Fear shouldn’t choke her.She’d struck out on her own before.She had resources, knowledge and skills.Choices.Agency.She’d made herself strong.
“Not a believer in fairy tales, then?”She could totally relate to the sneer in his voice.
“I don’t live my life in once upon a time.I make my own magic.”She dipped her toe further in the rapids just as two kayakers bobbed and furiously paddled by, and she kicked an arc of droplets that caught the sun back toward him.“How about you?”
*
The droplets prismedand rainbowed before falling around him.He’d been prepared for the move—she seemed like a playful woman, but he wasn’t expecting her to lose her balance.She’d moved so gracefully—like a dancer—during lunch and their walk.It was a particularly tricky section of the confluence.He’d navigated it hundreds of times, though he preferred mountain rivers or the ocean.
He hopped down, lunged across the distance to catch the waistband of her faded pink, flared jeans, pulling her flush with his body and angling back, hoping he didn’t have to sit on his ass to break her forward momentum.
“Oops,” she said breathily, and he felt her heart slam.
Her glasses had dislodged, and he caught them before they fell.He saw her pupils flare with alarm, so she hadn’t been testing him for a role as knight in shining armor—leaning into the fairy tale theme they both distrusted.
“Looks like you’re ably playing the part of prince today.”She sounded breathless, not as cool as she was pretending.
“Cam’s more suitable in that role.I’d be wildly miscast.”
The loss hit him again.But so did her scent—spice and citrus and something that felt familiar, but he couldn’t place it.The feel of her body woke up something he didn’t know slumbered.
“Same.I’m no princess and would make a lousy fairy.”
He looked down into her spectacular eyes.Felt like he stood on a figurative precipice now that they were both out of the river’s touch.
Jump.
Cam’s voice urged Telford to an action he didn’t want to take, though he knew eventually he’d have to.He couldn’t stop living because Cam had.That wouldn’t serve his friend, and though he hadn’t had time to promise anything to Cam as he lay dying, Cam had stared up at him, trusting him until his last breath.
His next steps might feel impossible, but this woman might just be the catalyst.
Like nitroglycerin.
But playing it safe hadn’t earned him a partnership with Cam, who’d been brilliant but reckless, and sometimes self-destructive.Always wanting to chase something new.Nothing held his interest for long.Would a wife have changed that?
“So not a fairy tale, for us,” he mused.
“There is no us,” she said definitively.
Yethovered on his lips.He managed to bite it back.
Where the hell did that come from?
“If we continue to play two truths and a lie…”
“We weren’t playing really.”She raised that one brow again.“I hijacked and instead asked you questions.”
“My turn.What do you want to happen next?”
That seemed to catch her off guard.He relaxed into the moment, feeling more in control, and experiencing that… buzz when he knew he was about to close a deal.
“Tell me your name.”He’d thought about this since they’d sat down to lunch that they’d barely had a chance to eat.He definitely owed her a meal, which meant more time together.
“Ayana.”
Beautiful.Unusual like her.
“The origin is Swahili and means wildflower.”
