Into the Tomorrows (Bleeding Hearts Book 1) (8 page)

I
woke
to the sounds of birds and men and a tent empty of Colin. The rustling of plastic, the murmur of conversation—both reminded me that I needed to get out of the tent and catch up to everyone else.

“Good morning,” Jude’s voice greeted me as I stepped out of the tent.

I managed a nod of acknowledgement, but kept my eyes averted. There was something about him that made me feel naked. I was wearing a turtleneck, another pair of the same tights, and a vest. But under his gaze, I was transparent; my clothes were brand new, unmarred by experience and his were holey and ripped at the tense spots, clearly broken in. I wore a costume and he wore himself.

If he was wondering what Colin saw in me, he could get in line—right behind me.

“Did you sleep well?” Jude asked, as if I’d invited this kind of conversation.

I thought of my sleep, how I’d been too afraid to move with each noise I heard throughout the evening. How I’d imagined a bear clawing its way into my tent, a fear perpetuated from reading too many horror stories in my grandfather’s old Readers Digests.

“I could have slept better,” I answered. My eyes met Colin’s across the camp and we both averted our gazes a second later. “It was cold.”

“You’ll have that.”

I grabbed my pack from the tent and secured my rolled up sleeping bag to it.

“Let me help you take down your tent,” he said, zipping my tent up behind me.

I was equal parts ashamed of being someone who needed so much help and relieved he’d offered. “Thanks.” I offered a small smile and set my pack down before walking around the tent.

His eyes met mine over the top of the tent and he said, “Ready?”

The single word scraped down my chest, as startling as a fork on fine china. It was as if something was unlocking within me. I had a distinct, prophetic revelation that I would meet his eyes and hear that word from his lips again, in a different context. And the thought froze me to the spot.

For the longest time, when I thought of Ellie, I thought of my past. She wasn’t here for me to imagine the future. But the way Jude had said one simple, five-letter word, I’d thought of a tomorrow that didn’t exist yet.

I stared into his eyes and watched as they changed too, but he didn’t look away. His mouth opened just slightly and then he swallowed.

“Trista.” It was the first time he’d said my name. I knew, because I’d never heard anyone say those two syllables that way before. Once the word left his lips, it came to lie upon my skin, imbedding itself into my flesh.

As if in reaction to the way he spoke, I shivered. What was this reaction? Why did he do this, cause this? Hearing him say my name felt serious, like he’d unwillingly taken a tiny piece of me. A morsel, maybe. It was insane, to be obsessing over this, to be thinking these thoughts.

The guilt came in, guilt for the unreal attraction I felt for Jude when I was supposed to be focused on Colin, focused on the erosion that had carved a distinct divide between us.

I had an alarmingly strong feeling that Jude would be a part of one of my tomorrows in some way. But today, today he was as much a stranger as Colin was.

“Trista,” he repeated.

I shook my head, yanking it away to stare at a tree. “Yeah?” I asked, avoiding his eyes altogether. “Sorry.” I leaned down and unhooked the pole from the metal bar it was secured in and helped him take down the tent, careful to keep from looking at his eyes again. I wished to close my ears to his words too, and it was all that I thought about as we sat around and waited for the others to finish.

Once we were packed, we had a breakfast of granola bars and bananas before setting off again. Despite doing my best to apply duct tape to my feet before they blistered, I knew just twenty minutes into the hike that I hadn’t taken care of my feet soon enough. The ache against my skin was almost unbearable and I wished to hell that someone would ask to rest so I wouldn’t be the person holding us back. Being needy wasn’t what I wanted to add to my resume of hiking mistakes.

Jude was beside me again, and I did everything I could to keep myself from thinking about that too much.
Colin
, I reminded myself.
You are on this mountain, bearing pain, for Colin.

“How are your feet?”

Stop talking
, I thought.
I can’t listen to your voice and not break out in a sweat
. I swallowed, told myself to stop obsessing over the way he said things. “Um,” I said as I grabbed a nearby tree for balance, my fingers clinging to the bark for help as I made my way over a tree that had fallen and blocked our path.

Jude stepped over the tree and held a hand for me, a dark tattoo peeking under his long sleeve. “It’s best to step over or go around things that block your path,” his eyebrows lifted, and he nodded for me to grab his hand. “Stepping up onto them will drain your energy more quickly.”

“My legs are short,” I muttered as my hand left the bark and clasped his. It was warm, solid, and he helped me bring my other leg over the tree patiently, easily. When he let go, my palm was sticky.

“Sap,” he explained with a nod to the tree I’d been holding. “Here.” He pulled a bottle of hand sanitizer from his pack and poured some into my palms. “This’ll help.”

I rubbed my hands, feeling the sap mostly disintegrate from the sanitizer. “You’re a boy scout, aren’t you?”

He laughed, and I felt that same little shiver from earlier, when he’d said my name.

“Not a boy scout.” He closed his eyes briefly and I watched as he breathed in the air. A smile curved his lips softly and I stared, mesmerized by how quickly he transformed into someone who looked like he belonged. “I’ve just spent a lot of time in these woods. Mila and I practically grew up with the trees.”

“She seems like a lively spirit.”

He laughed, and it echoed around the valley. “Great way to describe her. I think of her as this unending supply of intense energy.” We resumed the hike, silently and simultaneously increasing our pace to catch up with everyone.

“You must get along well, if she lives with you.” Since I was an only child myself, I didn’t have any grasp on what a sibling dynamic must be like, but I imagined living with siblings was similar to living with your parents after reaching adulthood.

“We do. We’re twins.”

“She called you her older brother,” I replied, remembering.

“Because I am, by a whole seven minutes.”

“You seem older, too.” I didn’t know how old he was, but he seemed older than my twenty-two years.

“We’ll be twenty-five in the fall, but you’re right.” He paused a moment and I stopped too, waiting while he uncapped his water and took a long sip. “We’ve lived different lives.” He studied me as he said that, as if he was waiting for me to add or ask something.

“I can tell.” Something about Jude made me think he was more serious, more reserved. It was clear that he was in his element in these trees, taking his time to appreciate the sights and sounds and smells. More than once, I’d caught him pulling a leaf off a bush or pulling down a branch and touching it gently. He picked up a rock or two so far on the hike, rubbing the dirt off of it before putting it in his pocket. He lived differently, he appreciated the world, in a way I hadn’t seen before.

“She’s come with me for a few work trips, but she’s just too go-go-go for me. We have to go to Yellowstone in a couple weeks, but I know she doesn’t want to tag along this time.” He held a hand out, gesturing for us to continue on.

“Why not?”

He shrugged. “She’s got auditions lined up all summer—it’s when she’s busiest. Summer travel really cuts down on the time she has for jobs.”

“What do you do for work?”

“I’m a travel blogger, working for companies and small businesses, mostly.”

“You can make money doing that?”

“You can make money doing just about anything, if you think outside the box.”

“Interesting.”

“What do you do for work?”

“Nothing, at the moment.” I swatted a bug away from my leg and pushed the hair from my forehead. “I used to work in a pet supply store.”

“But you went to college,” he said, encouraging me to continue.

“I don’t know if going for a year counts as ‘going to college.’”

He didn’t validate my response, just continued with his questions. “What did you study?”

“I was going to study English and web design.”

“Why?”

“English, because it’s a language I can speak, might as well write it well. Web design because it’s obvious that we’ll always need web designers and job security is important.”

“That’s honest.”

“I don’t know how to be anything other than honest.” The fact that the very statement was a lie made me want to laugh maniacally.

I felt him looking at me as I was several feet ahead and thought of how I should have this conversation with Colin, not with his roommate.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

I swatted another bug from my face, blew a breath that moved my bangs from my eyes. “Well, not everyone likes to hear the truth.” Which was why I was lying to my boyfriend.

“That’s true, even for me. I endeavor to always be honest, but I’m not forthcoming—not usually.”

It made me wonder what he wasn’t forthcoming about, but I barely knew him—and I definitely didn’t know him well enough to press. And besides, something on the trail caught my eye and I stopped in my tracks, completely oblivious to Jude and anyone else.

Crouching carefully beside it was a feat itself, because my muscles were so sore, but I did anyway, and gently touched the petals of the daisies that grew beside a few rocks.

“Daisies?”

I nodded, still marveling at them. The purple petals were bright beside the rocks, and made me think of my best friend. I stood, smiled to myself because they were such a happy color. An Ellie color. I thought of explaining it to him, but stopped, wanting to hold onto the thought myself.

But a noise from behind us had me spinning around, bumping into Jude as my eyes frantically searched our surroundings.

But all I heard was Jude’s even breathing and my agitated breathing. “So, tent guy,” I began, and Jude’s eyes smiled, “in all your years in the woods, have you seen any bears?”

“Sure,” he said as if I’d asked him if he’d ever seen a cloud. “All the time.”

I swallowed and looked quickly left and right into the woods around us. “I’m sure you know what to do if a bear approaches?” I asked hopefully.

He pointed to the can hanging on the side of his pack. “Bear spray.”

“I’m not sure if that makes me relieved or more nervous,” I admitted. “I was expecting you to tell me you’ve wrestled bears before.”

“Only on the weekends,” he laughed.

“Good thing it’s Saturday.” The smile was stubborn and I conceded, letting it spread and warm my cheeks.

“Good thing,” he agreed.

* * *

W
e stopped
for lunch in an area where a bunch of trees had fallen from a recent storm. It was jerky and granola bars again, but Colin’s hiking companion Teddy had a few MREs that we passed along to share. I started in on my second bottle of water for the day when it occurred to me that I hadn’t packed nearly enough water. When I mentioned it to Colin, he shook his head.

“We’ll be near some streams tonight and you can refill there.”

“You’ll want to purify it though; did you bring a filter?” Jude asked

I shook my head, looked at Colin. “I don’t think so?”

Colin shrugged. “The water’s fine to drink right from the source.”

Jude laughed, but it sounded humorless. “You don’t know what might be in the water upstream. Best to purify.”

“I’ve never gotten sick,” Colin said, seeming a little agitated.

“You also take a lot of unnecessary risks,” Jude countered.

Jude and Colin stared at one another for several seconds, the tension creating a lot of confusion for me. Finally, Jude broke the stare to turn to me. “I have a water bottle with a filter. I can share.” And then he stood up and put his pack back on. “Are we ready to go?”

We resumed the hike, stopping only occasionally for a water break or to take in the view. On our ascent the day before, I could still turn around and see the city in the distance, but now we were so deep that I could see nothing for miles apart from trees and rocks and cornflower blue sky.

The hike was hard because it was uphill and because I was so inexperienced, but Jude never made me feel bad when I walked a little slower than everyone else, he just adjusted his pace to match mine. At one point he said, “Colin should have had you lead with him.”

“But I’m slow.”

He turned to me, smiling. “You are.”

“Thanks,” I replied drily. “I’m slowing you down.”

“Exactly. We should have the slower people in front, so everyone only goes as fast as the slowest people.”

He held up a branch for me to duck under as I said, “So why didn’t he?”

“Because he didn’t want to make you feel bad for going slower than he’s used to.”

It made me uncomfortable, not because Jude was trying to hurt my feelings—he wasn’t—but because he was being completely honest. And it made sense. Colin hadn’t spoken to me much during the hike and hadn’t seemed bothered that I was in the back. Maybe he felt better knowing that I wasn’t up front, slowing everyone down, hindering him with my inexperience.