“No.”
I glance up sharply, and our eyes meet. The moment stretches—quiet, loaded, intimate.
“Oh,” I say softly.
He looks away first this time. “It was Bob’s decision to give it to you now rather than pick it up outside the wards at Yellowstone.”
“Because?” I prompt.
“Because he’s a nosy bundle of old feathers who likes to gossip as much as the next cryptid.”
I snort.
His expression gentles as he peers down at me and clasps my hand. “It’s possibly also because I’ve never asked for a rune before, nor attended the Solstice Festival with anyone else before.”
Warmth blooms behind my ribs, equal parts gratitude and hope. It’s his own fault that I stand on my tiptoes and urge him down so I can press my lips to his.
He comes willingly, offering me the softest of kisses.
I swear this Bigfoot is going to be my undoing.
We spend the next hour talking through the mechanics as much as Boone can explain them—how runes are anchored to places, how some are portable, how they interact with ley lines and older magic threaded through the land. My brain is on fire in thebestway now, scribbling notes, drawing diagrams, already half drafting a paper I can never publish.
At some point, the light shifts again, deepening toward evening.
Boone rises to start camp, and I watch him move with a familiarity that would have startled me a couple of months ago. This feels… normal now. Comfortable.
When night finally settles and we curl up together again—me tucked against his side, his arm a solid, warm presence around me—I feel the question hovering in my chest.
Mates.
Is that a thing? With sasquatch? With Boone?
The idea makes my stomach flip.
I could ask. Ishouldask. Communication is healthy. This is how adults navigate relationships.
But what if itisa thing—and it’s not me?
Or worse, what if itisn’ta thing at all, and I sound needy and foolish and far too invested far too fast?
So I don’t ask.
Instead, I press closer, fitting myself against him like I belong there, and listen to his steady breathing as he looks up at the cloudless sky.
Night settles in layers.
First the obvious dark, the sky dimming from deep blue to velvet-black, stars pricking through in careless abundance. Then the subtler kind—the way sound softens, how the forest exhales as day-creatures retreat and night-things take their place.
Boone builds the fire without speaking, movements efficient and unshowy. I watch him from where I’ve spread my sleeping gear, my chin propped in my hands, the rune warm against my chest where I’ve tucked it beneath my shirt.
It hums faintly, like it’s pleased.
That thought should bother me more than it does.
Instead, my brain keeps circling back to Christopher’s smile. To the way he leaned against Bob like gravity worked differently around him. To eighty years lived and worn lightly, like a well-loved coat.
To choice.
