science with hugs, you know.”

A smile played on my lips. “Color me unsurprised. Both with the fact that there is and the fact that you know about it.”

Jude laughed. “I can be a bit of a nerd, this is true.”

“Tell me your science, Jude.”

He had been waiting for me to urge him on and gave me a sheepish smile when I did. “Well, it can lower your blood pressure and the stress hormone. A solid hug can be the fastest way to get oxytocin flowing throughout your body, which calms your nerves. And, psychologically, it can establish a sense of belonging.”

His face remained calm as he said it, which made me process it as a harmless blip—a sense of belonging was something I both needed but didn’t want. I didn’t want to belong to anyone—because belonging was giving in and my current relationship—if it was still a relationship—was already taking what little of me I could spare.

“What about your other tattoos?” I asked, suddenly wanting the stories for all his tattoos. There were many down his arm, across his chest, down his back. And those were just the places I’d seen.

“They all tell a story. Even if it’s not profound, it’s a story that means something to me.”

“A singular story?”

“Sure. My whole body is a story, and each mark upon it is a page. Sometimes things happen in a story that you don’t want—or don’t expect—because you don’t choose it. And then, some things happen because you’ve chosen them—wanted them. My scars are things I didn’t choose. My tattoos are things I’ve chosen. And all of it is me, my story. It’s the story that sits in my throat, begging to be told. And when you’re too private to tell the story, you wear it instead.”

“Wow.” It was all I could say. I watched his arms, what little I could see of them. I had never thought about tattoos as small parts of a story, and maybe it wasn’t true for everyone who got inked—the fact that Jude gave so much meaning to the parts of him he’d chosen made me wonder if he was from another universe entirely. The thought he gave to things was all-encompassing and I wondered how exhaustive it must be, too.