Finding It

muscles locked up tight. His mouth moved to hover above my ear, and my arms shook so badly I expected them to give out any second.

He hummed again, and I could feel the vibration against my skin even though we weren’t touching.

His mouth brushed the shell of my ear in a second almost kiss, and he said, “Not yet, sweetheart.”

My arms gave out, and I flopped back onto his bed with a groan.

His smile was maddening and mischievous.

He gripped the bed frame, and pulled himself up off the bunk, leaving me lying alone on his bed.

What a tease.

“How do you feel about heights?” 

15

YOU’RE CRAZY,” I said.

“You wanted adventure, Kelsey.”

“I thought you meant more spontaneous subway rides and playgrounds, not jumping off a bridge!” I heard the scream of the girl I’d just watched disappear over the edge, and I dug my fingers into Hunt’s arm.

“I can’t.”

I’d been on bridges higher than the Zvikov Bridge before, but not ones I was supposed to leap off of. My heart was about to bust out of my chest, and Hunt was grinning like a madman.

I turned to flee, and Hunt pulled me back, his hand settling at the base of my spine. It was almost as if he knew that that’s where I felt him most intensely. When he was near, my spine became a live wire, sending shockwaves down to every last nerve ending.

His touch only amplified that.

“You’re going to love it.”

“Do you have a death wish?” I asked.

“I promise it’s going to be fine. We’re not going to die. We can jump together if that will make you feel better.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean the jumping was going to kill you. I meant I was.”

“You can kill me after the jump.”

“What if I’m too dead to kill you?” I was a little embarrassed at how hysterical I sounded.

He laced his fingers with mine, and squeezed my hand as he pulled me forward.

“Trust me.”

I did. But that only made me more scared. Trust was a key that gave him access to places far more breakable than my body.

It took all of my concentration to keep from crying or throwing up or both as the instructor began hooking us up to the same bungee cord. We were harnessed and strapped and lectured, and the only thing that kept me from having a complete mental breakdown was the fact that Hunt and I were chest to chest as they hooked us together. His proximity and his warm breath fanning across my forehead were enough to distract me from my impending death.

They had us move closer to the ledge, and I let out an involuntary squeak of fear when I saw the river winding away from us so far below.

Jackson slipped a hand around my neck and tilted my head up toward his. He placed a sweet kiss on my forehead that made my heart beat faster rather than calming me down. My heart scampered up and hid at the back of my neck, pulsing where Hunt’s hand still rested.

All I could think was … that better not count as my kiss.

He said, “Just try it for me. I’ll try something for you later. Whatever you want.”

I took a slow, deep breath and nodded.

Once we were all attached, the instructor began adjusting our hands and our bodies to match the appropriate form. My head was tucked into the crook of his shoulder, and his into mine. His skin smelled like the forest around us, but sweeter. We both had one arm wrapped around each other. We laced our fingers and pointed our other hands out toward where we would jump.

“It’s like we’re dancing,” Hunt said, his mumbled words drumming against the sensitive skin of my collarbone.

“Then why didn’t you just take me dancing? At least the tango wouldn’t kill me.”

His chest bounced with laughter below my cheek, and then they were counting down.

“Jackson …” I couldn’t get out anything but his name.

Then, like he could read my mind, Hunt quoted the Kerouac quote that had been at our hostel. “Mad to live, Kelsey. This is living.”

He pressed another kiss to my shoulder, and his lips were still there burning against my skin when we went over.

The world paused for one brief second, and my eyes took in the architecture of the land below us. Hunt’s arm squeezed around me, and then the peace ended. The wind slammed into me, the ground rushed forward, and my heart got left behind somewhere up above me.

Then I shrieked. A glass-breaking, eardrum-shattering kind of shriek that echoed off the canyon, reverberating back at me from all sides. The cord pulled tight, my insides seemed to resist and pull in the other direction. Despite the tug, we kept falling and falling, and the river rushed up at me, dark and unforgiving. I released Jackson’s hand to wrap a second arm around his body. I squeezed as tightly as I could, but it was only half as tight as I wanted. I opened my mouth to cry out, and then suddenly we jerked to a halt and were moving back up again.

I thought maybe the ascension wouldn’t be so bad, but then our bodies twisted and flipped, and I might have lost a few other vital organs to the same place my heart disappeared to.

We started dropping again, and Hunt shouted in excitement.

“Oh my God!” I screamed. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

This time I squeezed my arms around him not because I was scared, but because a feeling bubbled up inside me, potent and wild, and I just wanted to hold it all inside.

When we started up again my scream turned into a laughing cackle that would have made Ursula or Maleficent proud.

Hunt was right. It was fun.

I screamed some more just because I could, and because hearing the sound ricochet around the canyon felt like Hunt and I were the only two people in the world. It felt unreal—like I was two parts soul, one part body.

We bounced around a few more times, and I got the courage to let go of Hunt, to stretch my arms down toward the earth below us. I twisted away from him and looked around us and back up to where we’d jumped from.

“You dead?” Hunt asked.

“No.” Not by a long shot. In fact, I’d never felt so alive.

I smiled widely, and Hunt smiled back, and I knew my heart was back in place because it thumped so hard it was almost painful.

And then I didn’t have to ask if the time was right, and he didn’t have to tell me. Our lips pulled together like they’d been replaced by magnets. And all that energy that had sparked inside me began to unspool. I could feel it unwinding around my ribs, pulling from my fingertips, pushing into him.

His hands dove into my hair, and he kissed me like we were still falling, like this is how we were meant to spend our very last moments. His lips pressed hard against mine, and blood pounded in my ears in time with the thrust of his tongue.

I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling myself as close as possible. But still I wanted closer. I wanted to hook my legs around his waist and feel the skin beneath his clothes. The air pushed against us, soft and sweet, and completely at odds with the frenzy occurring underneath my skin.

Something tugged at our ankles, and we started to rise. I whimpered into his mouth, not ready for the