Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (26 page)

His arms folded around me, holding me tight as the wind whipped our clothes and my hair around our heads. “Let’s go inside and get warm for a minute,” Jude said against the shell of my ear.

I nodded and he held my hand as he tugged me to the fire station—that Jude informed me was a fire tower. It was a square-shaped, rust colored building with two levels. There was a white building—an addition maybe—that was attached, with all glass windows. Jude pulled me into the viewing room, which was a much-needed reprieve from the wind that had caused my hair to lash at my skin. After using the restroom, Jude pulled the pack off my back and dug around inside.

He handed me a pair of binoculars and encouraged me to check out the view from the windows with them. “We’ll see better back outside, but at least your hair isn’t in your face here.” He also pulled a thin coat out of the backpack and handed it to me. “You’ll need this for the hike back.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” I said, trying to hand the coat back to him.

“You’re not going to be working your body as hard on the way down, so you’ll be colder. Just trust me.”

So I did, sliding my arms into the coat and zipping it up. Jude grabbed a baseball cap from his pack and stuck it on his head. “Ready to go back out into that wind and see more views?”

I nodded and followed him back outside. Walking back into the wind felt violent after being inside and I gripped onto Jude to keep me steady. Perhaps because the adrenaline rush I’d felt immediately after climbing the mountain was receding, I felt shakier.

Fortunately, Jude seemed to sense what I needed and held my left hand in his as he pulled me against his side, his right arm wrapped around my back to my waist. It was almost like a dance move.

He tugged me over to a ledge of rock and kept me close. “Look out there, can you seen the Grand Canyon we visited yesterday?”

The wind was whipping my hair in front of my eyes, smacking me so fiercely that it was like hard lashes to my face. I scrambled to keep the strands from my eyes, but it was no use—my hair was too troublesome to take in the views.

“I’ve got another hat, if you want it?” Jude asked, leaning down so that I could hear him. At my emphatic nod, he opened the backpack I was wearing and pulled out a cap. He used one hand to pull the hair from my face and held it back as he settled the hat over my head, securing the hair away from my face.

“Thank you,” I said, tucking the loose hairs around my ears. Finally, I could see. And what a sight it was.

I must have been able see for nearly a hundred miles. The sky was so clear that I could make out sharp peaks at the edge of the world, lush green forest, snow-capped mountains, a valley of a dozen shades of green, and closer to us, the chasm that separated the canyon walls.

“I can see it!” I exclaimed, pointing. “Right there.”

“Yes,” Jude said, his lips next to my ear. I felt the heat of him at my back and resisted from stepping back one step, so that we were flush against one another. “And that’s the Hayden Valley, Mount Sheridan,” he said, pointing to the snowcapped mountains. “And that mountain range way far back? That’s the Tetons, the mountains we saw when we flew into Jackson.”

“We can see that far?”

“We’re on one of the highest points of Yellowstone—so yes, we can.” He smiled warmly at me, and my stomach was a riot of butterflies. He was just so handsome, with the navy blue Broncos hat, his stubble long past the point of calling it stubble. His sleepy, warm honey eyes reflected the clouds around us and I felt that turn in my chest, the slip to a fate that we’d been following for a while.

I wrapped my arms around him, just so overwhelmed by the sights and the feelings simmering inside of me. To be here, with Jude, was surreal. “I can’t believe we hiked up a mountain,” I said.

“We did it. Do you feel so accomplished? Because you should.”

Pulling back, I nodded. “I didn’t think I’d be able to do it—especially not after that hike down to the falls yesterday.”

He tugged on my hat, giving me a gentle smile. “That was a sharp incline,” he said. “This took longer, but the walking up was much more gradual.”

“Thank you,” I blurted out. “For bringing me here. For showing me the world.” I remembered what Jude had said when I’d asked him why he climbed mountains. So that he could see the world. As I held him and looked out across the rock and forest, I got it. It all made complete sense.

“How do you feel?”

“Amazing.”

“Good.” He tucked me into his chest, and neither of us pulled away for a long while after that. It was if we’d both decided in that moment to give in to the strings pulling us taut to one another.

With Jude wrapped around me as we looked out over the mountain, I felt like I was learning as much about myself as I was about him.

Approaching hikers caused me and Jude to turn, but we still held on.

The hikers looked a little worse for the wear, a little shaken up. But there was no denying the light in their eyes when they walked to where we stood.

“Did you see the bear?” one of them asked breathlessly.

Jude shook his head and we turned more fully to face them.

The guy took a deep breath like he’d just been running. “There was a grizzly—loping about in the meadow just down the mountain.”

Jude and I exchanged a look. “Want to go now?” he asked.

I nodded and Jude thanked the man for letting us know.

“Let’s get a few photos first,” Jude said, pulling the lens cap off his camera. I watched as he set the shot, even pulling his tripod off of the backpack and setting it up at one point, when he cursed the wind for making it hard to focus.

I walked around, looking at the various patterns in the volcanic rock. There were a lot more hikers approaching, all talking about the bear they saw. A few of them seemed nonchalant about it, but others were equal mixtures of terror and glee.

“Trista.”

I put my hand on the top of the baseball cap when a gust of wind made it feel looser and turned, facing Jude. The camera was up by his face and I heard the shutter click.

“Did you just take a photo of me?”

He nodded, taking another one. A hundred strands of hair had escaped from under the cap and flew up around my face.

“Let me take some of you,” I insisted, grabbing the camera from him. Jude set it to autofocus and then stood where the Tetons were behind him. I took a couple photos, moving from side to side and trying to test the angle of the shot itself.

“Come here,” Jude said, low and rumbly. I could barely hear him across the wind, but the voice carried anyway, and I looked up from the viewfinder to see him reaching a hand out for me.

Everything inside of me went shivery with the way he looked at me. His sleepy eyes were soft, his lips partly open but unsmiling. Tentatively, I placed my hand on his and he tugged me close, so quickly that I laughed once as I collided with his chest.

He took the camera from my hands and checked the focus before turning it around, so it was facing us. As the shutter clicked, one after the other, I leaned in closer and closer.

When he pulled the camera down, he wrapped the strap around his neck and turned to me. His mouth was in a grim line, but his eyes were still warm, like there was an ember behind the honey, making them glow against the darkening sky.

“Trista,” he said, then shook his head. I waited for him to say something, but instead he placed his hands on my shoulders, squeezing as I faced him.

My heart thumped painfully fast in my chest.

Slowly, his hands slid across my shoulders to my neck, pausing at the place where shoulder met neck, and then his hands came up the sides of my throat until he was cupping my jaw. One of his thumbs brushed my bottom lip before pulling it downward.

I was transfixed by his face; the way his eyes grew darker, the way his mouth opened wider. Every little movement was fascinating.

His thumb let go of my bottom lip and then he angled my chin so my mouth rose to meet his.

I didn’t hesitate, going up on my tip toes to make the connection happen even as his mouth descended.

He didn’t kiss me slowly—there was nothing slow about the way he kissed me. His teeth tugged on my bottom lip and I opened more, my hands coming to his wrists to keep him holding me—for as long as I could.

The weight of Jude was in that kiss—everything he wanted to say with words, he spoke with his lips instead. It was essentially the same thing, just translated in a different way. A way that was born from feeling, which meant more to me than words possibly could.

When he said my name against my lips, like it was a sigh, elongating the “s” I thought for sure he was in pain. Because in a way, I was too. There was nothing I wanted more than to keep kissing Jude on that mountain. Not one single thing.

The wind swirling around us picked up again, and the hood from my jacket flapped against my face, breaking our moment.

But instead of pulling away, Jude twisted my hat backwards and his too—so the brims were no longer right over our faces. He brushed the strands from my forehead before he kissed me there. I closed my eyes once again, committing all of it to memory.

Jude was just so beautiful—everything about him, from his kindness and his patience, to his brain and his backbone and way deep down, in his soul. Goodness emanated from him in the same way that sadness probably poured from me. And damn if I didn’t feel like he’d transferred some of that goodness to me when he’d kissed me like a man desperate for more.

“Ready?” he asked against the shell of my ear.

Every time he asked that, he made me think I wasn’t ready. No, definitely not ready for the havoc Jude would wreak upon my heart.

But I nodded, and his arms slid down until we were holding hands. And as we began our descent, all I could think about was how he didn’t let go of me. Not once. He held my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world.

Jude was a holder. And I’d never realized until that moment how badly I’d needed to be held.

There was no doubt about how I was feeling—even if I didn’t want to think it, to give weight to a word that meant so much. It felt too soon. And if I’d learned anything from Colin, it was not to trust the feelings if I felt them so suddenly.

I looked up at Jude once, when he’d stopped to hold onto the walking stick, watched as he looked across the meadows—searching for the elusive bear. And what struck me the most was that Jude was solid. He knew who he was. He knew what he wanted, even if what he wanted was more or less an ambiguous idea of where he’d be five, ten years from now.

He was everything Colin was not, and while I hated to compare them, I couldn’t stop myself from doing it. Colin made me placid; Jude made my head spin. Colin was like sand between my fingers and Jude was a brick.

But because I was so fresh from Colin, from the undecided place we’d left ourselves, I knew I couldn’t jump fully in, with two feet, with Jude.

I’d been half of Ellie and Trista. I’d been Colin’s girlfriend. And before I could be anything for Jude, I needed to be me. Just Trista.

* * *

A
bout halfway down the mountain
, Jude gave me a look. “I think we missed the bear.”

Shrugging, I said, “The bear wasn’t the one who made this special.”

He squeezed my hand. “What do you say to s’mores and hot chocolate by the fire tonight?”

I squeezed back, smiled as wide as I could. “I say that sounds amazing.”

We walked further down, until we could see the parking lot. Though I told Jude that, essentially, I was fine missing out on the bear, I still felt a slight twinge knowing we’d missed it. But when I thought about the way Jude had kissed me on top of the mountain, the bear was easily forgotten.

I wondered if I wore the peace on my face. Because that’s how I felt—completely peaceful. Hopeful, even.

As we crunched in our boots across the parking lot, someone shouted something that broke the dream-like spell I was under.

“Stay in your cars!”

I whipped my head around to determine where the voice came from, just as Jude pulled me back behind him. Someone shouted and I heard a succession of car doors slamming before Jude’s hand tightened on mine.

“Stay with me. Don’t panic.”

“What?” I asked, but obeying his low command.

“Bear,” he rasped.

My blood ran cold. I’d wanted to see a bear so badly, but had resigned myself to not seeing one as we made it back to our car. Now, faced with the prospect of seeing one, I felt just how real the danger was.

His grip on my hand was almost painful, and he moved so that he was more fully in front of me. “Don’t move.”

I wasn’t sure I could even breathe.

All I could see was Jude’s back as he dug into the front pocket of his jeans, noiselessly pulling out his keys. “We’re going to the car.”

My eyes darted right, to our car parked just three spaces away. “Okay,” I whispered.

Jude led, his face turned away from me as he kept an eye on the bear that I still could not see. “Go slow. Don’t move until I do. Stay calm.”

I nodded as I followed him behind the car next to us. And then another. By the time we made it to our car, Jude paused. “I’m going to unlock your door first.”