I caught his hand and pressed the bracelet into it. He didn’t pull away. In fact, he leaned in closer, so our knees touched and our hands overlapped.
“This is yours,” I said. “You can say no. But if you put it on, it means—” I faltered, the words sticking in my throat like they’d never learned to travel that far.
He looked up at me, his mouth parted, soft and hungry. “Means what?”
“Means you’re mine,” I said, flat and certain, like I was stating the weight of a two-by-four or the year the house was built. “Have been, since you walked onto this farm, but only if you want it.”
He didn’t blink. He just stared at me, the moment winding tighter and tighter. Then, with a trembling thumb, he unfastened the snap and wrapped the bracelet around his own wrist. His hands shook, but he got it done, then flexed his arm as if he wanted to make sure it fit.
He stared at the new jewelry on his body for a long time. Then, almost like he was in a trance, he reached out and touched the bracelet on my wrist. His fingers were cold, but the spot where they landed seared.
I saw it the second he decided. His eyes got wet at the edges, but he didn’t look away. “What happens now?” he asked, and there was hope and terror and a thousand other things in his voice.
I closed the distance between us, so close our foreheads nearly touched. I cupped his jaw in my hand, felt the faintstubble along his chin, the barely-there tremor that ran through his body when I pulled him closer.
“Now,” I said, “I kiss you.”
He gasped, but it wasn’t fear. It was more like he’d been holding his breath since the day we met and finally remembered how to use his lungs.
I kissed him. Not tentative, not sweet. I’d waited two years and I wasn’t about to pretend otherwise. He kissed back, desperate, hands clutching the front of my shirt like he was worried I’d change my mind if he let go.
I shifted so he was nearly in my lap, his body fitting against mine in a way that felt both familiar and new. The taste of him was coffee and nervous adrenaline and something bright, something that lived under his skin and was finally, finally allowed out.
When I pulled away, he stared at me, pupils blown wide, lips parted and red. “You okay?” I asked, thumb grazing the side of his neck.
He nodded, so hard his hair fell into his eyes. “Yeah,” he said, voice gone breathless. “Yeah, I’m—fuck. I’m really good, actually.”
I let myself laugh, a low rumble that shook his shoulders. “You want to stop?”
He shook his head, then ducked it so he was hiding against my chest. “Not unless you want to.”
“Not in this lifetime,” I said, and he laughed, muffled against my shirt.
I held him for a while. We didn’t talk. We didn’t have to. The sun kept climbing, and the air got warmer, and the river ran on like it hadn’t just watched two idiots make the best mistake of their lives.
When he finally sat up, he wiped his eyes and tried to glare at me. It didn’t work. He looked too happy.
“So, what do I call you now?” he asked, playful, but also not. He twirled the bracelet around his wrist, letting the name show.
“Same as always,” I said. “Just louder.”
He laughed, then leaned in and kissed me again, quick and sharp. It felt like an electric shock, all the way down to my feet.
After that, we sat together, shoulder to shoulder, picking at cold chicken and watching the sky. For the first time in my life, I didn’t want to be anywhere but here.
And I knew, for certain, that neither did he.
Chapter Two
~ Levi ~
When I was little, my favorite thing was to sit cross-legged on the back porch of whatever apartment or trailer we happened to be squatting in, and strum a pretend guitar until the sun went down.
That feeling of vibrating right at the edge of something, every chord a tightrope strung between what was and what might be—if I closed my eyes, I could almost believe my hands were strong enough to keep the world from falling apart.
I hadn’t felt that for a long time.
Now, the guitar was real—a beat-up Martin with a sticker-covered case I’d found at a thrift shop in Eugene—and the back porch was a sloped section of floor in my McKenzie River bedroom, under a window that caught the sunset just right if you left the curtains half-open.
