Rafe didn’t try to talk as we ran, thank God. And I was grateful when he steered us toward the old Harkness graveyard, because we wouldn’t have to dodge pedestrians there.
“Never came through here before,” I panted when we ran through the gate.
“It’s cool,” he said. “On the way home I’ll show you my favorite grave.”
“Bet you say that to all the girls,” I puffed.
He chuckled, but he didn’t slow down, damn him. At the other end of the cemetery, he ran us up Science Hill, where the pedestrian traffic was also minimal. But my pace had slowed to a crawl, so he took a hint and stopped at a drinking fountain in the tiny park at the top.
“Dying here,” I groaned, bending over to lean on my knees. “Why do people do this?”
He took a drink before answering. “Just to prove they can.”
“But I don’t care if I can.”
“You’d care if you couldn’t,” he pointed out.
“That’s deep,” I scoffed.
While I took my turn at the fountain, I saw Rafe giving me the once-over. “We’ll turn back now,” he promised.
I must have looked as tired as I felt. “You go ahead. I’m walking back.”
“No way,” he said immediately. “You’re going to do this right.”
“God, why? I’m not an athlete.”
He shook his head. “An athlete isn’t a special kind of person. Anyone can be an athlete. You just do it, and then you can call yourself one.”
“Just do it, huh? Are you on Nike’s payroll?” My stream of bitchiness was on autopilot now.
“Move your ass, Bella.” He pointed back toward campus. “It’s downhill, for God’s sake. My grandma could run that.”
Was there anyone bossier in all of Harkness College? I doubted it. “You’re not my favorite person today.”
He stretched his quads. “Eh. It’s been awhile since I was your favorite person. What’s one more day in the doghouse?”
I gave him one more ornery look, then I took off down the hill.
He was startled, I think. I swear he had to hustle to catch up.
If it hadn’t been downhill, I wouldn’t have been able to make it.
When I’d told Rafe I didn’t run, I wasn’t kidding. By the time the gates of the graveyard loomed, my lungs were burning and I had a painful stitch in my side. My body was clearly stunned at this sudden demand for locomotion. What the fuck, it seemed to say as I pounded out the last hundred yards, drawing up short in the cemetery.
“We’re not back yet,” Rafe said, stopping alongside me. And that bastard wasn’t even breathing hard.
“You think?” I growled. “Where’s your favorite grave?”
He took off running, heading to the right. After twenty paces or so I saw him turn.
Crap.
With my chest burning on each inhale, I chased after him.
He didn’t go far. Half way down the row of headstones, Rafe stood just off the path, waiting for me. I’d assumed he would bring me to one of the gaudy mausoleums I had glimpsed many times from the street. But he waited in front of a simple slate stone that was rounded at the top. “This is your favorite?” I gasped, sounding like an emphysemic octogenarian.
“Yeah, because it tells a story.”
I knelt in front of the stone, both to see it better and also as a cheap way of resting. “Here lies Daniel Webber, age 14, killed by a log he made.” Yikes. “That’s your favorite? Why?”
Rafe shrugged. “I’m not sure why they bothered to put that on here. Most of the other stones just give the dates and maybe the spouse’s name.”
I shivered. “He cut down a tree, and it fell on him. It was a revenge killing.”
Rafe’s lips twitched. “That must have happened all the time back then. Or other shit like it.”
“Are you trying to say that I don’t have it so bad?”
“Nah. I just like old things. And this is one of them.” He turned to walk down the row, and I followed, grateful he wasn’t running anymore.
“How far did we go, anyway?”
He glanced over his shoulder, then down at his watch. “Probably… a mile and a half?”
“Really?” I ran a mile and a half?” That couldn’t be right.
He grinned, the way you smile at a kitten that’s done something stupid. “That’s nothing, Bella. You probably walk twice that far every day.”
“Still,” I said. He wouldn’t understand. I spent a lot of time looking after athletes who benched three hundred in the weight room and squatted six hundred. But it was never me who wore the tired, satisfied look of someone who’d just completed a workout.