"Just... give me a second," I said, pressing my forehead to hers, breathing her in—perfume and sunshine and pure Ivy. "I want to remember everything about this. Do everything right this time."
Her hands came up to frame my face, thumbs stroking my cheekbones. "We have time. All the time we want."
I pulled away reluctantly and moved to the truck bed. Dropped the tailgate with a metallic clang that echoed across the water. The swag I kept there was worn canvas, soft from use, smelling faintly of leather and hay. I unrolled it carefully, added the wool blanket Mom had made—navy with the Blackwood brand woven in gold thread in the corner, a wedding gift she'd been saving that I'd stolen years ago for nights when missing Ivy got too heavy.
When I turned back, she stood bathed in moonlight, the creek's reflection dancing patterns across her skin. She looked ethereal, like something from a dream I was afraid would dissolve if I reached for it.
"Just like old times?" she asked, but her voice shook with emotion.
"No," I said, helping her climb up, my hands spanning her waist. She was real, warm, solid under my palms. "We're different now. We know what we're choosing. What we're risking."
She settled on the blanket, dress pooling around her like water. I climbed up beside her, close enough to feel her warmth but not touching. Not yet. The anticipation was exquisite torture.
Above us, the constellations sprawled in their ancient patterns—Orion standing guard, the Pleiades clustered like gossips, Venus burning bright near the horizon. The same stars that had witnessed our first kiss, our first everything, our last night before she disappeared.
"Do you remember," she whispered, "what you said that last night?"
"That I'd love you until the stars burned out."
"Still true?"
I turned on my side to face her, finally letting myself touch her—just my fingertips tracing the line of her jaw, relearning the geography of her face. "The stars are still shining, aren't they?"
She turned into my touch like she was starved for it, her eyes closing as my thumb brushed across her cheekbone. "I used todream about your hands," she admitted. "In Dallas, in my sterile apartment, I'd dream about your hands and wake up crying."
"Ivy..." Her name came out broken.
"Touch me," she whispered. "I've been waiting so long to feel you again."
My hand slid into her hair, pins scattering as I freed the honey blonde waves. They spilled over my fingers like silk, like water, like every metaphor poets had ever used because there were no words for the perfection of Ivy's hair in moonlight.
"Been thinking about this," I said roughly, "every day since you came back. Every time you walked past. Every time you smiled at someone else. Every time you existed in my space but not in my arms."
"I'm here now," she said, shifting closer until our bodies aligned, soft against hard, curves against angles. "I'm here, and I'm not running again."
When I kissed her, it was nothing like our desperate collision in the barn during the storm. This was deliberate, a slow exploration, a reacquaintance with territory I'd once known better than my own land. She tasted like the beer she'd been drinking, the mint she'd chewed after, and underneath it all, essentially Ivy—sweet and complex and addictive.
Her hands fisted in my shirt, pulling me closer as the kiss deepened. I rolled, bringing her with me until she straddled my hips, her dress riding up until it was just a suggestion of fabric between us. The position made her gasp into my mouth, made me grip her waist perhaps too tightly.
"Too fast?" I asked, pulling back.
"Too slow," she corrected, then proved it by unbuttoning my shirt with fingers that shook slightly. "I don't want careful. I don't want cautious. I want you."
Each button she undid felt like the snap of a fuse burning down. One by one, she traced the path she revealed—palms flat, fingers trembling, her touch somewhere between prayer and possession.
“This scar,” she murmured, her lips brushing just beneath my ribs. “Still here.”
Her breath hit my skin, hot and shaking. I closed my eyes as she kissed it, slow and deliberate, her tongue following the jagged line like she was memorizing it.
“Fence wire,” I rasped. “You remember?”
“I remember everything,” she whispered, and the sound of it went straight through me.
Her hands slid up my chest, steady now, claiming each inch like cartography—mapping the territory she’d once known by heart. When her mouth found mine again, it wasn’t soft. It was years of missing turned into motion—teeth, breath, need.
“Ivy,” I managed, half a warning, half a plea.
She pulled back just enough to look at me, her pupils blown wide, her hair a wild halo around her face. “You still taste like rain,” she said. “And I’m so goddamn tired of pretending I forgot.”
