She watched it go.
I let her hand go. I climbed down off the rock and walked to the truck and pulled the bedroll out of the back—heavy canvas tarp, an old wool blanket on top. I kept it in the truck for occasional after-lunch naps. I carried it back to the rock and climbed up and spread it out across the flat surface, smoothing the corners.
She watched me do it. She didn’t say anything.
I sat down on the blanket. I held a hand out to her.
She took it. “Here?”
“Here.”
She looked out at the water. She looked at the trees. She looked back at me.
“No one comes down here?”
“No one knows it’s here.”
“And if someone did?”
“We’d hear the tires on gravel.”
She nodded.
I drew her toward me until she was kneeling on the blanket facing me, her knees touching mine, her hands resting in my hands. The light coming off the river was hitting her from the side and turning the brown of her eyes lighter than I’d noticed before. I lifted one hand and pulled the elastic out of her ponytail.
Her hair fell.
I’d been preparing myself for it since the road this morning. I still wasn’t prepared.
It was longer than I’d thought it would be. Past her shoulders. Wavy where the elastic had held it. It was the same warm brown as her eyes, and it caught the light from the river the same way the river caught the sun. I sat on the blanket with her elastic in my fingers and looked at her and forgot how to talk for a beat.
“Ross?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re staring.”
“I know.”
Her mouth twitched.
“You hide that beauty on purpose?” I asked.
“I don’t do anything with it on purpose.”
“That’s the problem. You don’t have to.”
She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, I’d already leaned in. I kissed her.
She made a small sound against my mouth, then settled into it. Her hands came up to my chest. She went warm and still under my hands, and I knew this was the part where I had to be the man who didn’t rush.
I’d never wanted to rush anything more in my life.
I broke off and looked down at her. I could feel her breathing. She was breathing fast.
“You okay?” I asked.
“Yes.”
