“No worries,” I mutter under my breath.
“Anyway, no one gets the other information I gave you about the Wild Ones unless they’re inside the Wild One circle. Consider yourself unofficially inducted,” she states, not meeting my eyes.
“Is this you telling me you believe I’m really here and not going anywhere?”
She bristles. “It’s me extending a lot of trust,” she defends.
“And what does all that have to do with the bridge?” I ask, deciding not to push too far too quickly.
“Remember last week when you were talking about finding a way to prove to people Tomahawk is your home because you’re sick of Chester Perkins expecting you to leave? Which, by the way, what’s up with that?”
I shake my head. “I’d rather not talk about it right now.”
She shrugs. “Anyway, I was thinking about all that wood in your wood shop, and about the fact you’re actually good with your hands.” She gives me a wink and a dirty grin that has me moving closer, but she moves away from my hands, going to stand on the rickety bridge.
“Kylie,” I hiss, not daring to go after her because the weight of two might send this thing collapsing. “Get away from there!”
She just moves closer to the center while holding her arms out and grinning.
“This is the unusable yet most helpful road from the north end of Tomahawk to the south. Yet no one can use it, because the bridge will fall apart under a car. There’s also a waterfall type area when the beavers don’t have it dammed up, but the dam helps keep the lower areas from flooding or draining the upper level until it’s just dirt. So there’s no way to drive through here on a boat either, since you’d be dropping thirty feet.”
“Could you stop standing on the unstable bridge that might drop you those thirty feet so I can breathe, please?”
Her grin grows as she walks toward me, and I snatch her to me the second she’s in reach, holding her so close that she mocks a suffocating noise.
I barely loosen my hold, and she squirms away, laughing a little as she turns and leans her head against my chest.
“We don’t let the state do much for us, so we do most repairs on roads and such on our own.”
“That explains why the roads are so shitty around here,” I say before I can stop myself, not realizing how much of a douche I sound like until it’s too late.
She shrugs. “We’re not high maintenance. But this bridge needs more skill. It’s only a year old, and as you can tell, it looks a hundred.”
My eyebrows go up. Only a year?
“Two Nickels fixed it last time,” she says as though that explains everything. “Anyway, I thought maybe you could build the new bridge with all your fancy engineering information and wood skills.”
She turns and faces me, and I stare down at her like she’s a puzzle.
“Only those who really love Tomahawk take the time to help out with something that benefits everyone and not just themselves,” she goes on, shrugging one shoulder.
My fingers go to her hair, and I tilt her head back as I grin and kiss her lips. She’s trying to give me something. Something special. Something that money can’t buy.
She’s giving me the key to respect from a town that holds its outsiders at arm’s length.
The key to hopefully shutting Chester Perkins right the hell up.
And a chance to leave my mark on Tomahawk doing something I love to do.
She’s trusting me with something that clearly means a lot to her and this town.
“Don’t worry. People don’t sue if it doesn’t work. We just block the roads so no one can drive through if the bridge messes up. But it’s cool if you’re worried and don’t want to risk it.”
I’ve never built a bridge before, but this is a small section, and I can do the research. And I can also call a lawyer to draw up iron-clad waivers so that I don’t risk getting sued.
“I’ll do it,” I tell her, watching as that smile transforms her face.
My thumb brushes her cheek, and suddenly I realize why I’ve been freaking out. I guess it would have been obvious to anyone who knew the constant stirring of unexplainable and mostly conflicting emotions before. Someone who knew what it was like to feel excited and full of dread all at once.
I’m in love with Kylie Malone.
And she’s just spending time with me to ‘see how it goes.’ No wonder I’m acting like a fucking lunatic.
I don’t even realize she’s taking her boots off until she pushes away so she can stack them off to the side.
“What’re you—”
“Okay. Now we can jump,” she says, confusing the hell out of me.
“What?” I ask, just as she takes off running, laughing manically as she leaps off the unstable bridge.