The way he saysfalling in love with you, so easily and confidently, as if it's just a fact he's stating, cracks through my defenses like a rock through thin ice.
"We could've skipped the monthly subscription and saved the money," I say.
He grins. The grin I can now match to the voice that's been living in my ear for weeks. "Oh lord, Beth is going to lose it."
"Beth can never know the details."
"Agreed. Aiden either. He'll be insufferable."
"He'll say he told you so."
"Every day. For the rest of my life."
We're both smiling now, these big, stupid smiles, and the panic is still there but it's losing ground to something stronger.
Because now he's looking at me the way he described in his messages.
"Hi," he says, softly. And his voice drops into that register, the one from the phone, and my entire body responds like a switch being flipped.
"Hi," I say back.
His eyes go soft and tender. "I really need to hold you. Can I please?"
And something about the desperate gentleness of the ask, after weeks of baring our souls to each other through screens and phone lines, makes my eyes sting…and my voice comes out thick and cracked.
"God, yes. Quickly, ‘cause I think my legs are going to give out."
He crosses the room in two strides and his arms wrap around me—strong and sure and warm—and I collapse into him. My hands fist the back of his shirt and I press my face against hischest and he pulls me in tighter, one hand cradling the back of my head, and I can feel his heart pounding as hard as mine.
We're laughing, but it's that shaky, wet kind of laughter that's one breath away from tears. The kind that happens when something you've been carrying alone for so long suddenly has someone else holding the weight.
"I've got you, baby," he murmurs into my hair, his voice rough and breaking at the edges. "Everything's going to be all right."
I clutch him tighter and press my forehead against the solid warmth of his chest and justbreathe.He smells of zesty soap and the woods. And he'shere. The man behind the words is standing in front of me with his arms around me, and he's not running away, he's not disappointed, and the world hasn't ended.
We hold one another for a long time. Long enough for my legs to steady and my breathing to even out and the laughter to settle into something that feels like the beginning of everything.
Janis directs us to our cabin after, and the walk there is surreal…his hand on the small of my back, both of us stealing glances at one another like teenagers, laughing at nothing because the joy is too big to contain.
The cabin is gorgeous: timber-framed, candlelit, with a dining table set for two in front of floor-to-ceiling windows that frame the mountainside. There's wine, a gorgeous spread of food under silver cloches, and a fire already crackling in the stone hearth.
It's romantic as hell, and neither of us can focus on any of it.
We try. We really do. He pulls out my chair, and I sit, and we lift the covers off the plates—seared salmon, roasted vegetables, something with risotto—and it smells incredible and I cannot even process it since he'sright there.
His forearms are resting on the table and I'm staring at his hands, thinking about everything those hands promised to do to me, and my mouth has gone completely dry.
I stand up. "I'm going to grab water for us from the kitchen."
It's a flimsy excuse. I just need to move, to breathe, to collect the nineteen thousand nerve endings that are currently firing at once. I cross the cabin to the small kitchen alcove, open a cabinet, reach for a glass?—
And he's behind me.
I don’t remember hearing him get up. But I feel him…the warmth of his body, the nearness of him, the displacement of air that saysI'm done pretending I can sit across a table from you and not touch you.
"Camille." My name in his mouth sounds holy.
I turn around and he's inches away. His hands come up to cradle my face, and his thumbs trace my cheekbones, and his eyes are dark now and completely focused on me.
