Stay.

Part Two

“Ready?” Jason asks standing at my front door.

“Do I have a choice?” I reply while locking the door behind me. My skin crawls when his fingers intertwine with mine. My hand jerks away quickly.

“What?”

“No.” I bury my hands in my jacket pockets and keep a small distance between us. We cross the street and he helps me into his truck. “Where are we going?” I ask after the silence stretches to an extreme.

“You’ll see,” he replies.

“I don’t like surprises.”

“But… you’ll like this.”

“How do you know? I’m being forced to go on this date in the first place.” When he grips the steering wheel so tight his knuckles turn white I sink into the seat. Why am I all the sudden so scared of him? Last night I wasn’t scared of him. I held a conversation with him. Given I didn’t like him then either, I wasn’t scared. The small bruise peeking out and revealing itself answers my question. I jerk my sleeve down quickly.

The truck comes to a stop a few minutes later. Woods surround us and suddenly I’m scared all over again. I object when he reaches for my hand to help me out of the truck. Instead, I jump down, twisting my ankle in the process. I stumble away, trying to walk it off.

“You hurt your ankle, didn’t you?” he asks.

“No.”

“You should’ve let me help you.”

“I don’t need your help.” I walk through the pain and reluctantly follow him through the trail in the woods. I glance back at the gas station across the street, since I’ll probably never see it again. “Why are we in the woods?”

“So I can murder you in peace,” he says angrily.

I stop and stare after him.

When he doesn’t hear my footsteps he turns around and stares at me. “I’m kidding Riley. Have the rumors really prevailed to murder?”

“What?”

“The rumors about me; have they gotten to the point that I kill people?”

“I don’t know. I don’t listen to many rumors.”

“That’s a lie.” He wraps his hands around my elbow and pulls me further into the woods. We walk in silence and he no longer has a hold of me, so I walk a few feet away from him. When I step over a branch, his arm slides around my waist instantly. “Riley, don’t,” he yells.

I stare down at the cliff that leads to rocks. Well, I guess that could have been bad. “Thanks,” I say after he pulls me away from the edge.

“Watch where you’re going,” he says.

“Just say you’re welcome and move on,” I angrily demand. My confidence melts away when he towers over me. Strangely, I don’t feel threatened though. His height is perfect, the way my head meets his shoulders, so he can easily protect me. That is, if he ever protected anything besides himself. My eyes travel down his chest to his torso. The outline of his muscles slightly shows through his white t-shirt.

“This way,” he mumbles. His footsteps are loud on the leaves, but other than that he stays silent. He leads me down the rocks to the water that I hadn’t noticed while trying not to die.

I freeze when we reach the bottom. This is the surprise. A beautiful waterfall sits across the water. My feet are a few inches away from the water that is oddly really clear. The waterfall is kind of small, but it’s breathtaking, that’s for sure. The sunset sits over the waterfall making the orange melt into the green surrounding it.