“I can’t believe you’re dating Hunter Casden again,” Jane says.“You guys weresogross.Did Mom tell you she had to throw out that couch because it was practically?—”
“Yeah, she told me,” I say.
“You know you have to tell me how the hell you got back together someday, right?”she says.“Like, I get that now isn’t the best time, butdamn, Minty.”
I shrug my bag over my shoulder and think.
“He was staying next door with the hotshot crew, we made out, then we had a bunch of sex in a lookout cabin, and voila!”I say, waving my hands in the air.
“Definitely not good enough,” she says.
“Bye,” I say, laughing.
I walk through the hospital,and somehow, no one looks at me.No one stares, open-mouthed, as I walk by, even though I feel like there’s a big neon sign over my head that says SKANK, and the knowledge of what I’m doing has me wildly, insanely,incrediblyturned on.
I take the elevator up.I head for the nurses’ station and wave at them.They wave back.I keep pretending that I have underpants on and walk into Hunter’s room, shutting the door behind myself.The lights are half-off, and he’s propped up in the bed, watching TV, looking bored, and he grins when he sees me.
“I get out tomorrow,” he says.
I put my purse on a chair, my heart thumping, and lean over the bed to give him a kiss.
“What then?”I ask.
“I’m gonna stay with my parents for a few days, but my fire season’s over for this year,” he says.“I can just start looking in Lodgepole, because for some reason they don’t want guys with burns and fucked up lungs tagging along.”
He grabs my jacket and tugs me closer.He’s got the bed tilted a little higher than forty-five degrees, so he’s basically upright.
“AndI can take up residence in your bed and start convincing you this is a good idea,” he teases.
I kiss him again, then sit on the bed, one hand on his chest.
“I don’t need convincing,” I say quietly.“I think it might work this time.”
“I want it to work,” he says, and puts his hand top of mine.
“I want it to work too,” I say, and squeeze our fingers together.
“I think I’d have fallen for you even if I just met you last week,” he says, his voice still quiet and serious.
Then he grins.
“I mean, your ass lookedgreatin that skirt at the spaghetti dinner,” he says.“I got at least thirty percent hard watching you walk up to that microphone.”
“Only thirty?”I ask.
“It was a fast walk,” he says.“And your ass looks good in this skirt, too.”
“Should I walk around and see what percentage you come up with?”I ask.
Hunter grins and puts his hands behind his head, so I stand up and shrug off my jacket.My nipples point outward like arrows, and Hunter laughs, pushing the sheets off himself and sitting up.
“Clem, I swear to God?—”
I put one hand on his chest and push him slightly backward, even as he cups one breast in his hand, his palm rough on my nipple through my shirt.
“Aren’t you supposed to be resting?”I ask, grinning.
“I can rest later,” he says.
