His voice was sleep husky. It did things to all the parts of her that he’d had his hands on last night.
“Morning,” she said with a yawn. “I can’t believe we never actually spent a night together until now.”
He dropped a kiss behind her ear. “I was well-behaved in high school.”
“Ha.” Her sarcasm was a first instinct, but she reconsidered. “Actually, you really were.”
“My parents raised me right.” He fiddled with a lock of her hair. “Blue, huh?”
She wiggled around to face him. “It makes me feel brave.”
He twined a strand around his finger. “You needed to be brave to go camping?”
“I needed to be brave to be around you.”
He dropped her hair and pulled back immediately. “Not because I scare you, right?”
He looked ready to bolt out of the tent if she said yes. God, he was cute when he was flustered.
“No,” she said. “But also kind of.”
His brows jumped in alarm, and she slid a foot down his leg, drawing their lower bodies closer together in what she hoped was a comforting gesture.
“Notyouyou. But, like, this. Us.” Falling again. Maybe even loving him again. And always the fear of hurting again.
She didn’t say it, but he pursed his lips like he was thinking similar thoughts. And why wouldn’t he be? They’d both been through it. It had probably sucked just as much for him.
If it had, that memory didn’t keep him from wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into his body to rest his chin on her head on the pillow. They lay like that for a long time. A good, long time. And it was nice and comforting and felt like coming home.
But at the same time, she needed toknow.
“So we’re good?” Her heart lodged in her throat as she added, “You forgive me?”
After a moment, his head moved against hers in a nod, and all the blood in her veins thawed.
“Yes.” He shifted to rub his cheek against her hair. “I wish you hadn’t written what you did. And I wish I hadn’t reacted the way I did. If we’d been a little older, maybe it would’ve gone differently.”
“Or maybe not,” Faith said, thinking about their fight in the hiking store.
He laughed softly. “Or maybe not. But it happened, and we built our lives, and now we’re here.”
“Now we’re here.”
“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” he added a little gruffly.
“Nowhere.” She pressed herself close, shivering a little as her body started to register that she was lying on the ground outside in late October. “Okay, maybe in an actual bed.”
A groan rumbled through his chest. “If we were in an actual bed…”
Heat fired through her despite the chilly air, and she poked a finger into his side. “Time to check the trail situation?”
“Definitely.” He unwound himself from around her and crawled to the opening, unzipping it to let in more cold and light. “Want to come with me?”
She waved him off. “You go ahead. I’m going to pee behind a tree, and I’m going to curse your name the whole time I do it.”
He glanced over his shoulder as he tugged on his boots. “I thought you loved hiking now?”
The carefree look on his face made her buoyant.
