He nodded again. Stalling out. On a mountain with woods on one side and a cliff-like drop-off to rocky crags on the other. “You know, I am actually very good at jogging—”
At last, Skye cracked. “Oh my gosh, Theo. You are not going to jog next to the tractor for six miles in your . . . your”—she frowned as she glanced down at his feet—“absolutely hideous cowboy boots that look three sizes too small.”
Theo looked down at the overly ornate, gold-threaded black boots. “Two. But it was all they had.”
“Come here.”
He raised a brow and took a step forward.
“You’ll ride with me.” She stepped down from the tractor and waved impatiently for him to get in.
Theo hesitated, then glanced up the road.
“Get in.”
He felt momentarily helpless, unable to drive not only the tractor—which, given his occupation and lifestyle, was at least understandable—but a standard-transmission vehicle as well. Had he known, however, that she had expected him to drive her car, he could’ve driven his own, dropped her off at the gas station instead—
“You first.”
Theo’s thoughts dissolved as he peered inside. “Can this handle both of us?”
Skye gave him a look as if to say, Did your eyeballs just see Luke? What are you trying to imply about my weight?
“But of course we’ll fit,” Theo said. “With you being so petite, the tractor will need me simply to keep us grounded.”
“For heaven’s sake, Theo, just get in.” Theo felt her two hands press against his shoulders and push him forward. He scrambled up the steps and, careful to avoid touching any gadgets, sat on the cracked seat. The weathered steering wheel was large and tilted toward the sky. Numerous dials and switches were arranged beside the armrest to his right. Glass surrounded him.
Skye dropped all of her weight on his knee. He nearly grunted but managed to hold it in. “Ah. So that’s how we’ll fit. That makes perfect sense.”
She frowned at him and turned the key. The engine rumbled.
Skye flicked the switch and turned the vast wheel, and the massive tires of the tractor began to move. Theo’s world slowed as the wisps of her hair tickled his cheeks. While trees flickered by in his periphery, his breath caught on the scent he had almost forgotten. After all these years, her hair still smelled of strawberries and cream.
He lifted his voice to match the grumbling noise of the tractor. “You use the same shampoo.”
Skye jerked the wheel and looked over her shoulder. “Try not to sound like a creeper while I’m stuck in here with you. And . . . I can’t believe you remember that.”
He didn’t reply, but instead looked out the window. Only then did he realize just how quickly the trees whipped by. “How fast does this tractor go?”
“Twenty-five.” She looked back, noticed the car crawling behind them, and pulled closer to the creek-side edge. She pushed the window open and waved them on. Theo watched the tire creep over the white line and inhaled sharply before looking the opposite direction.
But as he watched her intent posture, her alert gaze, the confidence with which she handled the wheel, he remembered another thing he hadn’t called to mind for years: the way he used to trust her. Blindly trust her, really. Always eager for the next adventure.
“Do you remember the time I let you drive me around in that four-wheeler?” Theo said, his voice barely audible above the rumble.
There was a pause. Then a laugh. “The ATV? I was grounded for three weeks. How could I forget?”
Theo smiled to himself. “It was so cold that night. Do you remember how cold it was?”
Though her face was half obscured by her loose curls, he saw her wistful smile. “My fingers nearly froze clicking that flashlight so many dang times. I thought you’d never see it.”
He chuckled. “Oh. I always saw it.”
She didn’t respond, no doubt because she didn’t need to. They both knew he did. By the time they were teens, every weekend, every summer break, every chance he could convince his family to pack up and drive to Evergreen for a reprieve, he always went to bed keeping one eye on his window, just in case he’d see that blinking flashlight. Their code.
“It just took a while to see it coming from the barn,” he continued.
The tractor rolled past Skye’s cottage, the roof dappled with sunlight that spilled through the leaves of the great maple.
The sign for Evergreen Farm came into view, and Skye turned onto the gravel. “The snow was coming down too thick for you to see from my bedroom, and besides, I had to rig up the four-wheeler. I was coming for you whether you were sleeping or not.”
He grinned as they progressed along the bumpy gravel driveway between the trees. He recalled the energy, the adrenaline high, of spotting her blinking flashlight through the heavy snowfall. How he’d bounded out of his bed. How quickly he’d slipped into his warmest boots and bibs, barely snatching up his toboggan before cracking open the heavy front door and sneaking outside. He never had any idea what Skye planned; he was only certain there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
That evening, Skye screamed and laughed as she whipped the four-wheeler in figure eights beneath the midnight storm on the snow-covered field. Theo gripped the sled for dear life and laughed along with her. Screamed and laughed. Screamed and laughed. Until they saw her father in the distance, stalking out of the woods.
Theo blinked toward that empty field, now filled with rows of adolescent trees. “That was by far the most fun evening of my life.”
Her eyes flickered almost imperceptibly to the thirty-foot Fraser fir standing in the center of the field. The one in all this time he’d never cut down. “The most?”
He pressed his lips together. He could never forget the night before he’d left for UVA.
“The most fun. Another evening has its own category for simply being the most.”
She let go of the wheel with one hand to pull her hair behind one ear. Her large brown eyes gazed back at him. The corner of her mouth turned upward. “The most. You have a category where one evening wins for being the most. If that isn’t the most grammatically incorrect thing I’ve ever heard from you—”
Her hair slipped from her ear and covered one eye. Without thinking, he returned it to its place.
Suddenly they both stopped. Words stopped. Theo felt the tractor slow to a stop. And what was in her wide brown eyes welled, brimming with emotions, questions, memories.
His breath caught in his lungs, a heady strawberries-and-cream scent encapsulated by four walls of glass.
But then one word came to mind. Ashleigh.
“You know, I forgot I needed to make a few calls before we got started,” Theo said. He nodded to the cabin not so far in the distance. “I’ll just hop out here and meet you at the tractor.”
“Good plan,” she said, only too eager to push the door open and move down the steps before her sentence was finished. “It’ll take me a while to get the rachet straps on anyway.”
While the tractor continued puttering in the opposite direction toward the ridge, Theo took his first clear breath. Put his hands on his hips as he strode up the gravel driveway and then made his way to the cabin’s wide porch steps.
He couldn’t pretend anymore.