“It’s a thunderstorm, Brougham! You know, the kind with lightning?”

“The storm’s ages away, don’t be a wuss.”

“What the fuck is a ‘wooss’?” I stood at the base of the tree, hugging myself against the rain and frost.

“Scaredy-cat.” He hauled himself onto a thick branch, jiggled into a comfortable sitting position, then leaned forward to see me through the leaves. “You coming or not?”

I let out an exasperated sigh and looked around. There was no one, nothing, not even a bird. Just us, and Ainsley’s car.

It’d be awkward if I didn’t, now, wouldn’t it?

I shot Brougham a look of pure disdain and started the painstaking process of hauling myself up a damn tree, on a damn mountain, during a goddamn lightning storm.

Branch by gradual branch, with the grace of someone so naturally athletically untalented I couldn’t successfully cross monkey bars, I dragged myself up. When I got close enough, Brougham stretched out a hand to help me climb the last few feet. Warily—and more than a little worried about the weight-bearing properties of this branch—I lowered myself to sit.

“You did it,” Brougham said. He was grinning at me, properly. Nothing fake or forced about it.

I couldn’t help but grin back. “I hate you. Why couldn’t you just watch from the car like a normal person?”

“Because now I can say I’ve done this.”

“We’re soaking!”

“We were already soaking.”

I opened my mouth, then caught myself. He wasn’t exactly wrong.

The wind howled with a special kind of fury up here, and the leaves rustled back and forth with it, small branches hitting against my head rhythmically. The air smelled washed clean. Rain and the now-familiar musk of Brougham’s cologne. In the far distance, the storm had grown close enough that we could make out the first rumblings of thunder. And the lightning show flickered on.

“Didn’t you ever do this as a kid?” Brougham asked, turning to look at me. His face was shiny and wet, raindrops splashing on his skin and pouring down his hair, over the bridge of his brow.

“Can’t say I did, you weirdo.”

Brougham turned back out to the storm and swung his legs out. “New memories, then.”

“I guess. I definitely won’t forget this. It’s a bit of a departure from my usual thunderstorm routine.”

“What’s that?”

“Phish Food, blankets, horror movies.”

A clap of thunder over the steady hum of the rain pelting the cliffs. That one was closer, but not so close I worried.

“Horror movies! Great choice,” Brougham said approvingly.

Well. That was interesting. With Brooke’s taste in movies—or lack thereof, really—I’d been long deprived of a movie buddy who wasn’t Ainsley. I cleared my throat. “Um, when did you say you needed to be home by, again?”