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He gives me slow. Inch by careful inch until he’s seated deep and I’m full of him, breathing hard against his neck. The burn eases into something hotter, denser. He stays still, letting me adjust, kissing the side of my throat, my jaw, my open mouth.

“Touch yourself,” he says, voice low and certain. “Right here.” His hand guides mine between us. “Show me what feels good.”

I do. Fingers circling my clit while he begins to move—shallow at first, then deeper as the discomfort melts into heat. Every thrust presses me into the tree; bark scrapes my back, stars wheel above his shoulder, sawdust and pine and the wet sound of him inside me fill the quiet clearing.

I get louder again. Moans, broken yeses, his name. He answers with dirty, steady praise against my ear.

“That’s my girl. Take it. Let me hear how good it feels.”

“Wade—oh Wade⁠—”

“Don’t you dare quiet down. I want the whole mountain to know.”

The second orgasm builds slower, deeper, rolling up from where we’re joined. I dig my heels into his back, fingers frantic on my clit, and when it breaks, I come with a raw, open cry that echoes off the trees.

He follows a few thrusts later, burying himself deep, a long broken groan against my neck, holding me like he’ll never let the ground have me again.

We stay locked together under the cut sky, breathing hard, his heart hammering against my chest, my legs still trembling around him. The stars keep shining through the hole he made just for this.

Finally, we settle on the ground, Wade’s flannel around my bare shoulders and him flat on his back beside me. Neither of us has said anything in a long time, and for once the quiet is a thing we’re both just resting in.

His shirt still smells of pine and woodsmoke. It’s clutched to my chest, one of his arms folded under my head, and above us, the window he cut in the forest is packed edge to edge with stars. A satellite crawls across the top of the gap.

Somewhere down the mountain, the strip’s gone dark, everyone home, everyone asleep. The whole town not knowing that a girl who’s spent her life being told she’s too much just found the one person on earth who told her to be louder.

“You’re smiling,” he says.

He isn’t looking at me. He can just feel it, apparently.

“I’m allowed.”

“Didn’t say stop.” His hand finds my hip under the flannel, settles there, warm and heavy and sure. “Say it. Whatever it is. You’ve got a face full of it.”

“I’m thinking that I open in about seven hours,” I say, “and I have never in my life cared less about being responsible and boring.”

The rumble of his laugh goes through his whole chest and into my ear where it’s pressed against him. A real one. I’ve earned maybe two of those in three days and I intend to earn a great many more.

“I’ll walk you home,” he says, not moving, making no attempt to walk me anywhere. “In a minute.”

“In a minute,” I agree.

We stay. The stars wheel a slow degree over the gap he cut. I lie in the sawdust in a quiet man’s flannel and I let myself, for once, believe the good thing all the way, no joke stationed in front of it, no exit mapped. Just his arm under my head and his hand on my hip and the sky he opened up so I could see what was behind it.

“Thank you for the sky,” I murmur.

He turns his head. Presses his mouth to my hair. Says nothing at all.

I hear every word of it.

8

WADE

Iwalk Nikki home at midnight and it takes an hour, because neither of us wants the walk to end.

Her place is three streets back from Prospect, a rented half of a house with a porch light she left on. We stop at the bottom of her steps and she turns in against me, forehead to my sternum. I stand there in the cold with both arms around her and feel the whole day settle into my chest and stay.

“This is the part where you say something quiet and devastating,” she says into my shirt, “and I fall asleep thinking about it and burn my first batch tomorrow.”