Series: Fever Falls Series by Riley Hart
Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92704 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 464(@200wpm)___ 371(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Such a hot day.” I wiped my brow before grabbing the hem of my shirt and pulling it off. I slipped it through my side belt loop as Sawyer glanced over his shoulder.
“It’s not that hot.” He eyed me curiously, giving me the once-over.
“Is it getting hotter now?” I asked, arching a brow.
He laughed, turning back around, and—
“Look out!” I shouted, but it was too late. Sawyer’s head hit a low-hanging branch, and he pulled back, dropping the picnic basket, which rolled onto its side and dumped out the contents.
“Motherfucker,” he blurted, his hands covering his face.
“Holy shit, are you all right?” I approached him, inspecting the branch he’d hit. It wasn’t terribly thick, but I’d heard the sound when he’d slammed against it. “Let me see.”
Squinting, he pulled his hands away, and I could see a pink mark along his left brow. Fortunately, his glasses had gotten through the incident unscathed.
“I’m good,” he said. “It just surprised me. Does it look bad?”
“It didn’t break the skin, but it’s pretty pink. Might bruise. We can put some ice on it, if you want. Or do we need to go back?”
“No, no. I want to do this still. It’s a little thing. I’ve fallen off a bed and carried your weight too. I can handle a branch.”
Judging by his appearance, he was right, but I added, “Okay, but if that thing blows up like a hornet bite, we’re cutting our picnic short and taking you to the Urgent Care ASAP, got it?”
“Deal.”
We picked up the basket and contents together. I pulled out a cool pack of deli meat wrapped in plastic, which he put against his head as we continued trekking through the woods.
“So much for my smooth picnic date,” he remarked.
The way he said date made a rush of excitement pulse right from my core, bursting through my chest. I shouldn’t have been so excited—like a kid heading into Disney World—but I couldn’t help myself. Sawyer had this way of making me feel like I was floating, in and out of the bedroom.
It wasn’t much longer before we stepped out of the woods into a clearing. On the opposite side of the path we’d come from, water ran off a boulder, cascading into a pond that took up most of the space. Finches played in nearby trees as a squirrel ran around the grass and moss covering the ground around the pond. I had a funny feeling I recognized this from somewhere…
“Wait—this is that place where Jace and Dax got caught skinny-dipping, isn’t it?”
“One and the same. It’s off the beaten trail, so a little more private than the main falls.”
As he found a spot to set the basket on the ground, I said, “Okay, lemme see your injury.”
He rolled his eyes but let me take a look. It looked better already, which made me feel a little less guilty for having distracted him on our walk. Although, I suspected he’d have a bit of a bruise from the impact.
We rolled out the blanket Sawyer had packed and emptied the picnic basket.
“It is getting kind of hot,” Sawyer said, removing his own shirt and wiping it across his forehead.
“Oh, really?”
He laughed as he tucked the shirt in the back of his pants.
“Here I thought I was going to have to wait until later to get you out of your clothes,” I added as I started opening the containers from the basket to make us sandwiches.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Sawyer asked, eyeing my work.
“I figured I’d just go ahead and start—”
“You thought you were going to make the sandwiches I planned for our picnic. Carter, no, no. The point of this was so that you could sit back and enjoy yourself.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “Sorry. Just used to—”
“Yeah, I know what you’re used to, but you’re not my personal assistant, so you can let me do things for you.”
“Well, you do plenty for me in the bedroom, where it counts,” I joked.
“I’d say it’s a pretty even trade between the sheets.”
While he worked on our sandwiches, discovering I wanted more mustard than he could ever conceive of putting on his own, I decided to remain useful and continued holding a pack of deli meat against his forehead.
“Glad that branch didn’t hit low enough to break your glasses. Or even worse, my nose. I paid too much for this.”
With a knife in his hand as he spread mayonnaise on my sandwich, he eyed me. “Are you fucking with me?”
“God no. Are you kidding? This thing has been slimmed down, the bulge at the top flattened. The sexy man you see before you is the product of Dr. Wesley Johnson’s fine efforts.”
“You’re making that up.”
“No, I hated my old nose. And my ears.”
“These aren’t your ears?”
“They’re my ears, but pinned back and tweaked slightly.”