Charlie grimaced. “That’s wonderful, and I appreciate your efforts, baby. I really do. But I won’t be doing that.”
He smacked a kiss on my cheek to soften the rejection and scraped his plate clean.
I narrowed my eyes. “I see how it is. I’m just your spatchcocker. A means to crispy chicken skin, that’s all.”
Despite the heavy meal I’d just devoured, the look he gave me went straight to my dick. “Notallyou’re good for.”
Want pooled low. “Weren’t we meant to be planning all the ways I can make youfeel? I have ideas.”
He blushed, but his face grew serious. “Speaking of plans, what are we going to do after the season ends?”
I blinked, caught off guard by the change in topic. “What do you want to do?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
I cocked my head. “Is there somewhere you want to live? Do you want to stay here and apply to be a ranger? Or go back to school to do something else?”
He took both our empty plates and stood, placing them on the counter. “No, I’m serious,” he said before turning back to me. “I really don’t know. Is that bad?”
I followed him over and crowded him against the counter. “Of course not. You deserve time to decide. And I’d follow you anywhere, too, you know. We’ll choose those things together.”
He cupped my cheek. “Honestly, I just want to be with you. I want to go wherever you go. I want time to figure out what to do with my life, now that I have it back. I was just wondering if you already had plans for after this. I never wanted to ask, before…”
His eyes drifted. I kissed him, pulling him back into the present before he was lost down a road that wasn’t ours to take anymore. “Well, actually, I emailed my department chair and asked if it would be possible to cut my sabbatical short. I thought about returning for the spring semester, instead of taking the whole academic year off.”
At his surprised look, I hastily explained, “It’d still give us through the end of the year to plan, and I was just inquiring whether it would be possible. I don’t have to go back if we decide we want something different. I just… I teach a dendrology classevery spring, and I realized the other day that I miss it. I’m looking forward to it again.”
Charlie smiled. Of course, he’d understand what it meant for me to want some part of my career back. “Spring in Missoula,” he said, cautious hopefulness in his voice. “I bet it’s beautiful. Let’s do it.”
“It’s cold,” I said with a laugh. “Most of the semester is still winter. But are you sure? If you want to stay in Ponderosa, we can figure something out. I don’t want you to follow me just because it’s what I want to do. I want you to be fulfilled.”
He kissed me, long and slow. “I want to be with you. The rest we can figure out as we go. And who knows,” he continued with a wink. “I hear the University of Montana has a great forestry program. Maybe I’ll enroll. Someone said there’s this really swoony, grumpy tree professor who works there. I think I’d like to meet him.”
I threw my head back with a laugh. “I’m far too ethical to ever be your professor, but I think I could be persuaded into holding special office hours, just for you.”
“Good,” he said with a gleam in his eye. “Because you’re mine. I’ll stake my territory so those wide-eyed twenty-somethings know to keep away.”
Just then, his twinkle lights flicked on in the fading light. He smiled up at them before looking back at me, their warmth reflected in his eyes. “You roasted me another chicken, and my lights are back on,” he whispered. “You know what that means.”
I cupped his face in my hands and stepped backwards until I sat on the bed again. Peering up at him, I marveled at the magic that’d brought us together. There were moments I’d doubted whether or not we’d make it, but we had, and I’d never take it for granted. “I seem to have forgotten, you’ll have to remind me.”
Tears pooled in his eyes. “We’re here because you didn’t give up on me, Reece. You didn’t give up on us. Not once. I may notknow yet what I want to do with this beautiful life I get to live, but I know I want to spend it with you. Just you. And I know I love you so, so much.”
The sun dropped below the far horizon while we spoke, casting the lookout in a wash of soft pink light that highlighted the hidden auburn hues in Charlie’s hair. I stared, committing the moment to memory.
“I love you, too,” I said through my tears. “And I can’t wait to live my life with you.”
I pulled him back into bed, and we spent the rest of the evening under the glow of his twinkle lights, our kisses and slow touches coated in happy tears as we planned, hoped, and dreamed. We’d sleep peacefully, knowing no more ghosts lurked in the shadows, and no more monsters crept through the woods.
Still, the storms of life surely brewed, and if anything, our time at the lookout taught us that fire could come at any moment to sweep away everything we thought the future held.
Certainly, we hadn’t yet faced all the hardship and strife life had in store. But as long as we held on to each other, we could weather the strongest tempests.
And so, hand in hand with Charlie, always with Charlie, we did the scariest thing of all.
We lived.
EPILOGUE
