Page 71 of So This Isn't Love
I wait for the itch to hit me. The restless pull that has ended every good night of my adult life, the one that starts in my feet and finishes at a departure gate. I've trusted it my whole life. I lie still in the dark with Darcy's heart under my hand and wait for it to come take tonight apart.
It doesn't come.
The kid who sat on that rock had a name for everything he wanted. Fun. Adventure. A story worth telling at the table. I can't file tonight under any of them.
It should terrify me. It does.
Just not enough to let go.
CHAPTER 28
DARCY
Finn is asleep facing me, his hand still pressed flat between my breasts where I put it last night and where it has apparently decided to live. He held on all night. I have the pins and needles to prove it, and I wouldn't trade them for full circulation and a feather bed.
I've never seen him like this. It occurs to me, studying him in the gray-blue light, that I've been in love with a man I've never once watched sleep this deeply. Awake, Finn is always broadcasting. Asleep on the side of a mountain, the signal stops. Lashes down, mouth soft, one line between his brows working at some dream problem he'll never report.
Last night when we made love, he kept his eyes open the whole way through. All of it. He watched me as though closing them would cost him something he wasn't willing to pay, and being seen like that—at the exact moment I had nothing left to manage myself with—is a place I've never been to with anyone else. After Finn, I don't know how I'll ever share myself so openly if not with him.
That's a truth I'm still adjusting to.
So I lie there with my hand asleep and my body pleasantly wrecked in places I plan to be smug about all week, and I simplywatch him. My thighs check in first, then my hips, then several muscles that also have strong opinions on my attempts to move, even incrementally. Every single one of them votes to stay in this sleeping bag with Finn as long as possible.
There was never a list,he told me last night. There isn't one here, either. In fifteen years, this clearing has known exactly one guest accompanying Finn. Only me. I smile with the knowledge, with the warm disbelief that this is my life right now.
When I finally try to slide my hand free to go start the coffee, his arm tightens on me like a customs gate.
"Nope," he says, eyes still closed.
"But coffee."
"Coffee later. Stay here a while longer."
If he only knew how long I'd love to stay right here, with him. Suspended in this perfect moment after a perfect night together.
Eventually, we do get out of our little nest to have coffee and breakfast. We break camp slowly, because we both know what's coming even if we're not saying it. We take down the tent together. Finn dismantles the fire ring stone by stone and carries each one back to wherever stones live, then scatters the cold ash, drags a pine bough over the flat spot until the clearing forgets we were ever here. He does it without commentary, the same way he fixes my pack straps. By the time we shoulder our packs, his oldest secret looks exactly how we found it. Pristine. Secret. Now it belongs to both of us.
I follow him along a path through the woods that he chooses, one we've not been on yet. He pauses and turns to look at me. "Ready for the good part?"
I glance around at the ledge, the valley, at the astonishing beauty of our surroundings. "This wasn't the good part?"
He grins and points up.
The summit trail leaves from the back of the clearing and immediately stops pretending to be a trail. It's rock, then biggerrock, then a slanted slab with the whole valley hanging off one side of it. Two weeks ago I would have laughed at this itinerary and driven myself home. Today I put my hands where he tells me.
"Right hand to that flake." He's below me and to the side, unhurried, like we're browsing. "Now trust the boots. They're better at this than you think."
Halfway up the slab I make the mistake of looking past my elbow, and my hands independently decide to become part of the mountain.
"I'm stuck," I announce.
"You're not stuck. You're resting."
"It feels permanent."
"Your next hold is by your right thumb." His voice doesn't change at all. "You don't have to take it until you want it."
I breathe the way I tell my juniors to breathe before the AP exam, which I have always privately considered useless advice, and am now prepared to defend with my life. Then I ready myself for the hold, and I take it. My boot finds a comfortable edge, and then I'm moving again. He never once puts a hand on me. I could kiss him for that, and plan to.
