"Pops used to do the same thing. Scare me just enough to make me laugh." The memory sat warm in my chest. “He would be laughing at the irony of all of this.”
Nick tilted his head back, looking up at the sky. The stars were out, not as many as you'd see deep in the woods, but enough. The streetlights from Front Street created a soft glow at the edge of the green, but you could make out the Big Dipper and Orion's belt.
"It's similar," Nick said after a moment. "But not the same."
I followed his gaze upward. "As what?"
"That first camping trip. Out in the woods." He glanced at me. “There was something magical about it. Even the curse couldn’t spoil it.” His hand rested on mine. “Everything felt big out there. Like the universe was reminding me how small my problems were.”
"And now?"
“Now it feels different. We're not alone with miles of forest between us andthis.” He gestured to the buildings around the green.
"No," I agreed. "We're not."
We sat there for a while longer, neither of us ready to break the spell. I wouldn’t admit it out loud, but hearing the voices nearby, even the glow of the streetlights, carried its own kind of magic. He’s right, it wasn’t the same, but it had a similar sparkle to it.
When Nick shivered, I stood, hoisting him to his feet. With a quick pat on the butt, I guided him to our tent. Kicking off our shoes, we climbed into our sleeping bags. The tarp underneath us rustled as we tried to find a comfortable position with our faces only inches apart. It wasn’t the naked excursion I had hoped for, but I was still glad I got to spend it with him.
The stillness of the evening settled in.
"You okay?" I asked, keeping my voice low.
"Yeah." Nick turned his head toward me. "Just thinking."
"About?"
He was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. "The curse." I waited. "I thought... when Lacie did her thing, when it was over, I thought I'd feel different. Lighter, maybe." He stared up at the tent ceiling. "But I don't. Not really."
"What do you feel?"
"Scared." The word came out rough. It’s not what I expected him to confess. “I spent so long blaming the curse for everything that went wrong. Every failed relationship, every bad decision. It gave me something to point to, you know?”
I shifted onto my side, propping my head on my hand so I could see him better. "And now?"
"Now I don't have that excuse." He met my eyes. "Now if I mess this up, it's just me. My choices. My fault."
The vulnerability in his voice made my chest tight. This was the same man who had stood silent under the oak tree during movie night. The one who, for whatever reason, agreed to hike into the woods with me. The dark cloud that once hung over his head had evaporated, and there waslifein him.
"You're not going to mess this up," I said.
"How do you know?"
"Because you're here." I reached out, my fingers finding his in the dark. “You act like Lacie dragged you here. You could havegone back to Vanguard and never looked back. But you didn't. Some part of you wanted to see this through.”
His hand tightened around mine. "I couldn't. Not after—" He stopped, swallowed. “I’m going to get sappy for a moment.” I appreciated the warning. “It’s hard to leave after you touched a sexy man’s package.”
I didn't know what to say about that. Part of me wanted to crack a joke to lighten the moment. But this felt too important, too raw. If he was going to have a moment of honesty, the least I could do was return the favor.
"I've been thinking, too," I said finally. "About Pops."
He didn’t speak.
"He spent my childhood dragging me into the woods. Teaching me things I swore I'd never use. I was such a brat about it." The old guilt crept in, but it didn't have the same bite anymore. “I pushed him away. I didn’t want to be that kid and have that target painted on my back.”
He squeezed my fingers.
"He was giving me tools to feel capable when everything felt like chaos." I thought about the compass, the scrapbook, and the lantern sketch now tacked to my wall. "He was showing me I wasn't alone. That even when Firefly felt suffocating, I had a place where I belonged."
