by Lissa Linden
“Yeah?”
“I hope you text. Or call. Or whatever. But I’m not feeling like a Leah these days.”
“Oh, sure.” Her bracelets clack together and I can almost see her in front of me. “New gig, new you. I get it. So, what should I call you?”
My shoulders relax to their natural level. “Call me Amy.”
*
The climb to Tawny Ridge isn’t the most difficult of hikes. It was one of my favorites even back when I preferred the slow pace of bushwhacking over the marked trails. Back when I blamed my shortness of breath on asthma I didn’t have. But it takes me hours today as I stop to examine every scratch in bark and pause to identify trees I could have named in passing from thirty feet away.
I push my legs up the last bit of trail. Pick my footholds in the roots and rocks worn smooth with all the campers before me. A clearing greets me at the summit. An outhouse is off to one side. A raised wooden platform is on the other. I fill my chest with the breeze coming off the pond and break into a grin.
There’s still no ridge in sight. And the only thing the least bit tawny is the earth beneath my feet. But the irony of the name was half the reason I was so excited to bring campers here as a counselor-in-training. Trying to piece together why this clearing with a pond was called anything to do with a ridge was a rite of passage for younger campers. They’d try to work it out. Staff and older campers would pretend it was completely obvious. It was an entire evening’s entertainment.
My boots tap out a rhythm on the sleeping platform. The whole space feels smaller than it was. Even though I haven’t gotten any taller. Even though my footsteps are quieter. I make my way to the far side of the platform. I stop at the second body width from the edge and drop my pack. Flat on my back, I slip my sunglasses on. Clouds roll across the blue sky. They float, all rounded edges and wisps. But to me, they’re a dock. A canoe. A campfire.
The wood is rough beneath my fingers when they trace the space next to me. The edge of the platform that Paul had insisted he take. The edge he’d rolled off after our first kiss had left us breathless and dazed. The edge that helped break our newfound tension with giggles that we silenced between kisses two and three.
The edge I’d pushed him over so he’d wake up and stop calling her name.
I close my eyes and replay the night. I wait for the slow-turning knife beneath my sternum. The deep, twisting pain that drove me from camp. But it doesn’t come. And for the first time, I let myself linger on the kisses. The way his hand was so gentle on my cheek. How his eyes fluttered open between each one, like he was checking that I was still there. The way his fingers gripped my hair and his breath caught when our tongues touched.
A swarm of butterflies emerges from its cocooned sleep. They take flight in my stomach. Rise to my chest. Tickle at my throat with wants I’ve swallowed and words I’ve left unsaid. Because here, in the space that drew us together and pushed us apart, it’s clear. His tentative touches weren’t gropes. He stopped at three kisses when I’d reached for more, threading his fingers through mine and kissing my knuckles like each one was a discovery.
And I’d pushed him over the edge without hesitation.
Just like he’s pushed me over mine, now. Woke the woman I’d separated from my body. Waited for all of me to want all of him. He took me whole, or wouldn’t take me at all.
I curl onto my side and pull my knees to my chest. It doesn’t kill the fluttering in my body, and each tremble of my thoughts rearranging rocks me. Every flicker of awareness rubs my scars raw from inside.
I swallow over the quaking in my throat. Over the four-letter word that terrifies me. That has ripped me apart before. But it just sinks deeper. Takes root in my softness. Grows stronger and more consuming until it comes to the surface. Quiet. Hoarse. Undeniable.
“I love him.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
I push through the front door. “Amy?”
Chuck greets me with a woof and his happy, full-body wag, but there’s no human response—which only makes me more determined to follow through with the plan I’d concocted while stuck in rush hour on the way back. I head for the bathroom and throw my deodorant into a plastic bag, followed by my toothbrush, shampoo, and whatever else my hands come across.
In the spare room, I hesitate when I see that the bed has been remade—that she’s been here—but I toss the bag into a nearly packed box and fold the flaps shut.
Chuck sits with his back to the wall, tracking my movements as I empty the drawers into my backpack, and stuff the clothes from my closet on top. “We’re moving a little earlier than planned, bud.”
I stack the boxes by the front door, shrug into my backpack, and head into the living room for my guitar. The house still looks like the place I inherited from Fred. It looks like my home, but it’s not, and I need Amy to be sure of that.
With a deep breath, I open the door. “Let’s go, Chuck.”
Chuck bounds beside me and we make it a few steps toward the rec hall before the hurried crunch of gravel beneath feet stops me.
“Paul!” Amy half runs, her pack bouncing behind her. “Where are you going? I mean, why are you here? I mean, no.” She comes to a stop close enough that I can see the flush in her cheeks and catch the shine left on her lip when she rolls it between her teeth. “Where are you going?”
Chuck shoves his nose into her hand and she scratches under his chin without looking away from me. It’s all so perfect. Her and me and Chuck and this wild place where instinct collides with practice—where risk and reward are the same thing, and there’s space to fuck up and try again. I tighten my grip on the guitar case. “We’re going to the rec hall. I’m giving you your house.”
Her hand stalls on Chuck’s chin. “What?”
“I need you to know that I don’t want to stay here just because I’m afraid of leaving. That I didn’t ask you to let me stay because I regret quitting. Because I don’t. I would do it a hundred times over if it got us to right here, right now.”
Amy feeds her hands under the straps of her daypack and looks up through her eyelashes. “Are you, though? Scared to leave?”
“No. Well, yeah, actually. But not because this job is that great. I mean, it is, but it’s not that good. Dammit. This isn’t coming out right.” I rest the butt end of the case on the ground and wrap my hands around the top. “You like blunt, right?” She nods, but her forehead creases. I lose myself in her eyes—the eyes that look at me, not past me. I take a deep breath. “I want to stay here, at camp, but I need you to know that I don’t want to stick around because I’ll miss the job. I mean, I will, but you’re the director now. This is your camp.”
“Right.” Her cheek sinks into her teeth.
“So, I’m going to give you the training manuals I was putting together. I’m going to hand over the whole house like I should have done the first day you got here. I’m going to separate myself from your job.”
“Great, but—”
My voice grows gravelly. “Bobcat told me this place would rule me like a woman, and it did. But camp doesn’t have control of my soul anymore, Amy. You do.”
Her mouth parts and her chest stops rising and falling, but she doesn’t look away.
“I’m not going to beg you to let me stay. And that’s going to be hard, because fuck, I want to stay. But I’m going to try, because I hope to hell I’ve made it clear that I want you, Amy. All of you, for as long as you’ll have me.”
Amy rubs her thumb along my jaw. “Are you done?”
I swallow hard. “Yeah.”
Her hand cups my cheek. “I’m not making any guarantees. I can’t. But today was exactly as I imagined this job would be.” She strokes my skin. “I was alone. Nobody was demanding anything of me. I could do whatever I wanted. Only I couldn’t. And you know why?”
I shake my head farther into her grasp.
“Because of all the things in this fucking world, I wanted you.” She pulls her hand away and smooths back the litt
le hairs that have come loose from her ponytail. “I tried to escape it. I got some things prepped for camp. Made some playlists for themed lunches. I even had a little detour to my old job, but you know where it led me?”
My heart hammers against my chest and I wet my lips. “Where?”
“Tawny Ridge. I had the whole camp to myself and I ended up there. So I’m all for not begging. But I will do it if you don’t get back in that house.” She sets her eyes on mine. “So take your shit back inside. Please.”
My fingers flex against my case. “Be clear with me. What aren’t you guaranteeing?”
“That you can stay. Longer.” She rolls her shoulders. “But I am thinking about it.”
*
Amy sets her pack on the floor when I kick the door closed, and it’s beautiful—her things in this living room, sharing space with mine. My cheeks twitch and settle into a grin when I swing my bag down next to hers.
She’s thinking about it. Not that she will think about it, or that she might. She’s already doing it.
Chuck herds us into the living room and I flop onto the couch, pulling her down with me, her cheek to my chest, our legs intertwined. Every nerve in my body hums with hope. I pull out her hair elastic and massage her scalp.
“God, that feels good,” she sighs.
My fingers work in slow circles. “Know what else feels good?”
She nuzzles her head up to see me, her eyes dark and lips wet. “What?”
“Not wearing a fucking tie.”
Amy laughs and pushes herself up so she’s between my legs, facing me. She draws a finger along the skin showing through my unbuttoned collar. “How was the interview?”
I weave my fingers through hers and graze my thumb back and forth over her skin. “Not good. Thanks for the car though. You’re right that it was a much better fit down there than the huge van I was going to take.”
“It was no big deal.”
I kiss her hand. “It was. You were thinking about me.”
Her fingers squeeze mine. “Definitely was. But I’m sorry. About the interview.”
My lips work their way across her knuckles. Her eyes watch the soft caress and her mouth parts. “I’m not,” I say.
I press languid kisses to the inside of her wrist. “But you need a job,” she says.
“Eventually.” I work my way up the thin skin of her forearm. “But I have some inheritance from my parents, and there’s really nothing to spend money on up here. I’m not worried about an income.”
“But what would you do? You’d never be happy sitting around the house all day.”
“I’d figure it out. Online tutoring, maybe. YouTube sensation. One of those shirtless guys on the cover of romance novels. We’d figure it out one day.” My lips linger on the thin skin at the crease of her elbow. I scrape my teeth across her flesh and she creeps forward until her chest grazes mine.
Her lips hover achingly close. “So your plan is to have no plan. To take it one day at a time.”
I brush my thumb over her cheek. “With you? While you think?”
“With everything,” she breathes. “With work. Life. Us.”
“God, that last one sounds good.” My tongue takes an exploratory lick of her lower lip and her eyelids drift closed. “Know what else sounds good?”
Her eyes flutter open. “What?”
I tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. “You.” I palm over her ass and press the seam between her legs.
Her gasp changes to a moan when I seal my lips to hers. Her mouth parts and my tongue dips inside, tasting. I run my hand back up her ass and grip her by the hips, forcing myself to hold back—to take it slow. To make sure her brain responds along with her body. “You sound so good, Amy.” A thumb slips under her shirt and I rain kisses across her jaw. “Do you know what it does to me when you sound like that?”
She tilts her head and my mouth takes the invitation, trailing down her hike-salted skin. “What does it do to you?” she asks.
I pull her onto my growing erection and she grins. Her hips draw back in my hands, and I hold her in place—keep her from rubbing our bodies and blurring our thoughts with want. “This is only half of it,” I say. “You turn my cock to a fucking rock just by breathing. But this is just what you can see.” I guide her hips in finishing their roll and her weight pins my dick tight against me like the squeeze of a desperate fist. I lick my lips and fight through the urge to do it again—to shift her back and forth over my length until she pants my name. “This is what you can feel. But it’s not all I’m feeling. For you. For what we could be together.”
Amy blinks, her jaw loose. But second by second, her lips turn upward. She pushes her hand through my hair and pins me to the couch. Her tongue drags to the spot behind my ear that drives me crazy, and I hold her hips tight to keep her from moving, but the extra pressure on my dick shoots need through every part of me.
“Amy?” I rasp. “Do you understand me?”
“Mmhmm.” Her lips brush against my ear.
And with that single sound, the featherlight contact, she releases the binds that have pressed against my chest since I ran out of that kitchen, hair dripping. She flicks my earlobe with her tongue and I nudge my mouth toward hers, seeking her taste and warmth—chasing the connection between our bodies and what we’ve said. She kisses her way across my cheek, but pulls back without warning.
Amy’s eyebrows press together. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you taste a bit like banana.”
I trail the back of my hand down her spine and chuckle.
“Do I even want to know?”
My stomach flips, but I give my words a lightness I don’t feel. “Probably not.”
Amy swings herself off the couch and my windpipe knots with fear that she’ll ask. That I’ll have to explain. Now. Where I was. Who I was with. When there’s no other woman I want in my thoughts. Not right now.
But she holds out her hand and my palm meets hers. “Come on,” she says. “I have an idea.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Water pounds into the bathtub. It drowns out the thump in my chest. The irregular beats of possibility and resistance fight for control. But Paul’s hand smooths down my back. The touch is soft. Reverent. Everything the steel in his pants isn’t. And it reminds me that he, too, is only hard on the outside.
I grip the side of the tub and push my ass higher, grazing his erection. Paul hisses but doesn’t move. My teeth bite off a grin as I wiggle my hips from side to side. I drag myself against him achingly slow before pushing back hard. He circles my waist with an arm, holding our hips together and cupping my center in his hand. We stand still. His cock grows harder against my ass. Heat spreads through my core. I close my eyes against the rising temperature in my body, but there’s no way to block out the tug low in my belly. To deny the desire that’s building by sharing a clothed touch. That builds just by sharing the same air.
Paul pulls me upright and pushes my hair over one shoulder. He presses kisses down my neck and tugs at the back of my shirt, lingering on the once-hidden skin. I step out from in front of him and put some space between us, but it does nothing to dampen the steady pulse of Paul’s name in my veins. Our eyes meet and I reach for the hem of my shirt. He braces his hand on the wall and licks his lips.
With one move, my hike-dusted top is up and off. His eyes darken with hunger when I unclasp my bra and let it fall to the ground. My nipples pebble under his gaze and I press my fingertips onto the countertop to steady myself. I swallow hard. “Your turn.”
His gaze sweeps over my skin before our eyes lock. He pushes each shirt button through its hole. The simple task takes him longer and longer as he works his way down. He struggles with the last button and I drop my eyes to his fumbling fingers. His untucked shirt does nothing to hide the shape of him straining at his zipper. Paul rips the last button out and lets his shirt fall. His work-toned arms and chest shudder with his shallow breathing.
My fingers relax on the co
unter and I open my shorts with trembling fingers. Eyes glued to him, I shimmy my way out of the denim. I kick them to the side and run a thumb under the elastic waist of my thong. The thunder of water into the tub is lost under the pounding in my ears when he plants his hand on the wall and groans as he guides his zipper down, dragging it over the bulge in his pants. His cock is held tight in boxer-briefs, a wet mark spreading from its tip.
I lick my lips. “Paul?”
His hand fists on the wall.
My fingers dip into my panties and find my own wetness. I trail my arousal up my body. “You do this to me.” His eyes flash and I pull my fingers higher, tracing a circle around my nipple. “Without even touching me.”
His jaw sets and my skin burns under his gaze.
“And I know why.”
“Why?” His voice is hoarse.
“Because I want you. With every cell of my being.” He crosses to me in one step and digs his fingers into my hips. His cock throbs against my stomach and I press my hand to his cheek. “Every. Single. One.”
His lips crash down on mine and I open for him, tangling my tongue with his, pushing and pulling, and devouring this man whose body I want. Whose soul I crave. The counter cuts into my lower back and I push forward. His shoulders hit the wall and our mouths jar, but stay together, frantic in their need to share breath and life and need. I hitch a leg onto the side of the tub, opening every part of me to him. He catches my moan in his mouth when his fingers find my slit, tracing it over my panties, and I reach for his cock, diving into his boxers and wrapping the pulsing steel in a tight fist.
Our kiss breaks as his mouth falls open. “Fuck, Amy,” he breathes. I pass my thumb over his dripping head and he growls into my ear.
His fingers shove my panties aside and plunge deep inside me. My breath catches and my forehead falls onto his chest. He circles his fingers in my softness and my tongue darts out, desperate for contact and finding a tight nipple. I flick it with the tip of my tongue and he hisses, ramming his fingers deeper. His hand hits my clit with each deep thrust and I cling to his cock for balance.