“And why were you lying?”
She looks at me and bites her lip, which makes me look at her lips. They’re fucking perfect. I want to soothe that bite with my tongue and then bite her again. And then maybe move on to something more.
“Well I actually have a pretty intense work schedule. I mean, really intense. I work at an emergency animal clinic. You see, my plan is to become a vet. And my parents are the concerned type. Always afraid I’m working too hard, too hyper-focused. ‘You’re so young, Erin. You need to let go and have fun.’” she imitates their voices and rolls her eyes. “So I told them that I was coming here so they would lay off a bit, not worry so much. I didn’t know that they’d actually end up coming here.”
I laugh. It’s impossible not to. “A vet? That’s awesome.”
“Hence the whole animals over people thing,” she says with a small smile. “I did actually come here before, once, when you guys first got the horses. That’s what gave me the idea in the first place. It’s beautiful up here, and it was the first thing that popped into my head.”
“Glad to hear that.”
Blue Mountain is beautiful, and all three of us owners take pride in making it a place that people love and want to come back to. I won’t lie, if someone told me as a kid that I’d end up as the owner of a holiday destination, I would have laughed in his face. But it suits me. I’m the one that plans the excursions. Activities Director, that’s me. Internally, I shake my head at the stupid fucking title Leo and Asher made me take.
For a while I didn’t really have to worry about any of the business shit. All I did was split the hikes with Leo and make sure that everyone had a good time. But as Blue Mountain expanded, I’ve had to do more admin work, and the restlessness of that is constantly under my skin.
Whenever I have the chance now, I slip into the woods on my own and just…go. Now that Leo and Asher have partners, I’m lonely. Of course I’m happy for my friends. It’s just—I love Blue Mountain, and nothing is going to make me give up on this place and this dream. I’m just going to have to get used to the way things are now, and hope that I can stand the changing current.
We used to have a kind of Three Musketeers thing going on, but now that they have Rose and Diana, it’s different. So the only place where I don’t feel the crushing weight of everything that’s changing is in the open woods. And talking to Erin right now.
“How often are you using us as an excuse?”
She snorts. “Whenever I possibly can. Practically every weekend. I’m amazed that they haven’t caught on because I’m supposedly doing all this outdoorsy stuff, but I still get winded walking up the stairs.”
“I highly doubt that. You were barely winded on that hike today.”
Erin glances up at me. “I didn’t think you even knew I was there.”
“A beautiful woman hiking beside me? Of course I knew.”
Her cheeks tinge pink in the dim light. I like that. It makes me wonder what else I can do to make her cheeks turn pink. And then red.
She clears her throat. “But yeah, whenever they need a shift covered, I volunteer.”
“Sounds strenuous.”
“Maybe.” She just shrugs. “But I love it. I have to do it.”
Something about the way that she says she has to snags on the edges of my mind. There’s a determination there that I can’t name. “You sure you’re not actually working too hard?”
The way her eyes shatter sends a shock through my chest, and she looks away. “Not hard enough.”
The words are soft. So soft and completely laced with emotion. The pain in those words makes me want to pull her close and wrap her in my arms. To make the pain go away.
All at once she pushes off the wall and walks out of the barn, head down so that I can’t see her face. She’s walking in the direction of the fire pit, but she shouldn’t go there. Not like this. That group—her parents—are too rowdy and drunk for whatever just came over her.
It’s not my business. It’s not. But I can’t stop myself from reaching out and catching her by the arm. There’s absolutely nothing in me that’s going to let her walk away right now.
Erin looks at my hand on her arm, then up at me, and her eyes are glassy with built up emotion. Fuck. I swallow. “Your parents will assume that we know each other?”
Slowly, she nods. “Probably, yeah.”
“Then it won’t be a stretch for us to have a drink together that doesn’t involve marshmallows and loud campfire songs, right?”