“Yeah. Nothing fancy. Just new walls and better flooring. Something that could handle the weather better. Probably install some better windows too, so we can open them in the summer.” He looks back at the cabin. “Dare wanted to sell it, but I don’t know. I kinda love its charm.” His voice lowers as he digs a toe into the dirt. “I’ve never brought anyone here. Not even Georgie.”
“You always come alone?”
“Dare and I came together once, that first night after we bought it, but otherwise, yeah. I’ve always come alone. It’s been my little hiding place. Somewhere where I can think, you know? I don’t think Darren even uses it anymore, to be honest.”
I stop walking, turning Fletcher to face me. Now I feel even worse about how I’d reacted. “Thank you for sharing it with me then.”
He leans in, sliding an arm around me. I brush my lips over his before pulling him in for a hug. He’d meant this weekend as a gift, and I completely blew it out of the water.
Back inside, we eat the rest of the fruit and chips for lunch. I empty the bag without meaning to, caught up in our easy conversation.
The afternoon blurs. We end up on the bed again, fully dressed, boots kicked off. The world narrows to the warmth of Fletcher’s side and the steady rise and fall of his chest. Draping an arm over him, I rest my head on his chest, fully relaxed.
Fletcher’s arm curls around me, his lips warm against my forehead. There’s no pressure. No expectation. Just us sharing the space.
It’s what I needed.
What we needed.
“Next time we come up here, we should bring better coffee,” Fletcher says, almost offhandedly. “I’m still tasting it from this morning.”
The words shatter the fuzzy feelings.Next time.
Lifting my head, I look at him, at the soft light touching his face, the small scar above his eyebrow, and my heart squeezes. God, how I love him. I love everything about Fletcher, and that terrifies me.
We have to talk about this.
“I… don’t know what next time looks like,” I say, somehow keeping my voice from shaking. “I don’t know what I’ll be able to do. Or want. Or… handle.”
Fletcher nods. “I know.”
He watches me carefully, like he knows there’s a crack forming. “But that’sokay, Vince. It’s okay to not know.”
I sit up, pressing my back against the wall. Fletcher mirrors me, close enough that our knees touch.
Where do I even begin? How do I explain that I want a future with him without promising that we’ll ever get one? Not the kind he’ll want, anyway.
“I want this more than anything,” I say. “I think Christmas solidified that for me. I want to be with you.”
He smiles softly, but it’s etched with fear. “I sense abut,” he says quietly.
“I’m trying to be okay with what we have, but I’m the kind of guy who looks ahead. Who sees the whole picture and makes plans, you know. It’s how I was raised, and how I was trained to be.”
He nods slowly. “And it’s hard to do that when your body fights you. You can’t see what it’ll look like for us.”
He says it so easily, as if he’s pieced all this together himself. Maybe he has. He certainly knows me well enough to.
I rub my fingertips together, trying to feel them. “I’m scared to make promises to you or dream about what our life could be like, because I feel like anything I say or do will just… disappear. I won’t be able to follow through.”
“Then we don’t plan,” he says simply. “If something new comes, we adapt and keep going. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I inwardly cringe. A life without plans sounds worse than a horror show.
I turn to him. “What if what I need is smaller than what you want, though? I don’t want to slow you down.”
He shakes his head. “I learned long ago there is nothing more important than the people in my life.Nothing. Where I go, what I do… it’s all extra, hon. It’s all noise. But you, Georgie, my brother? You’re what I need.”
“What about your business? Or even this, coming up here? If I’m in a wheelchair—”
