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“I’m not exactly crazy about the idea myself,” Adam retorted.
His reply stung… and then a less logical response bubbled up inside of her. A laugh slipped out of her, edged with hysteria.
She heard Adam shift across from her. The cot jolted as he sat down on the ground beside her and leaned back against the frame.
A head of unruly sun-stained hair rested by her right hand. It would be the simplest thing for Ellie to reach out and run her fingers through it.
The impulse was wildly inappropriate. Ellie resisted it. After all, she had no reason to think it would be welcome. Instead, she continued to stare up at the ceiling as the sounds of the camp filtered softly through to where they sat. The low conversation of the men by the campfires mingled with the snorting and shuffling of the mules in their pen.
“I swear I didn’t know,” Ellie quietly confessed. “Not until you told the story about the emu when we were on the boat.”
“I thought you were worried about the bird,” Adam replied.
“If I had just told you then, you would certainly have made us turn back,” she said. “All of this could have been avoided.”
“Maybe,” Adam agreed. “We would’ve missed out on a lot of fun, though.”
“Fun?” Ellie sat up and looked down at him. “Nearly going over a waterfall wasfun?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t enjoy it,” he retorted as he glanced up at her with a wicked glint in his eyes.
She flopped back down and shook her head at the ceiling. “You’re impossible.”
“I think the word you’re looking for isright,” he countered.
Ellie didn’t reply. For a moment, she let herself simplybe, soaking up the rumble of laughter, the soft rush of water from outside the tent, and the easy presence of Adam leaning beside her.
She took a breath as she steeled herself for what must come next.
“Please don’t take this the wrong way. You’re a very nice person—” she began.
“I’m awhat?” Adam sounded offended.
“…But surely there must be some way out of our situation that doesn’t involve legally binding ourselves together for life!” Ellie finished.
She felt his sigh through the frame of the cot.
“I am a suffragist!” she continued. “I have been arrested. I went to university, for goodness’s sake! It’s not as though I have any reputation worth speaking of.”
“This is different, and you know it,” he replied. “Look—I’m the last guy to lecture someone on sexual mores—”
“Are you?” Ellie asked, suddenly curious.
“But this isn’t about you,” he pressed on, deliberately avoiding her question. “It’s about everybody else. Your dad. Your stepmom. Your brother. I know how the world treats people who don’t follow the rules. It’s why I got out. They don’t just go after you. They punish everyone you care about like it’s contagious.”
He was right, and Ellie knew it. She hated that she knew it, but that didn’t make it any less true. Raising a spinster was one thing, but a whore…
Ellie perseverated over it in grim silence until Adam finally spoke again.
“Why didn’t you fix it?” he asked.
The words were unusually tentative.
“I mean the… things you hadn’t been completely honest about,” he added awkwardly. “Once you realized I wasn’t the kind of guy who’d just leave you in the wilderness over them.” He frowned and turned toward her, resting his arm on the cot. “You did realize I wasn’t the kind of guy who’d leave you in the wilderness, right?”
“Of course I did,” Ellie replied. She kept her gaze on the ceiling. It was easier than looking at him.
He turned away again. “Never mind. It’s none of my business.”
