“Yeah.”
Jesse moves closer on her other side, and then Wyatt shifts until we’re all surrounding Callie.
“This is nice,” she says quietly.
“Just nice?” Jesse asks.
“Don’t push it.”
“I thought you liked being pushed.”
“I like a lot of things I shouldn’t like.”
“Such as?”
“Such as sitting on a ridge in the middle of the night with three men who are supposed to be off-limits.”
“What else?” Wyatt asks.
“Such as the way you all look at me like I’m a human being instead of just another Thompson to avoid.”
“You are a human being, at least you seem like one,” I tell her.
“Human with a capital H.”
“The best kind of H,” Jesse says.
“The only kind of H worth having,” Wyatt adds.
She turns to me and in the starlight, I swear see something vulnerable in her expression.
“What are we doing, Boone?” she asks.
“Right now? We’re keeping each other warm and looking at stars.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. And honestly? I don’t have an answer. All I know is I’m having a good time and I don’t want it to end.”
“It has to end.”
“Why?”
“Because reality exists. Because our families exist. Because the whole town would lose their minds.”
“Let them lose their minds,” Jesse says. “It’s not their business.”
“Everything is everyone’s business in a town this small.”
“Only if we let it,” Wyatt points out.
“How do we not let it?”
“We keep it between us,” I suggest. “What happens here, stays here.”
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
