“I don’t want to hurt you.”
I turned to her fully and nodded. “You won’t.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do,” I said, voice steady in a way I didn’t expect. “Because I’m not rushing you. I’m not asking for more than you can give. And whatever we figure out, it’ll be both of us choosing it.”
Her eyes shimmered with something new, but the stove hissed quietly.
We had duties today.
But between us, warmth lingered, tentative, tender, but real.
And it was more real than anything I’d let myself feel in years.
“Carson…” she whispered.
But whatever she was about to say was cut off by a loud, cheerful voice bursting across camp.
“Good morning, guides.”
Emma.
Sienna stiffened. I exhaled.
We weren’t done talking.
Not by a long shot.
But as she got to her feet and forced a smile for the honeymooners, I watched her carefully, wondering about the thing she hadn’t said.
Wondering what she wanted and what I meant to her.
Wondering whether she really believed last night could be just once.
Because I knew something now with complete, unshakeable clarity:
I didn’t do one-nighters.
Not with her.
Not ever.
But I still didn’t know if she was someone who did?
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Sienna
Breakfast should have been simple: oatmeal, coffee, and a quick hike. But instead, it was one long stretch of awkward, unbearably loaded silence punctuated by Emma and Jake’s cheerful commentary about nature, marriage, and the strength of our hypothetical marital bond.
Couple Goals,as they put it.
I could barely look at Carson without remembering how his mouth had felt on mine. How his hands had held me. How I’d woken tangled against him, his breath warm on my neck, his arm heavy around my waist. I kept pretending I wasn’t staring at him, but he’d look at me, and my heart would forget its assigned rhythm entirely.
His protectiveness was worse. Every time he passed me a mug, or checked my pockets for hand warmers, or glanced my way when Emma asked about today’s hike, it hit me all over again: last night had changed something. Something I didn’t know how to manage.
But I wasn’t the only one feeling it. I could see it in the way his hand hesitated when it brushed mine, in how he stood just a little too close when we packed up breakfast, in the flicker of emotion he didn’t hide as well as he thought.
