Delusion Road (28 page)

She was right about that, too—twice he almost ended up on his ass. The stones continually shifted beneath Keegan’s feet, and walking even a short distance involved a lot of concentration. The clatter of rocks rolling out from under their feet made it hard to talk, so they moved in relative silence. “How far are we going?” asked Keegan after several minutes of fighting for footing. The whole beach had widened like the letter V as they walked.

“Not far,” she said. “Just around that outcrop.” She pointed at a cliff that reached farther toward the water than any other.

“What’s there?” he asked.

“The last part of the surprise.”

A few minutes later, Keegan’s legs feeling like they’d run two miles, they reached the outcrop. On the other side was what Willa had brought him here to see: a narrow waterfall that plunged from the top of the cliff to its base, the smash into stone sending up misty rainbows in the bright, clear air, the roar until now blocked by the massive wall of rock. It was, indeed, a surprise. “Wow,” he said.

“Yeah,” she agreed. “When my brother and I were kids, my parents used to bring us here for picnics. It’s my favourite place in the whole world.”

Keegan could see why. If those people who’d voted online had seen this, he thought, the Bay of Fundy would’ve been a lock-in for one of those natural wonders.

“You can put that here,” said Willa, pointing toward a large flat rock out of range of the waterfall’s mist, and he slid the knapsack from his shoulders and set it down. “I know it’s still early, but I always work up an appetite after that walk.” She unzipped the knapsack and began taking out container after container filled with what looked like cheese, cold chicken, sandwiches, and at least three kinds of salad, followed by large bottles of water and juice. No wonder the thing had felt so heavy.

“Is there an army showing up later?” he joked.

“It’s that walk. Trust me.”

And that was something else she was right about. Keegan inhaled four pieces of chicken along with two handfuls of cheese
and an entire salad, and he was finishing off a roast beef sandwich when he saw her grinning at him. “Okay, definitely worth the trouble schlepping all this here,” he admitted. He wiped his mouth on a napkin, took a final swallow of water from one of the bottles, and lay back beside her on the blanket that had also been in the knapsack. The smooth round stones beneath it shifted slightly to accommodate the contours of his body, making the whole lying-on-rocks thing far more comfortable than he would’ve thought.

Gazing up into a cobalt sky dotted here and there with feathery clouds, he sighed. “Life doesn’t get any better than this, does it?” He turned and saw her smiling at him. “What?”

“I was just thinking that very thing.”

He noticed something he hadn’t seen before. “What’s that doing there?” he asked, pointing at a rope dangling from a cliff just beyond the waterfall.

“My dad says the locals put it there in case of an emergency.” She propped herself up on her elbows, nodding toward the bay. “See where the water is now?”

He propped himself up, too. “Yeah, it’s closer than before.”

“This beach is flatter than most of the shoreline around here, so it doesn’t take long for the tide to cover it. The part we walked on first is a lot narrower, and so is the part where the right-of-way is,” she said, pointing farther up the beach. “If they weren’t paying attention, people sometimes got caught here at high tide. Somebody tied a rope to a tree at the top of that cliff so you could climb out if that happened.”

“Why not just swim over to where the path is?”

“Not a great idea.”

“Why not?”

“For one thing, the water is freezing, even in the summer.”

“Are all Nova Scotians pussies?” he teased.

She frowned. “Remember what I said about the hundred billion tonnes of water flowing in and out of this bay? It doesn’t stay long enough to warm up. Other parts of Nova Scotia have tons of beaches that are great for swimming, but I dare you to stick your feet in here.” Which explained why she’d told him to leave his trunks and towel in the car.

“I think,” he said, “if I had a choice between getting cold and getting dead, I’d swim for it.”

“The cold isn’t the only problem. When the bay’s rough, even strong swimmers don’t last long in it. Besides the undertow, high waves can toss you against the cliffs. Even Olympic athletes can’t swim if they’re unconscious.”

Looking at the glass-like smoothness of the water now, Keegan found it difficult to imagine the scene she was describing. He glanced again at the rope. “How long do you figure that’s been there? Rope rots after a while, right? Can’t be very safe.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she said. “We won’t be staying long.”

That, however, turned out to be the one thing she was wrong about.

Willa held up the dandelion-chain in the bright sunlight, her fingers stained and sticky from the stems. As uncomfortable as the stickiness was, though, she didn’t care. Her chain was longer than her brother’s. Aiden’s older hands were bigger, his fingers thicker and blunter than her tiny ones, and he had trouble making the twists and loops without breaking the fragile stems. Aiden could beat her at everything else, but she was still the champion dandelion-chain maker. Daddy said so, which made Aiden really mad. So mad that he grabbed the hose and turned it on her, the cold water—

—splashing over her feet, like liquid snow icing her bare skin.

Willa’s eyes snapped open, her lungs ballooning from the shock. Turning, she saw that Keegan had fallen asleep, too. “Wake up!” she cried, prodding him as she scrambled to her feet. “We have to get out of here!”

“Wha—” he muttered. He’d drawn up his knees in his sleep, so the surge of water that had woken her hadn’t reached him. But the next swell did, and suddenly he was gasping from winter in the form of a wave. “
Jesus
!” he cried, bolting upright. He picked up the blanket and turned to the containers on the rock, jamming them into the knapsack.

“Forget them!” Willa insisted. “No time.” Looking down the beach in the direction of the path, she could see that water had already covered most of the blue-grey dunes. Only a thin strip at the base of the cliff remained bare.

“Do we climb?” asked Keegan, pointing toward the rope.

She shook her head. “We can make it if we run.”

They didn’t run as much as clamber and fall and then clamber some more, and they were only halfway to the path when the rest of the stones ahead disappeared beneath a slow wave. “Keep going!” she shouted, looking back, and it was only then that she saw he’d hung on to the knapsack after all, the end of the blanket flopping from its unzipped opening.

The last leg of their clamber and fall was the worst, as icy water clutched at them. They kept going, though, splashing and staggering through it, and the whole time Willa was grateful for the bay’s unusual calm.

She was laughing when they reached the path, but she wasn’t sure why. Exhaustion? Her jeans were soaked nearly to her thighs, her sneakers felt like lead weights on her freezing feet, and her whole body jangled from the punishment of the shifting stones. She was wheezing and coughing and groaning, but she was laughing, too. She had never felt so exhilarated. She turned to Keegan, who was staring at her with wide eyes.

“Could’ve been worse,” she offered between choking gasps. “We could’ve been running from a toothless banjo-player.”

Then he was laughing, too.

“I’d better throw another log on the fire,” she said, but she was reluctant to leave the nest they’d created for themselves in the living room, blankets wrapped around them as they huddled together on the loveseat. From the laundry room beyond the kitchen came the thunking sounds of their sneakers tumbling inside the dryer. Because they knew their footwear would dry faster alone, they’d hung their jeans from a makeshift rack beside the fireplace, and the smell of damp denim was heavy in the air.

“I’ll do it,” said Keegan.

Which was, in fact, exactly what she had been counting on. She liked watching his body move. She liked seeing his boxers slide up his thighs as he stooped for another birch log, liked how the muscles of his long legs bunched as he crouched down, liked the way his shoulders thickened beneath his T-shirt as he prodded the wood with the iron poker. Liked it a lot.

She justified her reluctance to tend the fire with the simple fact that she was wearing only a thong beneath her jeans. This was, however, something she could have easily remedied. She had other stuff in her bedroom upstairs, but those were her Delusion Road clothes, comfort wear. She’d rather have Keegan see her in her laciest thong than in any of the baggy sweats she usually slopped around in while she was here. Besides, pretending to be self-conscious about her underwear gave her the opportunity to check out his ass.

Watching him rebuild the fire, she marvelled at how connected the two of them were, how they liked the same music, found humour in the same things, even read the same personal ads. More important, though, she thought about how easy it felt to be with him, how safe he made her feel. How
good
he made
her feel. From the moment she’d left him yesterday in the school parking lot, she hadn’t stopped thinking about him.
Couldn’t
stop thinking about him. And now she couldn’t stop looking at him. There was only one thing that bothered her—

“Anything wrong?” he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder.

“No, why?” she lied, marvelling once more at how closely attuned they seemed to be.

“You’re so quiet.” He gave the fire a final prod, sparks flaring and cascading into themselves as the birch caught. Then he stood and hung the poker from its hook before returning to their nest, drawing the blanket up around their shoulders again. Despite the warmth of the day outside, the interior of the cottage was cool and those waves had chilled them to the bone.

“I’m savouring the moment,” she explained in response to his comment.

“Which moment would that be?” he asked. “The memory of having cheated death?” He leaned toward her, waggling his eyebrows suggestively. “Or were you just checking out my ass?”

She laughed softly, amazed all over again at how well he seemed to know her. “Do I have to choose one?” she asked.

“I’m willing to offer a both-of-the-above option.”

“Then that’s my answer,” she said, and he grinned.

His face centimetres from hers, she saw how incredibly long his eyelashes were, how his cheeks dimpled as he smiled, how the silver flecks in his grey eyes seemed to blaze as they mirrored the firelight. But then the grin vanished, replaced by something altogether different, his expression now brooding, his eyes filled with what seemed like melancholy.

What was wrong with her? Although her mind balked at
the thought of Wynn right now, she couldn’t help remembering she’d had the same effect on him. In the middle of every intimate moment, he’d suddenly pulled away, leaving her confused and deflated, questioning what she’d done—or hadn’t done—to ruin it again. She knew now, of course, that there was so much more going on with Wynn than she ever could have guessed, most of it having nothing to do with her, but hadn’t the same thing just happened with Keegan? What was
wrong
with her?

She turned toward the fire, despair like its own sudden tide washing over her, and the flames began to blur before her eyes. She swallowed hard and got to her feet, tugging the blanket around her. “Guess we’d better head back.” To hell with her jeans—she’d throw on her sweats after all. She turned toward the stairs, then felt a hand on her arm.

“Willa.”

She knew he’d gotten up, too, but she couldn’t look at him. “My dad probably has something around here that you can wear till we get back to Brookdale.” She took a step toward the staircase, but he held on to her.

“Willa,” he said again.

She turned, and there was more than melancholy in his expression now. Those silver-flecked eyes seemed filled with misery. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’m not …” He glanced away as if unsure how to finish what he’d begun.

“You’re not what?”

For a long moment, the only sound in the room was the crackling of that birch log in the fireplace. Then he turned to her again. “I’m not who you think I am.” His fingers on her arm relaxed and they were standing apart once more.

She swallowed hard again and nodded. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Get what?”

Was he really going to make her say it? She took a breath, released it. “That you’re not into me. Seems no one is.”

He reached for her again, this time drawing her body against his, enfolding her in his arms the way he’d done the day before. “I’m not Wynn,” he murmured into her hair, his hands warm against her back, gently caressing her, soothing her.

But it wasn’t enough. She leaned away, looking up at his face. “Who
are
you then?” And there it was. The thing that had troubled her before. “These past couple days I’ve told you more than I’ve ever shared with anybody, and you’ve been a really good listener. So good that it’s taken me until now to realize I know almost nothing about
you.
” She shook her head sadly. “You were wrong when you said you’re not who I think you are. I don’t know
what
to think. And just so you know, I’ve had my fill of guys pretending to be someone they aren’t.”

“What if they don’t have a choice?” He’d spoken so softly that she’d had to strain to hear the words.

“Too bad,” she replied, the sudden strength of her voice surprising her. She could see it surprised him, too. “I’ve got zero time for that bullshit.”

He nodded, and she somehow felt in those seconds as he stood staring into her eyes that he was making a decision, making a choice of some sort. He reached up, placed his hands gently on either side of her face, and pressed his lips to hers.

Their jeans were bone-dry when they finally got around to putting them on.

“I
was getting worried,” said Evan, shutting off the TV and getting up from the sofa.