“You can’t come,” he said in a low voice after I shut the front door softly behind us.
“Excuse me, free country,” I reminded him as I laced up my hiking boots.
“No, this could be dangerous.”
“Rule number one in hiking: Always go with a buddy.”
He continued to shake his head.
Unstoppable now that I had committed to this, I continued, “Or no, because you want privacy? If it’s that, I’ll walk with you up to the point where you want to”—I paused, uncertain how to phrase it—“be with your mom.” Then more firmly, I said, “I’m going with you.”
He finally relented with a grudging “Fine.”
We set off across the bridge that connected the hotel with the rest of the pueblo, skirting the barrier that blocked the road to the heritage site I thought I’d never see again. It was a good twenty-minute walk along a dirt road next to the river before we got to the trailhead. Time had done nothing to tame the seething river, and I was glad we’d be leaving it behind before long for the steep uphill climb. I stopped in front of the footbridge we had crossed three days earlier, still under assault. My pulse raced. If either of us slipped and fell into that deadly whirlpool, there was even less of a chance of survival. We only had each other.
Not far from the bridge, Mother Nature had provided her own barricade in the form of a fallen tree. This was as close to real photojournalism as I had ever come—encountering obstacles, flinging myself into the unknown. I was going to say as much to Quattro, but he was lost in his own thoughts. We barely exchanged any words on our rapid walk other than instructions: Watch out for that rock, careful over that slime. He needed solitude; I understood that. It wasn’t every day that you laid your mother’s ashes to rest.
For the next few minutes, I had to concentrate on my footing. We’d decided earlier that the trail through the jungle was the fastest way up to Machu Picchu, but littered as it was with wind-torn branches, our progress was slow. Quattro sighed, frustrated.
“We’ll get there,” I assured him.
His only answer was to push a low-hanging branch out of my way. I wished I had my old camera to zoom in on Quattro, staring at the trail ahead of us, ready to tackle any challenge handed to him: tough and resourceful, protective and well meaning. And irritating. Very irritating. He glanced at me after I clicked the shutter of his point-and-shoot. Even before I lowered the camera, I knew that I had captured something special.
“You want to turn back?” Quattro asked me, his first real words in half an hour, as he leaned his hand against a mossy tree trunk.
“Do you?” I asked.
He vaulted over another log that lay across the trail.
“Show-off,” I said as I hoisted myself up on the fallen tree and swung both legs over. Not graceful, but it would do the trick.
“What does that make you?” he asked.
A hundred responses formulated in my head, few of them G-rated. While I might not have said a word, I couldn’t quite conceal the curve of my smile: challenging with just a hint of suggestiveness. I couldn’t help it, really. As Quattro held my gaze, he shook his head at me with an expression I was still deciphering when he said in a low voice, “I give up.”
He gave up? On me? On this mission? I frowned, confused.
“You’re impossible to forget,” he said. His tone was almost accusatory, but he stepped closer to me.
Ohhhhh. I breathed out. My lips softened into a smile. “That makes two of us.”
Before my toes could even graze the trail, he caught me in his arms, held me so tight our bodies were imprinted on each other, and kissed me as if every bit of pent-up passion was unleashed in that moment. He pressed me back against the tree, his hands protecting me from the rough bark, and deepened the kiss. And then just as suddenly, he lifted his lips, both of us breathing hard, as we stared at each other.
“What happened to starting college without any ties?” I asked. I had to know.
“Ancient history.”
“Prehistoric?”
“Mesozoic.”
I smiled, pleased. He grinned, even more pleased.
The rushing in my head when he kissed me a second time, then a third, had little to do with altitude. Not that I would ever tell him. Boys, bravado, egos, and all that.
Our ascent to Machu Picchu was going to end up being much slower than the descent a few days before, and not just because we were plowing straight uphill. We kept stopping every couple of feet to kiss each other: the hollow at my throat, the side of his neck, our lips. Our lips. Our lips.
When we reached the first intersection between the trail and the road, we found the asphalt was even more treacherous, covered with mossy slime.
“You okay?” Quattro asked, reaching over for my hand to lead us across the road.
“Never better,” I said softly. Even so, I gripped his hand tighter for the sheer pleasure of it.
“You know, most people wouldn’t do this.”
“I’m not most people.”