"Absolutely not."
"Didn't think so." I shifted my hips and her laugh dissolved into something else entirely, her head tipping back, throat exposed to the February sun.
The creek moved below us, fast and cold. The horses stood quiet in the shade, completely indifferent to us by now. The sky was that thin winter blue, the same one she'd told me she'd never seen before, growing up an hour away and never looking at it right.
She was looking now. Eyes closed, face turned up to the light, both hands in my hair.
I watched her and moved and let myself have it—all of it, the way she felt and the sounds she made and the specific warmth of afternoon sun on her skin and the fact that tomorrow we'd be on a film set and everything would have structure and call sheets and other people, and right now there was none of that. Just the creek and the horses and the blanket and her.
"Sawyer." My name in her mouth, that particular way she said it when she was close—not performing, not playing, just her. Just Daniela.
"I've got you," I said.
"I know." Her hands tightened in my hair. "I know you do."
I reached between us and her breath caught and her hips lifted to meet me and I felt her start to shake.
"Look at me," I said.
She opened her eyes.
"Stay with me."
"I'm here." Her hands slid to my face, held it. "I'm right here."
Something cracked open in my chest—the same thing that had cracked open at the picnic table three days ago when she'd said I thought about you the whole time into the cold morning air like it cost her something to admit.
It had cost her something. I knew that. I knew who she was before all this—the control she kept, the performance, the careful management of everything she let herself want.
She wasn't managing anything right now.
"I love you," I said. Quiet. Into her face.
Her eyes went bright.
"I love you," she said back. Immediate. Like she'd been waiting for the right moment to say it again and this was it—sun and creek water and a wool blanket and my weight over her and all of it.
I kissed her and she arched up into me and I drove deeper and she broke apart with her fingers twisted in my hair and my name on her mouth and her heels pulling me in like she wasn't ready to let go of a single second of this.
I followed her over with my face pressed to her throat, her name in my mouth, both hands gripped in the blanket on either side of her.
We lay there.
The creek kept moving. A bird called from the cedar on the far bank, sharp and once. Redbird lifted his head from the water trough and looked at us with the weary patience of an animal who had seen everything and had opinions about none of it.
Daniela's fingers were still in my hair. Moving, slow, the way she touched things she was paying attention to.
"Last day," she said. Quiet.
"Last day," I said.
Neither of us moved.
The sun was warm on my back. Underneath me she was warm everywhere. I propped up on one elbow and looked down at her—loose and sun-warm, the flannel half off her shoulder, the creek light catching in her eyes.
"It's not going away," I said. "Whatever this is. It doesn't stop when we're on set."
She looked at me for a long moment.
