I pulled him in closer. “Of course it’s okay. It’s been a long few days. Let’s sleep on it, you’ll feel better tomorrow.”
Frankly, I didn’t want to know how his story ended. If he remembered who’d been responsible, he would’ve said so. But without that, what difference did it make?
Charlie would still be dead at the end of it.
I shuffled around so I was lying with my head on my pillow, and pulled Charlie down so he lay next to me, pressed up against each other.
“Is this okay?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he breathed.
It was intimate; more so than I’d been with anyone in a very long time, even before Josh and I broke up. I wasn’t sure exactly when we’d crossed the line from platonic into something that brushed up againstmore, or when I’d allowed myself to admit Iwantedto hold him like this, rather, but there was none of the awkwardness that usually came along with it.
It felt like Charlie was always meant to be tucked right next to me, curled into my warmth while the wind lashed sleet and snow against the windowpanes.
“Reece?” His words tickled the soft skin of my neck.
“Hmm?”
“Do you think that’s why I’m still here? Because I haven’t… fully faced it yet? What happened?”
Reflexively, my arm tightened around his shoulders. “I’m not sure. Truthfully, I don’t even understand how you’re here at all,let alone what might be keeping you. Is that what it feels like? That there’s still something you have to do?”
He was quiet for a long while. So much so, I’d contented myself that he wasn’t ready to answer, but then he said, “For so long, it felt like I couldn’t leave this lookout. It felt like I was trapped. Now, though, I wonder.”
“What do you wonder?” I whispered into the space between us.
“I wonder if I was only waiting.”
I couldn’t vocalize the burning ache that bloomed in my chest at his words, but I could hold him close, and I could keep him warm.
So I did. All night long. Because there was a part of me, one I was too afraid to even silently acknowledge, that wondered if I’d been waiting, too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Who isthat?” Charlie asked as he shoved a handful of popcorn into his mouth.
“Glen Powell,” I grumbled.
“And him?”
“Miles Teller.”
“Wow…” he sighed dreamily. “It really is that damn mustache, isn’t it?”
I rolled my eyes and hid a smile. It would’ve rankled more if Charlie wasn’t scooched right up against me, tucked into my side under our shared blanket.
We were off lookout duty for the day, and probably tomorrow, too, due to near-whiteout conditions throughout the mountain pass. We radioed in our weather data reports as normal, but there was no sense in being on the clock when I couldn’t see a foot past the railing.
This storm would probably go down in the record books for June snowfall, but I’d always remember it as the day Charlie and I watched a movie together for the first time. He’d loved seeingTop Gunagain, all these years later. We’d stayed in bed all morning, snacking on popcorn and M&Ms before I made ramen for lunch.
Once we moved on to the sequel, though, I could tell something bothered him. As the ending credits rolled, he side-eyed me. “Does it bother you that I’m like, old?”
“Huh?” I asked, taken aback.
“While it was fun to actually celebrate my thirtieth birthday with you yesterday, in reality, I’m old enough to be your dad. I would look like them,” he gestured to the aged pictures of the original cast.
I blinked a few times. “Honestly, I’ve never considered it before,” I answered. “I mean, I wondered if you knew my dad. He was a pilot for the Forest Service during your summer out here.”
