"I don't like surprises." I laughed nervously as the big truck thundered beneath me.

"Oh, I figured as much, Kit." He said quickly. "You didn't seem like the type who does, which is exactly what makes this more fun."

I narrowed my eyes at the side of his freshly shaven face. "What is that supposed to mean?"

He laughed easily, smacking me on the knee. "Don't be so easy to bother." He told me. "You let people see that teasing you gets a rise out of you and everyone will do it."

"You sure are good at avoiding questions, aren't you?" I crossed my arms.

He laughed again, taking an exit ahead. "I am, and you are stubborn as an old mule, but somehow only with me."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, when you're around your friends you kind of get quiet. I'm not sure if you're different with them, or different with me, but either way, you only have that flare of backbone with me." He shrugged.

I didn't have to wonder if it was my friends or him that made me act differently. That answer was pretty easy to figure out. What I didn't know was which of those two versions of myself the true one was. Instead of thinking too much on it, I set my jaw and narrowed my eyes even more at him. "So first I'm a party pooper who doesn't like surprises or fun, and now you call me a pushover?" I huffed. "Why do you want to be friends with me again?"

He cut his eyes over to me and winked. "I told you you were too easy to rile up."

"Shut up." I smirked, he'd tricked me right into that one.

We fell quiet for a while and I rolled my window down, leaning my head into the breeze and letting it swat my ponytail around. I used to love doing this as a kid, laying my head in the window and watching the world fly by. I can't remember the last time I'd done it. The crisp morning air made my skin feel alive and the aches in my bones from a rough night melted away as the slow country song played out on the radio.

I didn't even notice that I'd started to sing a long until Hunter started to sing too. He wasn't great, but his voice wasn't bad either, especially not in unison with the deep soulful voice that crooned along with us. When the song ended we both smiled at each other for a second before he turned his eyes back to the road in a hurry, some weird expression crossing his face only for a second.

"How do you like your new job?" He asked suddenly.

"You want to make small talk with me now?" I asked. "Boring old pushover me?"

"Now which of us is evading questions?"

"Answering a question with a question, nice move." I tipped my head. "Definitely should've been a psychology major." I added, then sighed, leaning my head back down. "I like work a lot actually. It's easy, but it feels good, being around all those books and getting to smell the freshly brewed coffee all day. I like feeling like I'm actually doing something for myself for once."

"You're lucky that you had parents who were willing to support you." He said thoughtfully. "Not everyone does."

I nodded sadly. "I know." I muttered, thinking about how that was one of the things that had led me to thinking about being a teacher. I had great support systems and influences in my life, but so many grow up feeling so alone. I want to be able to be there for those kids, always letting them know that I'm there for them whatever they might need. "You've never told me about your parents before." I turned toward him again.

"Not much to tell." He said, a shift to his usually calm and collected expression. He looked...lost. Kind of like a little boy again, even though looking at the rest of him he clearly wasn't.

I nodded, not sure what to make of that. "You mentioned that you had a brother." I broached the subject carefully, knowing how much it hurts when people bring up that kind of loss out of the blue without you being prepared for the onslaught of hidden grief that will always accompany their names. "Do you have any other siblings?"

"No." He shook his head once, settling into a deliberate stillness.

"I'm sorry." I mumbled. "I shouldn't have brought it up, I understand how you feel. I don't have any others either."

His stone-like stance chipped away a little and he let his shoulders come forward slightly, breaking that ever perfect military posture. "It's ok." He told me, turning to me without fully meeting my eyes. "It was just me and Rhett. He died about five years ago. He was just barely older than me, my parents had us back to back. I was an oops." He explained. "For most of our lives it was like we were twins, but we were really different as we got older. My folks always kind of hated that about us." He paused, deep in thought. "About me, actually."

My heart tinged at the hurt in his voice, but I fought my urge to reach out to hold his hand that was between us on the gear shift. "My brother and I were pretty different too, but then at the same time we were really close. Especially after he got sick. We were inseparable for the whole last year."

His lip jutted out slightly, his voice barely above a whisper. "You knew it was coming?"

"Yeah." I sighed, little images of being at the doctor's office in the waiting room reading a magazine when my parents came out of the meeting with the doctor, both of them had obviously been crying, and one look to Clint's ghostly pale face and I knew. Right then I knew my life would never be the same again. I shook my head to clear the memory, then turned to look at Hunter. "Don't tell yourself it would have made it any easier." I whispered. "I spent months saying goodbye to him, and I still feel the pain. I think no matter how the loss comes, it takes the same things from us no matter what."

Hunter kept his eyes trained forward, but he brought his hand over to my leg, squeezing my knee. Not in a playful way, but like it was the only way he could be there for me in my pain at the moment, but he wanted me to know that he was there. Then he straightened up, lifting his hand to the radio. "Oh, I love this song." He said excitedly, quickly moving that mask of confidence and strength back in place as he turned up the dial and hummed along with the song that it was obvious he didn't actually know.

I knew that move better than most, having deployed that trick of using the radio as a way to silence the words you don't want to hear, and clear the pictures from your mind you're not willing to see anymore. I knew how it felt when someone strikes a chord with you, so I let the conversation drop, unsure how it had gotten to such a deep place so fast in the first place.

After a few songs had passed and we were cruising down an old road, cracks with grass growing up through them all in front of us, Hunter pulled the truck over onto the wide shoulder and parked us in the dirt. "What are we doing?" I asked, totally confused.

Hunter winked, hopping out of the truck and grabbing two backpacks from the bed of the truck. One was an army print bag that he slung over his own shoulder, the other was just a plain black and he threw it over the truck to me when I got out. I nearly dropped it, but I got a handle on it before it hit the ground. I pulled it open to see what the heck was weighing it down so.

Inside were two big water bottles, one Redbull, a jumbo bag of beef jerky, and at least a dozen mini KitKats. I tossed my head back laughing. "What on earth?" I shook my head, pulling out a candy bar and unwrapping it before I slung the bag over my shoulder and walked to meet Hunter at the front of the truck.

"Hope you can keep up, Kit." He laughed as he reached over and yanked off one of the chocolate pieces and tossed it in his mouth before taking off into the thick woods.

I followed him as fast as I could, pushing around overgrown foliage and dodging spider webs. "Are we hiking?" I asked, my voice ringing in the open air.

"Are we outside?" He chuckled from ahead of me.

"Uh, yeah."

"Are we walking through the woods?"

"Yes." I clipped.

"Then I'd say, yeah, I think we're hiking, Kit." He spun around to muss my hair, annoying me because then I had to stop to pull my hair back up into a neat ponytail. He wasn't kidding about not letting me slow him down either. I had to sprint to catch back up.

I watched him in amazement, trying to be sure to follow his footing exactly so I wouldn't get caught with my foot in a hole or get bit by a snake or some other embarrassing thing I could manage out here. He zigzagged through the trees, the denseness of them getting thinner and thinner as we went. "Do you actually know where you're going?" I called, slightly out of breath while he didn't even look to have broken a sweat. We weren't following any sort of path, yet he'd make deliberate turns at certain spots like this tree with the hole in the side or the big mossy rock.

"I wouldn't just lead you out into the middle of the woods to kill you, Kit." He laughed. "If I was going to do that, I wouldn't have wasted money on getting you your own snacks."

I skipped ahead to walk beside him instead of behind him as the area opened up even more. "I wasn't even thinking of that, but thanks for putting that idea into my head." I nudged him in the side. "I was more concerned with getting lost and having to spend the rest of my life in the wilderness with you."

He looked down on me and feigned insult. "Oh come on, that wouldn't be so bad, would it?" He joked looking down at me.

"It would be with so few KitKats." I giggled then I skipped in front of him to look over the edge of the hill we were up on. I gasped as I looked down into the clearing below us. "Wow." I whispered, my eyes wide.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" Hunter asked as he caught up, putting his hands on his hips to admire it himself. "We used to throw parties down here when I was in high school. Pretty sure most people still do, so I wasn't sure if you would have ever been here before or not." He shrugged.

"I wouldn't have been invited to any of those parties." I mumbled, hardly listening to myself.

"That's too bad."

Down the hill from us was a clearing the size of a football field, flat stone rocks encircling a big pond in the center with a glistening waterfall pouring lazily over the rocks opposite from us. The tall trees around us gave it some shade, the bright sun casting green tinted rays down through the leaves to spilt across the clearing in some places while the direct sunlight made the water's surface shine like rippling diamonds in other spots.

I looked around again, then back to Hunter. "This is...so pretty, but how do we get down there?" I asked, looking back down at the edge of the hill we were standing on top of. The rocks to the right and left of us that led down looked a little dangerous, but the sandy grass below us looked too steep to try to walk down.

He smiled wickedly, the sun on his glinting smile almost blinding me. "Well, you could go down the rocks and risk getting cut up, or...." He laughed, pulling his back pack off and pulling out a shiny silver cookie tray of all things. "Getting down there is half the fun."

I widened my eyes at the tray. "You're insane." I choked out.

"Could be true, but I'm about to show you what fun is." Then he inched forward to the edge of the drop off, sat down on the cookie sheet and pushed himself forward. He cheered laughing as he slid down the hill, holding onto the side of the tray like a sled. When he hit the bottom he jumped up and threw the tray back up the hill. I missed it the first time, watching as it slid back down. "Come on, Kit." Hunter called. "I'll be right here to catch you." He promised before he sent the tray flying back up towards me.

I had to jump down on my knees to grab it before it started to slide back down. I swallowed hard, as I inched to the edge like I'd seen him do and I positioned myself on the center of the tray.

"Is now a bad time to mention that I've never been sledding before?" I asked nervously.

"Come on, chicken!"

I closed my eyes, counted to three, then started over and counted to ten before I finally nudged forward, feeling the earth come out from under me for a second before the tray leveled out and I slid speedily down the hill, my stomach in my throat, but giggling the whole time.

As promised, Hunter caught the tray right at the bottom, bringing me to a stop. He was bent over, his hands holding the tray right next to mine and his big smiling face was right in front of mine, his indigo blue eyes dancing. "Gotcha." He smiled, then we both stalled stuck in this strange moment of closeness where if we weren't just friends, we definitely would have kissed.

I dropped my eyes from his first and he backed up, standing straight as I got myself up too.

"Here's another question," I laughed, looking around. "How the heck do we get back out?"