My mind screams it at me, but I don’t want to stop. I loathe the idea that this has to end. It’s the most I’ve felt since… since…
I can feel the prickles of distant eyes on my skin. A flash of paranoia lights up my hazy brain like lightning through a gray cloud.
I open an eye, expecting it to simply be paranoia, but dread twists my gut, and a humming sounds through my head when I put a body to the eyes I felt on me mid-kiss. He’s back. The man from before.
Dark clothes, dark hair, heavy jacket.
No face.
“Nok,” I breathe, pushing against him and pointing to the shade of the trees across the stream.
He turns, sensing a change in me as I look at the faceless man watching us from the shadows. I point and the man ducks down behind a bush. “What is it?”
“He’s back, right there. Just staring at us.”
Nok pulls away, keeping me behind him as he surveys the area. “I can’t see anyone.”
“He dropped down when I saw him.”
He looks at me like he doesn’t believe me and why would he?
“I’m serious,” I admonish, slapping his chest. “He was standing right there.”
Sighing, he peels away from me with clear reluctance. “Wait here.” I reach down for my knife and pull it from my boot, but he immediately takes it from my hand. “You don’t need to be playing with that today.”
I’m not a delicate fucking wet paper towel that needs protecting but something tells me not to let him cross that stream alone without it.
He holds it as he hops across the rocks in the water, peering over and around all of the mossy obstacles that separate him from the creep.
“Hurry back,” I call after him on a hushed note. “Knowing my luck, a bear or a wolf will come along and eat me while I don’t have a weapon.”
He laughs through his nose but sobers and stops in his tracks when we hear the cracking of a stick and the rustle of a tree. It’s insane how instincts can force us to drown out all sounds but the ones we deem most dangerous during moments like this.
“Come out and I won’t hurt you,” Nok warns, yelling so loudly it echoes through the near silence, piercing it like a pin in a balloon. Birds fly and animals that lie sleeping now run away, startled.
My ears stay tuned in to anything out of the ordinary.
“Can you see anything?” I ask as he kicks at the ground.
“Nope. Nothing. Are you sure you saw someone?”
“You think I’d interrupt that make-out session for nothing?”
He grins at me over his shoulder for a brief second before returning to his manhunt. After searching for another minute, he returns to me and shrugs. “We’ll go, just to be safe.” He peers around again, a crease in his brows. “What did he look like?”
“I don’t know…”
“What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Like… he kind of reminded me of my dad, I guess. Broad shoulders, dark clothes…”
He looks around one more time. “You don’t think he followed us out here?”
I shake my head.
“Are you sure? It wouldn’t be the first time a girl’s dad has chased me with a shotgun.”
“My dad’s dead, Nok. I’m sure.”
His eyes inherit an understanding sadness that one only gets when they’ve felt the loss of a parent.
“Your mom?” I ask and he nods grimly. “How old were you?”
“Seconds old. You?”
That’s a tragedy.
“I was…” I want to answer; the age is on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t think of it. It’s not that I don’t remember I just can’t seem to get my head to work for long enough to conjure the moment my dad died. Or how he died.
“Nokosi,” an unfamiliar male voice calls from somewhere to our right. It’s distant, too distant to have been the man hiding, just like that howl before.
Nokosi mutters a curse and quickly pulls his shirt back on. “It’s Anetúte.”
“Your dad?”
He nods, his lips a thin line. “He’s checking to make sure I’m being nice to you.”
I raise a brow. “You know, I can switch on tears like that.” When I click my fingers, he glares at me. “What’s it worth to you that I don’t make up shit for attention?”
“You wouldn’t dare…”
I drop my features and inhale sharply. “How could you say that? Why do you have to be so mean?”
“What are you doing?” he asks, looking and sounding panicked.
I sniff dramatically as tears well in my eyes. “You think I’m fat?”
“You better stop it.”
“Nokosi?” the voice shouts again, getting closer this time.
“What do you want from me?” Nok hisses and I realize in this moment that he respects his dad. I can see it in the panic of his eyes.
“Nothing, just figuring you out,” I mutter, smiling wryly. Then I lean into him, pressing my shoulder against his arm.
“And what have you figured out?”
I lower my voice as I speak through the side of my mouth, “You’re a daddy’s boy.”
“I will throw you in that river.”
“I’m telling everyone that Nokosi Locklear loves his daddy.”
“Nokosi,” the voice yells once more.
This time Nok replies, his eyes still on me, both glittering with humor and curiosity, “Over here.”
I hear footsteps come closer, more than one set. Two men appear, both look so much like Nokosi it is unreal. It’s like looking at his future, plus twenty years then plus another twenty. They must be related.
“Dad,” Nok says softly and bows his head with his hand raised.
“Son,” the younger of the two men say, both with acorn-colored eyes lined by a sharp ring of darker brown just like Nokosi. They look at me, assessing me, figuring me out.
“Lilith, this is my dad, Dasan, and my grandfather, Peter.”
I want to ask why they all have a mixture of Native names, yet Peter seems to have a normal name. But that’s probably rude so I don’t ask.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say stupidly because I don’t know how to greet them beyond that.
“Likewise, young lady,” Peter says, smiling kindly at me. “I trust my grandson is being a gracious host?”
They all stare at me expectantly waiting for my answer. I look at Nok and consider telling them he’s an ass, but he hasn’t been, not today anyway.
“He’s been teaching me some new life skills,” I reply, nudging him with my arm. “Though I don’t think I’ll be able to survive in the wild for more than a few hours without heading back in search of a Starbucks.”
They laugh and I feel a pleasant tingle in my chest that I’m the one who elicited such a response from them.
“This brings me happiness.” Dasan places his hand on his son’s shoulder and then looks at the discarded fishing rod. “Was your morning out here fruitful?”
“I caught three, but they’re big,” Nok explains and points to the bucket, his chest swelling with pride.
Dasan peers inside and beams with pride at his son. It makes me ache for my own dad. He looked at me like that… sometimes.