Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (27 page)

I didn’t have a choice anyway, so I just did as he instructed, following him along the side of the car. Quietly, he put the key in the lock and turned, unlocking. I was too afraid by his complete stillness, the rigidity in his shoulders, that I didn’t look away—trusting him to have control of the situation. He leaned in, so his body was covering mine. “Get in. Don’t close the door unless the bear comes close and unlock the doors but not until I’m around the car.”

Swallowing, I nodded once. He let go of my hand to brace it on the door before he pulled the handle and opened.

“Get in,” he said.

I slid in, holding my breath and then pulled the door until it was almost closed. My hand was trembling as I scrambled for the unlock button. It felt like it took Jude less than a second to be on the other side of the car.

He slid in. “Close the door.”

I did as he instructed and then he locked the doors. We both sat back in the seats and I thought for sure he could hear my heart thundering because it was deafening.

I finally got up the courage to look out the windshield and was about to ask Jude where the bear was when I saw him—walking right through the parking lot in front of the car.

His dark, marble eyes searched the parking lot, his head swinging back and forth. His snout was long and his fur was a mix of brown and black, matted along the side of his body we could see. He didn’t look particularly drawn to any one thing, lifting his head looking around but not really moving in any specific direction.

“It’s a grizzly.”

I looked at Jude. “He’s huge.”

Jude pulled his camera up to his face, played with the lens and got a few shots of him. “I think that’s Scarface. Look, when he turns his head back around.”

Indeed, when the bear turned I saw the significant scarring along the side of his face. His ears appeared misshapen, like there wasn’t much left to them. He looked a bit haggard, but seemed unperturbed by the cars that were starting their engines. His mouth was open a little, like he was breathing through it as he searched the parking lot.

He took his time crossing the parking lot, swinging his head from side to side. And when he reached the side of the parking lot, where grass and flowers stretched far up the side of the mountain, he picked up his pace a little to jump up the retaining wall into the field. And then he went on his way, like it was business as usual.

“A bear,” I said, dumbfounded.

“I’ve heard people have seen him over here, but I’ve never seen him myself.”

“He looked old.”

“I think he’s around twenty years old, so he’s definitely been around a few times.”

“Why was his face so scarred up?”

“Could be a number of things, depending on who you ask. It could be from other bears, incidents with bison while hunting. Or they could be self-inflicted, from him trying to take off the collars they put on him.”

“He looked like he wasn’t afraid of people at all.”

“He probably isn’t. A lot of animals become accustomed to our presence in the park. That’s why it’s important not to feed them, because once you do they can become dependent on it.”

I nodded and we watched the bear climb the hill until he disappeared over the ridge.

A
fter a dinner
of grilled chicken Jude had picked up at the nearby general store, we settled around the fire with chocolate milk Jude had also bought.

“You love your chocolate milk, don’t you?”

“Sure do. When I was younger, I was a little overweight. That’s what got me active. But I still wanted something sweet right before bed every night, so my mom made chocolate milk with skim milk and Hershey’s syrup and it was a way for me to get my sweet in without eating an entire candy bar every night.”

“You were overweight once?” I asked, sizing him up and down. He had an athletic body, one that spoke to his experience in the woods.

“Sure was. When I was sick.” He brushed the knees of his pants and then sat back in his chair. “Easy to gain weight when you’re in a bed all the time.”

“I’ve always been a little chubby,” I said, feeling like I could admit that to Jude without him judging me for the thing I’d always been the most concerned about, in regards to my looks.

He shook his head. “Mila told me you had a distorted view of your body. And after our first camping trip and hearing you say that, I can see what she means.”

“I struggled a lot, with my weight, growing up. I’ve tried losing weight, but most of my attempts were half-hearted. I just gave up, and it happened naturally.”

“You were never chubby.”

My skin prickled and I looked at him. “You’ve only known me for a few weeks. Trust me, I was chubby.”

“When?”

“Until the last year or so.”

“It’s not true.”

The prickle in my skin carried into my face. “You haven’t known me,” I repeated. “I was.”

Jude was silent and I suddenly felt awkward—the way he was acting was so strange that I couldn’t reconcile it. “Are you tired?” he asked.

I shook my head, wondering at the change of topic. “My legs feel a little bit like jelly, but that could be thanks to the bear and not the actual mountain climb.”

“If it makes you feel any better, my legs felt like jelly too when I saw him.” His demeanor changed like that—where he had just been a little standoffish with his insistence that I hadn’t been chubby, he was now amiable Jude.

“Can I see your camera?” I asked, wanting to see the bear again.

He was still wearing it around his neck, having just come from the thicket of trees beyond us where he’d snapped picture after picture. He pulled it off his neck and passed it to me, but didn’t let go immediately.

“I just want to look through the photos,” I said.

“Don’t delete any, please.”

“Okay.” He was acting really strange. When he finally let go of the camera, my eyes narrowed for a moment as I wondered what was going on in his head. “How do I turn on the gallery?”

“Press the button that looks like the ‘play’ button. And then use this,” he reached over, pointed to the arrows just right of the screen, “to navigate through them.”

I pressed play and looked at the first several photos of the trees Jude had captured in his lens. It was our last night at the campground, because tomorrow morning, we’d wake early and get on the road to see the rest of Yellowstone before our flight that night.

When I reached the bear, I used the little zoom button to see his face more clearly. From this view, he looked little, harmless apart from the obvious scarring on his face. It made me think about how photos couldn’t do justice to reality.

I kept scrolling back and out of my periphery, I watched Jude stand and walk to the picnic table. The fire crackled near my feet, but I kept scrolling through the photos of the meadows and the marmots we’d seen on our way down. When I reached the photos from the summit, I paused.

My hand came to the top of my head instinctively as I stared at the photo of Jude and me. His arm was wrapped around me, and we were both smiling into the camera. But the smile on my face wasn’t what gave me pause.

I was wearing a baseball cap. I’d forgotten about it, because after the bear left Jude had repacked the backpack and taken the hat from my head.

But I was wearing it in this photo. And my stomach burned as I stared at it.

It was purple.

A Rockies baseball cap.

And across the Rockies letters was a speckling of white. Paint, perhaps.

The hand on my head slid, like deadweight to my lap as I stared at it.

The Rockies cap I’d seen the night Ellie died.

This Rockies cap. With the paint splatter.

The Rockies cap the man who had administered CPR to Ellie was wearing. The emblem that bounced in my head as Ellie’s chest had been pumped, over and over.

I felt like I’d lost a grip on the now. My mind flashed to that night, to the person who was sitting beside Colin as Colin lit up a joint. The person who hadn’t spoken to me, who’d remained hidden underneath that baseball hat. The person who had pushed me out of the way to start chest compressions.

“Trista.” Jude’s voice lured me back to the now.

I stood, albeit shakily, and walked to him, holding his camera in my hand. As if in a shock, I handed it to him. “This,” I said, my tongue so thick I couldn’t move it around my mouth. “This hat. Your hat?”

He took the camera from me and nodded tentatively. “Yes. My hat.”

I blinked, trying to reconcile the Jude that was here with me and the Jude that had been there with me. Trying to save her.

“You were there.” I swallowed, braced a hand on the picnic table. My legs were trembling under the weight of what I’d just realized.

“Yes.” He seemed cautious, as if he was bracing himself for my reaction.

I’d just discovered a secret of his.

“Ellie,” I said, feeling warmth swamp my chest. The heaviness of it all was reminiscent of the night she’d died. “You did CPR.”

“Yes.”

“But you didn’t know her.”

“I would do the same for anyone.” He placed the camera on the picnic table. “Anyone else would’ve done it too.”

“But they didn’t. No one did. But you.” I blew out a breath. “You gave Ellie CPR. You tried to save her.”

“I did.”

I placed my hands on his chest, pulling myself closer to him. “I don’t know what to say.”

“Let me say something then.” His hands were at his sides. “I didn’t mean to keep it from you. But when I met you, you looked so sad. I didn’t want to dredge something like this up, to remind you of that night.”

I thought about the first time I’d seen Jude, how I’d just spent a sleepless first night in Colorado. “Please don’t keep anything from me again,” I said.

“Okay.”

He looked remorseful and maybe a touch sad. “Thank you. For trying.” I curled my fingers into fists so that his shirt was taut in my hands.

He kissed my forehead first, but we both knew it was a weak anesthetic for what he was doing to my heart.

Realizing that Jude had tried to save her the night she died—it should’ve hurt me. It dredged up the old wounds, the harsh reality of her physical absence from my life. But instead of being hurt, I felt lighter—as if I’d found a communion in Jude. Like I wasn’t completely alone.

Suddenly, I was starving for him. As if the kiss on the mountain hadn’t been enough to sustain me. All the voices telling me to slow down were shoved back as I stepped close enough so that my body was completely in line with his. And then I kissed him.

Each time we kissed had felt like a test of the waters, to see how we fit, even though each kiss had been better than the last. Like I was constantly telling myself to slow down even when my heart was steps ahead of me, tumbling over itself. My brain had no power over my heart—all its caution fell on deaf ears.

I didn’t have to ask Jude to kiss me back. He did it himself, caressing my skin like it’d been made for his touch. He didn’t hold me gently, he held me like he worried I’d slip from his grasp.

One of his hands slipped up my spine, coming to rest at the back of my head. He cradled me, but his fingers dug in. Tilting his head, he sunk in deeper. His tongue lashed against mine and I might have made a sound in the back of my throat, because the feel of his tongue against mine was the first step to my undoing.

He pulled back, breathing hoarsely against my mouth. But I didn’t want to stop, not this time. With a boldness I didn’t know I possessed, my hands snaked under the bottom of his shirt, slid across his abdomen. The divots and the rounded fullness of his muscles under my skin made my own body warm like the very center of me was just molten need.

His mouth was a centimeter from mine, so all I heard was our harsh breaths and our heartbeats thundering. “Trista.”

“Jude,” I said. “Ask me if I’m ready.”

He didn’t. Instead, he kissed me again, bruisingly, branding his taste on my lips. This was what I’d been looking for, for so long, that I couldn’t comprehend that it was actually happening. As if my brain just woke up to that fact, my hands became hungry, cruising over his skin and squeezing and nicking him with my nails.

“Trista,” he repeated, pulling back again.

“Jude.”

He made a noise in his throat, something guttural and desperate as he opened my mouth with his again. He was brilliantly untamed in the way he didn’t hold back. His lips absolutely devoured my mouth, like we were two live wires trying to find our way back to each other.

My entire body shook, so powerful was my immediate need for Jude.

“Fuck,” he said, breathing the syllable on my lips. “Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” I said, before he lifted me into his arms and carried me into his tent.