"It's not free," he says, smiling up at me. "There's a trail tax. First, a kiss."
"Happy to pay," I reply as he stands up and pulls me close for a sweet, yet intense, kiss.
When our lips part, he opens his eyes and holds my gaze. His is playful. "Plus one square of the s'mores chocolate."
"You're easy. After today, I would've given you the whole bar."
"I'd rather have more of you." He kisses me again, slower this time, then brings his hand down on my ass with a light smack. "Let's get down off this mountain."
He leads the way, and my boots, which two weeks ago were archaeology, carry me comfortably down the mountain. Somewhere in the past, a version of me bought these for reasons I no longer remember and buried them in a closet. I owe her an apology and possibly flowers.
We descend, tired but happy. Finn loads the Jeep with the tent and all our gear, then we head for the highway, and I watch the ridgeline shrink in the side mirror until a curve takes it.
Every mile toward Mattichogue is a mile toward Monday, and we both know it. He takes my hand on top of the gearshift and holds on slightly too tight for a man just resting his hand there. I hold back slightly too tight for a woman just letting him, and for a hundred miles neither of us adjusts the grip.
Then the trees open up and the Mattichogue water tower swings into view, silver legs and faded letters, standing where it's stood my whole life, and my heart does the thing it's been doing since the waterfall. The thing I keep pretending it doesn't do.
It's falling deeper. Irretrievably deeper.
Finn's hand tightens on mine at the exact moment the tower clears the trees.
So he's pretending too.
Twelve more minutes before he drops me at my apartment and real life begins again.
Neither of us lets go.
CHAPTER 29
FINN
The Jeep’s engine ticks as it cools outside the bookshop. Darcy stares ahead, silent. Neither of us moves to get out.
The Sunday evening shops on Main Street are dark, sidewalk empty, Mrs. Johnson's flower buckets pulled in behind the glass two doors down. Darcy's hand is still under mine on the gearshift, where it's been for a hundred miles. Her thumb moves once across my knuckles then goes still.
"I had a really great time, Finn."
"Yeah, me too."
She's looking at her own building through the windshield as if she needs to check the address. The streetlight gilds her profile. The line of her nose with its new sunburn. Her mouth. The soft, brown hair that I can still feel wrapped around my hand and silky against my cheek while she slept against me. I could sit here watching her not get out of my Jeep until the town wakes up for work.
I'm good at leaving. It might be the thing I'm best at. I've broken camp in a whiteout with fingers too numb to work the buckles. I've walked out of board meetings, base camps, entire countries without one look over my shoulder. Departure gatesrelax me. That's not a figure of speech. My pulse drops when they call boarding.
So this is new. The trip is over. The Jeep is parked. And the part of me that handles departures—the machinery that has run my whole life without a missed start—won't turn over. I'm sitting at a half-lit curb in Mattichogue with no boarding call anywhere in my body and nowhere on earth I'd rather be.
Sticking around was never the expensive option before. I'm getting my first honest look at the price. Merritt is still out west waiting on an answer I keep not giving them. The parcels are assembled, there's another buyer circling Breckenridge, and a table of investors wants me standing on that land for the next several years of my life.
Everything I've built points in that direction. Hell, I aimed it there on purpose, starting at seventeen, on a ledge Darcy and I just drove down from.
The woman beside me lives up one flight of stairs on this street. It feels like a summit I'm afraid to approach.
God, if Wyatt or the other guys at The Retreat could see me now. The instigator of the Last Billionaire Standing wager, parked at the curb with his heart in his hand, stalling the inevitable.
Even I have to admit the irony is funny. It should be funnier than it is.
"Come on," I say, giving her hand a squeeze before I let it go. "Let's get you home."
I'm out and around the hood before she can touch her door handle.
