“I think so? I’ll go check,” Charlie replied, standing from the bed. He ran a hand along my shoulders as he passed, a soft smile on his face.
My phone rang, and I hit the ignore button.
“Tate again?” he asked, his brow furrowed in displeasure.
“Mmhmm.”
“Why don’t you just answer it?”
I sighed. “Because I really don’t want to talk to him. I check in with Dad and Bobby every day. If he wants to know whether or not I’m alive, he can ask them.”
Charlie trailed his hand from my shoulder down across my chest and leaned over to kiss me. I turned my whole body into it, twisting in the chair to face him for a better angle.
“Mmm,” he hummed when I deepened the kiss with my tongue. Throwing both arms around my shoulders, his fingers dug in. “I was going somewhere,” he breathed, tipping his headback to allow my searching mouth to taste the column of his neck.
“Onions,” I said, palming his ass.
He laughed. “Oh my, talk dirty to me.”
I pulled away a bit to watch the way his laughter made him glow. “Onionrings,” I said with a grin.
Charlie laughed harder, his head thrown back and dimples on full display. “Only you.”
His words held such fondness, such warmth, I thought I might be glowing, too.
He was mourning, yes, and there were times I didn’t know how to be there for him or what I could do to make him feel better, but then he’d just ask me to hold him again, and the squirmy feeling of not being enough during his time of need fled.
We hadn’t gone any further since that first time, but it somehow deepened the intimacy between us when all he needed from me at night was to be held. Just being in each other’s presence was enough.
I still thought about him all the time, though. I stillwanted.But only if he was ready, only if he also wanted that with me again, too.
With one more chaste kiss, he walked toward the door.
“Please be safe,” I said.
He grinned at me through the glass, blinked away, and then re-materialized at the bottom of the tower, right in front of the utility shed.
I couldn’t even pretend to roll my eyes at the sight of those dimples reappearing.
With a sigh, I returned to the tedious chore of sorting our weather data records and field observation logs by date. An easier task now that Charlie and I had both filled out the forms—his chicken scratch was slightly more legible than mine.
Squinting between two forms, attempting to decipher which was from the thirteenth and which was the eighteenth of the month, movement outside caught my eye.
Far in the distance, a truck trundled down the only stretch of park service access road visible from this lookout’s vantage point. I stood and snagged my binoculars from the windowsill, brow furrowing when I caught a glimpse just before the road curved and the truck drove out of sight.
It wasn’t extraordinary to see cars on the road, but Forest Service or other government vehicles were the only ones legally allowed in the park, and this was clearly privately owned.
Even more confusing, however, was that I knew exactly who it belonged to.
Bobby.
It was a 1986 Chevy Silverado, blue with a bold white stripe down the body. I knew that, because he’d bought it off my dad when he’d sold our house in town and moved out to the cabin. It’d been Dad’s back when it was new, and he’d always planned to keep it maintained, but when Mom moved and he got busy with work and solo parenting, it’d fallen into disrepair.
Bobby was good with cars; he’d loved flipping through restoration magazines as a kid, and he’d done a great job fixing the old truck up.
I thought back on our conversations over the last few weeks and couldn’t remember him ever mentioning he’d be out this way. If so, I’d have invited him to come up to the lookout. Of all the people in my life, I’d want Bobby to meet Charlie first. He’d probably struggle with the idea of ghosts and be worried for me, but he’d also be the most understanding of how I felt.
So, why hadn’t he told me?
