“Put me down?” I ask gently.
His arms tighten a fraction, as if the idea offends him.
Then, reluctantly, he nods and lowers me to the ground with exquisite care, making sure I’m steady on my feet before he lets go. My legs feel like jelly. I hope that doesn’t show too much.
“I’m getting a blanket,” I announce, partly because I want one and partly because I need a second to breathe without his mouth right there.
I retrieve the thick camp blanket from inside the station and spread it out on the flattest patch of ground near the grill. Boone watches me, still in his cryptid form, one huge hand resting lightly on the back of one of the chairs as if grounding himself.
I pat the blanket. “Come on. Sit with me.”
He hesitates.
“You want me like this?” he asks quietly.
It takes me a second to realize what he means. Then my chest aches all over again, but this time in a good way.
“Yes,” I say firmly. “Like this. Exactly like this.”
The last of the hesitation leaves his shoulders.
He crosses the distance in three long strides and lowers himself onto the blanket, folding into a cross-legged position. His knees take up a ridiculous amount of space. I drop down beside him, close enough that our shoulders touch. The contact sends a warm thrill through me.
I hand him a skewer. No fork this time. Just food and fingers and the easy intimacy of sharing.
He eats delicately for his size, stripping the pieces from the stick with more grace than I expected. We work through the rest of the meal like that—passing things back and forth, occasionally brushing fingers, trading small comments about which spice he likes and which vegetable he finds suspicious.
And we talk.
We talk about little things first. Stupid things. I tell him about the time I tried to impress a date by cooking and nearly set the oven on fire. He tells me about a raccoon that somehowmanaged to break into his cave three winters ago and rearranged his herbs.
“You have no idea how long it took to realize everything was alphabetized by smell,” he grumbles.
I laugh so hard I nearly choke on potato.
Bit by bit, the conversation shifts deeper.
He asks me about my family. I tell him more about Milo, about how we weren’t that close growing up and how we found our way back to each other once we both stopped pretending to be people we’re not. I tell him about the guilt that still lingers every time I go off-grid for too long and forget to check in.
He listens with that unnervingly focused attention, occasionally asking a quiet question that shows he’s actuallyhearingwhat I say, not just waiting to talk.
I ask him about solitude. About what it’s like to be the only one of his kind in this particular stretch of forest for long periods of time. He answers honestly—about the quiet, the peace, the occasional crushing loneliness he tries not to think too hard about. About the Monster Network and how ridiculous it sometimes gets, how much he complains and how much he secretly loves that everyone relies on him.
“You keep the lights on,” I say softly.
He huffs. “Something like that.”
At some point, without quite meaning to, I lean into him more fully. His arm shifts behind me, then settles, a massive, warm weight along my back. I curl closer, head resting lightly against the thick fur of his upper arm.
The stars come out overhead, bright against the dark bowl of the sky. The forest hums softly around us—crickets, the rustle of small animals, the distant hoot of an owl. The fire in the grill dies down to a faint glow.
I feel… content.
Ridiculously, impossibly content.
Like this is a scene from a life I didn’t realize I wanted, and now that I’m in it, some missing piece has clicked into place.
“I don’t want this night to end,” I admit quietly.
