I saw her a moment too late – a split second sooner, and I'd have caught her, but I was distracted, and now she was covered in poison ivy from the knees down. Thankfully, she had pitched forward into a fern, rather than backwards into the rest of the ivy patch. I sighed. This trip was not going well. Why, oh why, had I let Emmett talk me into taking Bella, the most accident-prone danger magnet in the West Coast, and maybe the world, camping in the wilds of Montana. I scooped her up, slung her on my back, and made for the lake.
"That was poison ivy, wasn't it?" she asked, glancing at her legs, rather than the trees flashing by us as I ran.
"Yep. I'm sorry about that; I should have been watching," I apologized, knowing it wasn't enough, and that she would be suffering for a while from this latest mistake of mine.
"Right, Edward, because you are responsible for every dumb thing I do," she sighed, and I could practically hear her eyes rolling. A small smile tugged at the corners of my mouth, even though there was nothing remotely funny about this at all. Hopefully Alice had packed something helpful in the picnic basket along with Bella's lunch. I wished she had warned me about this, but I supposed it wasn't her fault that I was so inattentive.
Bella broke into my reverie with a small kiss on the back of my neck. My hesitant grin broadened, and my legs moved faster as the heat of her lips warmed my skin, sending tendrils of flame shooting down my spine.
"I love you," she whispered, and my heart soared. I let out a whoop – I never tired of hearing those three little words.
"Love you, too," I answered as we emerged from the green shade of the forest into the bright light of the late morning sun, reflected from the little lake spread out before us.