“Oh, okay, Wordy McBigword. If you say so.” They’re both whispering, but it feels like shouting.
“I do say so,” he says, taking a step toward her. “I wasn’t talking aboutmyfeelings. I meant yours, Ripley. I wanted us to stop beforeyourfeelings grew deeper.”
“Thefuck,James.” She presses her palms to her forehead. “Literally, what the fuck. Am I not good enough for you? There’s nothing someone like me can offer someone like you, so you’re planning to go back to Oxford and wait until the feelings pass?”
He catches one hand, pulls it away from her face. “No,” he growls. “You are never to think that. You areeverythingto me, Ripley. Everything.”
“If I’meverything”—she makes the word sound maudlin and overdone so she won’t cry—“why are you pushing me away when there’s no one here but us? What’s the problem, James?”
“What’s the problem?” He looks skyward with an incredulous laugh. “The problem is that when you love something, Ripley Adams, you love it with your whole heart. You never walk away. Notever.You could’ve become a librarian or statistician, like your classmates. You could have gone to work for the Black Hills Institute, scoutingT. rexesfor a finder’s fee. They would’ve sent a team to Yellowtail Ranch and hacked Beauty out of the hillside in one week flat.
“But you didn’t. You’re here doing the thing you love and taking care of the father you love. You were looking for your dreams, and you’ve bloody well found them.
“So what happens if you come to have feelings for me, Ripley?Not that you would. That’s arrogant of me. Unbearably conceited. Wishful thinking, at best,” he says in a hoarse rasp. “But if you did, that would tear you apart. Because you can’t havethis”—he gestures between them—“andyour work,andyour father. I don’t presume you would choose me over them. In fact, I would not allow it, because I cannot, cannot be to you what my father was to my mother.
“But having to make that choice would hurt you. If you loved me,” he says, his whisper dying over the last words.
His body slackens, losing its fire. He looks away, out the front window of the cabin, where the waning crescent moon shines over the canyon.
God, she loves him. She loves him for never compromising. For always putting others before himself. For thinking through what things will mean and taking decisive action even when it hurts him to do it. She loves him for never, ever asking how long her dad is expected to survive or where she might be willing to live after his death.
She steps forward, reaching for the hand that lies loosely against his thigh. She curls her hand under his, her fingers whispering across his palm. “If I loved youback,you mean. If we loved each other.”
“Don’t,” he says, the word raw. “Don’t say that word, I beg you. I can still leave. It’s not too late; I can—”
“Itistoo late,” she says, and he takes a breath like a sob. “It’s too late. I have feelings already, and so do you. There’s no way to avoid the pain, James. It’s going to happen no matter what we do. The only choice we have now is whether to reach for the joy too.”
“There’s so little time,” he says, like he can’t quite believe it. “How can this be what’s meant to happen?” He pulls her hands to his stomach, runs her palms up his chest, and drapes her armsover his shoulders. Her back bows where his arms loop around her waist. He lowers his face, closing his eyes when his forehead kisses hers.
“I don’t know,” she says. “But I think…I think we’re lucky, James. Some people have regrets because they would have done things differently if they’d known the end was coming. But wedoknow. We can do anything we want with the time we have. So what do you want?”
There’s a moment of stillness where every possible future comes into focus, one after another after another, shifting like the kaleidoscope in his eyes.
“I want so many things,” he says. “I want everything.”
“Me too,” she says.
And he lets her pull him down.
30
Every time James kisses her, it’s different.
He gave her urgency in the rain and slow, agonizing precision in the museum. This time, when they’re surrounded by the slumbering camp, it’s a breathless, silent secret.
He unzips her hoodie, puts his mouth to the places he’s revealed. The night air is velvety against her neck where his lips have been; the moon spills pale light over his dark hair and uncompromising cheekbones. He drifts his trembling knuckles down the tender skin of her chest, then over the thin pink cotton that doesn’t at all disguise the peaks of her nipples.
He slides his hand inside the hoodie and runs into bare skin below her shoulder. He jerks his fingers back like a boy who’s accidentally gotten a handful of boob.
“It’s what I wear on hot nights,” she says, showing him where she’s cut the collar and sleeves off a bargain-bin tourist T-shirt. It’s comfortable, but the coverage isn’t reliable. She doesn’t usually wear it unless she’s alone.
She wore it tonight, though.
James’s hand returns to the ragged cotton edge of the makeshift tank top. His fingers rub the curled-up fabric before slidinginside to circumscribe the wide, deep armholes, which she cut almost down to her navel.
“Sweet Christ, Ripley.”
His voice cracks the way it might have when he was a teenager, and she suddenly wishes for that past James with a ferocity that takes her by surprise. She’s greedy for every moment of his life. She wants her own past self to have comforted a young, sad, lost James. Years from now, she wants to take the face of an older, distinguished, still-handsome man between her palms and kiss him good morning. She wants seven generations of a family that includes both of them.
