“Relax, Reyes. It’s just a little bit of nature.”
“I’m not not relaxed. I just don’t want shit on my face.”
“You’ve got a little something…” I swiped my hand across my cheek, watching him mirror my move.
“No, here.”
He followed my lead again as I brushed my fingers along my forehead, rubbing his palm across his own, eyes locked on mine as he waited for me to give him the signal that he’d gotten the imaginary dirt off of his face.
It was because of that fixated eye contact that he caught on as I failed to hide the quiver of my mouth. Reyes’ face slowly fell, drawing long and unamused as his eyebrows flattened to a strict line.
“You’re being a brat again, aren’t you?”
My lips pulled a wide grin at him, unable to hold back anymore. “That’s implying I ever stopped.”
A scowl pinched on his lips, he cleaned his thumbs against the lenses of his precious fucking glasses. He shoved them into the front of his shirt, letting them hang as low as his growling voice.
“For once we can agree.”
I snickered, falling back into line with his strides with an easy smile on my face. We wandered on, sifting through another mile of sprawling trees and shrubbery whose leaves winked at us with the graze of the wind. Beautiful. Everything around us was beyond the word.
We found a meandering creek that wound its shape from narrow to fat and back again and glistened with diamond-like lappings of waves. Shimmers skipped along the rocks embedded in the water, the sun composing its claim along the creek. Both Reyes and I stood in silence as we watched the waves and a family of turtles that swam inside of them.
Butterflies of yellow and burnt orange whirled around and between us, each one’s wings flapping up a smile bigger and brighter on my cheeks. Ahead on the path stood a monstrous tree, towering and branches like trunks of their own. I ran after it, climbing up the beast with Reyes beneath me, shouting at me to get down.
He finally traveled up after me, forcing his way up the tree with moves like a predator closing in. Though, halfway up on his way to retrieve me, he paused and eased down onto a branch, gaze cast over the view I’d sought out in my climb.
We stayed there in the tree for a while, soaking up the fields of green earth and the sky that stretched on in a sheet of uninterrupted blue. Not a cloud. Not a bird. Not a single touch of humankind.
Just the rustle of the creek in our ears and the beauty of land untouched in our eyes.
We climbed down from the paw of the tree and settled back into our trek, an ease settled like the sweetly fresh air between us. That was one of the beauties of nature. We were two souls of fire and fury brought to a calm by the gentle hand of the breeze.
“Did we land on a name for you yet?” Reyes asked after a period.
“Definitely not Scar.”
“I’m not calling you Hades.” Due to the peace waltzing a slow song between us, I let soft laughter tumble free at the notion. I wasn’t a Hades.
I didn’t know who or what the fuck I was past a tragedy, but I certainly wasn’t going to stick around long enough to find out.
“Queen of the Underworld suits you, though,” he tagged on.
I shot him a look. “I’m flattered.” And then a funny thought struck. “Does that make you Hades in your version of the story?”
His face pulled an incredulous expression, even better exemplified by the glint of humor visible in his unshaded eyes.
“I hardly think this,” he gestured around him, “counts as kidnapping.”
And I knew I shouldn’t have because it would shatter the mood this trip had distilled around us, but I sucked in a deep breath and let it out anyway.
“And the plane?”
To that, his arms fell back down to his sides and his mouth sealed right up. His eyes, like the soft yellow honeysuckle bush we’d passed a few paces back, steered towards the ground, covered up by admittance seconds later as he slid his shades back in place.
I smirked. “Checkmate, Hades.”
Once again, Agent Reyes picked up the task of clocking each sign we passed, mapping our journey in his mind.