“All right, you two. I can do the dishes. Get out of here.” Mrs. Montgomery came up from behind us and took the plate from my hand.

“No, really. We can do it,” I argued.

“You’ll make a mess of my floors and I’ll have to mop them. Get on out.” She reached for a towel and tried to smack Tatum with it.

“Let’s get out of here before she beats us to death.” Tatum squirmed to get away from her well-aimed swipes. He ran outside, Buster on his heels and me not far behind. “Wanna go for a walk?” he suggested, and I felt my face light up.

“I would love that.”

The heat wrapped itself around me with each step, making me wonder if people got used to it. I still wasn’t. Tatum reached for my hand and rubbed his thumb across my palm. Buster wagged his tail and followed behind before Tatum shooed him away and told him to stay put. The dog whined, but stopped walking and plopped down right in the dirt.

“So, where are we going?” I asked when I realized we weren’t headed the same direction as the swimming hole, and I hadn’t been to any other part of the property before.

“You’ll see when we get there.”

“That’s helpful.”

“You’ll like it,” he assured me, and I believed him. It made me realize that when Tatum said something, I knew it was true. For some reason I implicitly trusted him.

We walked through a wide-open field and directly into a line of trees. The sun disappeared as we stepped under the canopy of oversized branches and green leaves. Tiny rays of sunlight would stream through the space in the trees when they could, forming what looked like roads to the sky. Our steps echoed into the space around us as branches and old leaves crushed under the weight of our feet. My sandals slapped against my feet, and somewhere along the walk, I’d started counting the clip-clap sounds they made.

“Are we almost there?” I asked, breaking the vocal silence.

“Almost.” Tatum smiled, and I noticed that his usual stress lines looked less pronounced. He looked happy.

Was it because of me?

Pulling me through the trees, it seemed that he knew exactly where to head. All the trees looked the same to me, and heaven help me because if Tatum ditched me in here, I’d never find my way out. I’d be lost in the land of sunless forest forever. And then I’d die there.

A few more steps and the trees thinned out, the forest opening up into a meadow with tall grasses. I spotted something out of the corner of my eye and knew this was where he was taking me. A swing hung motionless at the edge of the darkened woods and the brightly lit meadow. The tree that held it was large at its base, with sweeping branches that almost touched the ground in places. It looked like something straight out of a picture book, the way the light hit it on one side.

I smiled at Tatum. “Do I get to swing on it?”

He nodded. “Let me look at it first. I tightened the rope not too long ago, but I want to make sure it will hold.”

The swing’s wooden seat was strung up on each side with some weathered rope that I assumed was once white. I followed the rope upward until I saw where it met the tree branch and looped around. “Who made this?”

“My dad. He used to bring me with him when he would gather up fallen tree limbs for firewood. He made me that swing as a reward after I’d looked for as many pieces of wood that I could find.” Tatum’s expression looked wistful. “After I’d put all the wood in a pile, he’d push me on this swing for hours. It was probably only twenty minutes, but it felt like hours. I loved this swing.”

“I would have too. What a great memory.” I reached out for his shoulder and gently squeezed. He turned and pulled me against him, his arms strong and tight around my body. I could feel every movement his chest made as it moved in and out against me. The weight of his chin rested on top of my head, and I knew he was battling through some emotions, so I stayed quiet. We stayed like that for a few breaths before he let me go.

“He would’ve loved you. He woulda told me I was out of my league, but he woulda loved you,” he said, his lips forming a half smile.

I smacked his arm. “Stop it.”

“It’s true,” he said as he tugged on the ropes and inspected the wood. He hopped onto the seat and bounced a little before deeming it safe for me to ride. “All ready, milady.”

I curtsied. “Why, thank you, good knight.”

Tatum’s hands gripped my waist as he lifted me like I weighed nothing and placed me square on the wood plank. I shuffled and scooted my butt back a little farther, then shouted, “Ready!”

“Ready for what? Don’t you know how to swing?” he asked, standing in front of me.

I cocked my head to the side and extended my legs, trying to reach for his goodies. “I know how to swing, all right, and you’d better watch out. I’ve got one heck of a leg stretch,” I teased.

“Don’t you kick me, woman.” He moved behind me, completely out of view. Firm hands pressed against my back before they shoved at me. I squealed as the swing flew forward and I was soaring into the trees.

“Tatum, it’s so pretty! It looks like I’m flying through branches and with the trees!” I cried out in delight as he pushed me higher and higher, each forward movement sending me more and more into a state of bliss. My hair flew all around me, covering my face before blowing away again. I felt like I was soaring, and I wanted to thank the heavens for giving me the wings to fly.

Glancing back at him, I asked, “So, what did you want to do after school? I mean, did you want to play professional football for a living?”

“Not really. Playing football helped pay my tuition, and without that scholarship, my parents would have gone into serious debt to get me into school. Football was a means to an end, from my perspective.”

“But did you enjoy playing, at least?”

He laughed. “Oh, hell yeah! I loved it. I just didn’t want to do it forever.”

“Well, if you didn’t want to play football, then what did you want to do?” As the swing fell to where Tatum’s hands would normally reach for me, I braced for the contact, but it didn’t come. I turned to look at him and made the swing go crooked as it moved forward again, wobbling from side to side.

“I’ll tell you after you tell me more stuff about you,” he said.

“What do you want to know?” I offered, wondering what he would ask and if there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t honestly tell him.

He pulled the swing to a stop and leaned toward me like he was going to confess a secret before asking, “Why were you really driving across the country? Was it all because of Douchepants?” Reaching for my hand, he grabbed it, planted a kiss on the top, then pulled me back and sent me swinging again toward the trees.

“No,” I shouted immediately before pondering on where to start exactly. “I just needed to get away. I’d been telling my team that I wanted to go to college for a few years now, but they kept putting me off. It was always ‘Not now, Paige’ or ‘You can do that later,’ you know?”

Tatum nodded that he understood, and I continued. “But I finally realized that later was a day that was never gonna come. They were never gonna let me stop working to go to school. And then my little sister started applying to colleges and hearing back from them, and now she’s getting ready to move on with her life and move out.”

“And you were jealous?” he asked, his tone understanding and not judgmental.

“I was. I was totally jealous. Stupid, right?” I slowed my kicks and waved Tatum’s hands off as the swing came to a slow stop.

“Not at all. Most of us are raised as products of our environment. A lot of the kids here are raised to take over their family farms, or run a shop, or something. But I’m sure where you grew up, everyone planned on going to school and then going to college. We all follow these paths that are set before us, whether we realize we’re doing it or not.”