“I’ll put it out, Lorraine,” he says, nodding toward the fire. “Our cabin’s closest, and I’vegot a lantern.”
“You’re sure?” she asks, looking back and forth between us. Part of me wants to say,Lorraine, don’t leave. Things are weird and what if they get weirder?But she’s not giving a look like Betty or Kit or Greer would give me, not anAre you all right with thingslook. It’s more of aWhat a nice night for a young couplelook, and so the other part of me focuses on that, on how convincing Aiden and I must’ve been today.
She and Paul say their goodnights; when Paul stands from his place on the log I have to feign interest in my shoelace on account of the cannonball thing. Aiden snickers, and I lean into him with my shoulder, a light body check that he contains by pulling me closer. He smells so good, like this bonfire and like the trees and likehim.
We listen to the fading footfalls of the group, watch their lantern lights dim as they go their separate ways, and then, suddenly, we’re alone.
“I’ll just—” I say, scooting away from him, closing my eyes at the awkwardness of it, afraid to see his reaction.Which would be worse,I think:relief, ordisappointment?
“So is it because of Aaron you became a paramedic?” I have to tuck my hands underneath my thighs to keep myself from slapping them over my mouth inembarrassment.
Beside me, he’s quiet. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him take a deep breath, and I expect he’s counting to ten so he doesn’t call me a bunch of names or remind me of the deal:You and me, we don’t talk about my brother.But instead he says, “I guess that’s part of it. Spent a lot of time around doctors with him, back when we were young, and I suppose—I was good in a crisis, when it came to him.” He pauses and then adds, “Not all types of crisis, I guess.”
Well. That lands like a lead balloon, an awful sadness that I don’t know how to recover from. I am anidiotfor bringing it up, for saying his name. I’m as bad as Lorraine.
“Why’d you become a lawyer?” he asks, and I slump against the log behind me in relief.
“My dadwas a lawyer.”
Aiden nods, like he fully understands this as an explanation. “You think you’ll ever go back to it? I know you won that money, but…”
“I didn’t win enough money to never work again.” I’d been so embarrassed, initially, that he’d known, but now it’s almost comforting, not to have to keep it a secret from him. “I thought I’d—I don’t know. Take time off? Figure out what I really want, I guess. My first job...” I trail off, thinking of the sleek, glass-walled offices at Willis-Hanawalt. My two-thousand-dollar ergonomic chair. The Tiffany desk clock I got after my second year of service. “I had my eye on the wrong thing. I went to a top law school. I thought that meant I should go to a top firm, same as my dad did. I went through the motions.”
“It’d be a shame to give it up altogether. You’resmart as fuck.”
I look over at him, my smile immediate and spontaneous in a way it’s usually not around him. I’m probably blushing all the way down to my boot-cramped toes. “Drives me crazy,” he adds.
I know by something in his voice that he doesn’t mean an annoyed kind of crazy. He means the same crazy that I felt this morning, in my bunk. The same crazy I felt when he smiled at me on the zip line. The same crazy I felt with his hand on my skin. His eyes slide to mine, one hot second of contact before he stands and reaches behind the log he’s leaning against, hefting a large metal pail I didn’t even realize was there. He moves to stand between me and the fire, his back to me, and dumps the bucket on top, the fire hissing and popping. It’s not all the way out yet, but Aiden grabs a stick that’s leaning up against a nearby tree and begins stirring the pit, extinguishing more and more of the flame.
“Might want to switch on that lantern,” he says.
But I don’t. In the fading light, I watch the muscles underneath his shirt move, watch when he leans forward a little, the muscles in his legs and ass pulling tight.What would it matter,I’m thinking.What would it matter, if we justdidthis, if we didsomethingwith this attraction other than sniping at each other?Aiden’s the first man I’ve wanted like this in a long, long time—and if I press hard on that thought, I’ll bet I come to the conclusion that I’ve never wanted a man like this, wanted a man enough that the fact that we barely get along is something I’m willing to overlook. Since Christopher, I pick men who are easy. Men who won’t fight with me. Men who won’t get in the way of my work. Men who won’t ask why I never want to stay over. Men who won’t ask anything of me at all.
“That night at Betty’s,” I say, softly, and he stops stirring. “At first, I thought you werewith Charlie.”
“No,” he says.
“Right, I know. But—I hated that. For some reason.” This is as far as I’m willing to go with it without something,anything, in return.
“You know the reason.” My blood feels as if it turns warmer, thicker at the roughness in his voice. “Same reason I hate the way Hammond stares at you, sometimes. Same reason I’ve been thinking about getting my hands on your skin since yesterday. Since before yesterday.”
“Oh,” is all I say, because that was definitely more thansomething. He turns around so he’s facing me, looking down to where I’m sitting, knees tucked up against my chest, my arms wrapped around them.
“We do this, and it can’t have anything to do with debt. With anything else but you and me.”
I stand from my spot on the ground, take a step toward him. “I shouldn’t have said that yesterday,” I say, but he’s shaking his head before I’m even through.
“Doesn’t matter about that. I’m talking about this. You and me, and what we want from each other.”
It’s full dark now, the fire all the way out, smoke and ash heavy in the air. I barely notice. I only notice him coming closer to me, tilting his head down. Not to kiss me—to get close, to put his ear that much nearer to my lips, so he can hear me say it back to him. “You and me,” I whisper, an agreement as sure as the one I made with him a month ago, and I am suddenlydesperatefor this, for him to put his hands on my hips and tug me right against him. To work off this tension. We’re so well matched, me and Aiden—I can feel it, how good we’ll be together. But he doesn’t make a move. He’s standing close enough that I can hear him breathe, and I reach a hand out, wrap my fingers around his wrist, same as he did to me, onthat first day.
I feel his pulse beat, hard, againstmy fingertips.
We stand like that until the smoke begins to thin, until Aiden’s pulse evens out again. Slowly, he pulls his wrist away from me, moves past me and leans down to pick up the lantern, placing it my hand. “On,” he says, a dark command, and I flick the switch, watch him crouch down in the column of light to place his palm against the ring that had contained the fire. He moves around it methodically, making sure it’s cool all over. It looks as if he’s done this a hundred times, as if he belongs in a place like this—out in the woods, building and putting out fires and just like, leaving his testosterone all over the place. My skin flushes with heat, anticipation.
When he stands again, he looks right at me, light from the lantern casting the hard planes of his face in shadow. “Let’s go,” he says, and nudges me toward the trail.
* * * *
