38. Paige
38
Paige
I couldn’t have asked for a better trip to Yellowstone.
Mainly because Rhodes was with me to experience it.
We drove to Yellowstone Lake to stay at the campground I booked for a night, exploring and hiking nearby. Last night, he cooked me hot dogs and macaroni over my single burner camp stove because it’s all the small convenience store had when we stopped to see the Old Faithful geyser.
We fell asleep that night after he stole my breath with another visit between my thighs. When I continued to hear very suspicious noises outside, he got up to check every lock on the door, pet Cleo who refused to leave her cat bed, and climbed back in bed with me. He pulled my back to his chest and massaged my arm, shoulder, and hip until I was crawling on top of him again.
I forgot all about the noises.
This morning, I made us cereal—okay, prepared—before we took off in the van.
On our way to the Lamar Valley, we saw a mama bear and her two cubs climbing an embankment near the road. The cars in front of us totally missed them, and Rhodes almost did, too, but my scream helped.
They were adorable and utterly unimpressed with us, thankfully.
Later that afternoon, after seeing the largest bison herd in the valley, we circled our way back to Mammoth Hot Springs around dinner time. There weren’t as many people on the winding wood plank pathways leading to the top, giving us ample room to play tag like we were kids again. I won since I bent him backward over a visitor sign to get him and then thoroughly distracted him with our hundredth kiss in an hour.
He held my hand the entire way down, pulling me in to steal kisses and remind me exactly what he could do with that mouth of his. I’m a wanting mess by the time we reach the small parking lot.
“Should we go to the visitor’s center?” he asks, starting up the van.
I buckle in and shake my head. “I want to go to our next spot. Now.”
His smile lifts, then turns into a sly grin. “Where to?”
I smile, knowing he’s going to love this. “Thirst Trapp Farms.”
He peers at me as we head through the small town of Mammoth toward the park's North entrance in Gardiner. “Say that again.”
“Thirst Trapp Farms.”
He gives me a questioning look.
“I found them on social media a couple days ago and booked it on Experiences R Us. It’s a working farm that has cabins to stay in, but they also added a few water and electric hookups for vans or RVs,” I explain. “There are also things you can do there like horseback riding, cow hugging, hiking, etc.”
“Sounds like an adventure.” He steals my hand from my lap even if he has to reach across the wide cavern between our seats to do it.
Wait until he sees what kinds of adventures they have there.
“What about Constance? Is she meeting up with us today?” I ask him.
“She texted this morning saying that family is driving her to the airport on their way to Norris Hot Springs.”
“They’re what?” My sister has lost her mind.
I almost didn’t believe her yesterday when I used Rhodes’ phone to call her. She apparently agreed to continue traveling with them until I realized this family put her up in her own hotel room after giving them a sob story about her husband running off with his mistress after he stole her wallet.
I don’t know how we’re related.
“Don’t ask me,” he says. “Constance lives in a realm I’ve never visited.”
We both laugh, and I ask, “How’d she get a ticket home if her husband— ex -husband—stole her wallet?”
“Your Mom and Dad, I’m sure.”
I shake my head at this, wanting to call my parents and tell them to stop picking up her messes, but I don’t because boundaries exist inside me now. They need to figure out their own stuff.
Rhodes’ eyes are on the road, shaking his head when I peer over. The sharp line of his jaw is covered in a five o’clock shadow that would likely knick my fingers if I traced it. The inside of my thighs are already marked with a slight rash because of it. I not so secretly love it. And some of his hair falls over his forehead despite his multiple attempts to push it back; finger tracks run through the rest of his hair.
“Rhodes.” I startle us both.
He looks at me with those two hazel eyes that sometimes have gold flecks and other times look more green. “Yeah?”
“What happens now?”
He doesn’t answer the literal version of my question with we’re going to grab dinner or we’re driving to that farm . No. Instead, he answers the other twenty questions behind this one.
“I’m going to ask you to be my girlfriend, and then we’re never going to get enough of each other even though we’ll try our damndest every day. We’re going to spend time with each other like we did before, but it will probably involve more kissing…” he swings his gaze to me, “and other things. We’ll have dinner at your family’s house, sometimes mine, and you can stay over at my place since Constance will likely torment both of us if we stay at yours.”
I laugh because he’s absolutely right about all of this.
“We’ll live our lives…together.”
I lean my head back and keep looking at him, studying the ways his love shows up on his face. “I like the sound of all that.”
He squeezes my hand.
He’s already looking back at the road and doesn’t see my smile drop. “And what about my career? My livelihood? What am I supposed to do about that?”
“Whatever you want.”
I shake my head and then look forward. “What if it isn’t in Washington?”
He’s quiet for a beat. “Then we don’t live in Washington.”
“We?”
He looks at me for longer stretches while navigating the many turns in front of us. “Paige, yes. I’m in this now. Together. With you. There isn’t another person I want to spend forever with. I would put a ring on your finger today, put a baby inside you, move to Timbuktu, or live in your parent’s basement. I would do any of it as long as we’re doing it together.”
I swallow the lump in my throat that rises at his words. “You’d do that?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation, just one word that sends pure fire through me. He doesn’t have to do this. We could start off slow or maybe backtrack a little since we’ve already jumped pretty far in this short span of time. But he doesn’t seem bothered by that. He isn’t afraid of commitment like some of my other boyfriends were. He’s sure about me, and that changes everything.
He is what my heart has needed.
“Pull over.”
He double-takes. “What?”
“Pull the van over.”
He must see something in my steely gaze because he does what I say. The van isn’t fully in park before I’m climbing out of my seat and into his lap. I honk the horn with my ass, but the seat is already pushed back as far as it can go because of his long legs.
I cradle his face with my hands. “I want forever with you, too.”
He frames my hips with his hands and tugs me closer over his lap. “I’ll do whatever I have to in order to keep you in my life. If that means being friends with you until my last breath, I’d do it. But if it means having you in my bed—since yours is much shorter than mine—holding you whenever I want, kissing you…” he shakes his head, “I won’t ask for anything more in my whole life as long as I get this— you .”
My mouth crushes against his, swallowing the you he barely finished saying. I kiss him with all of the heat and pressure that has built in my body. With teeth and frantic hands. It’s my fingers scraping through his hair this time, tugging him closer as he makes a mess out of me yet again. But I don’t care. I prefer it. I crave being undone like this with him because he was right: he’s my safe place. The man who somehow makes me feel protected from miles away, who would travel by pack mule, Chevy Spark, or skateboard to get to me.
“I love you so much, Rhodes.” My confession is spoken between hip rolls and clashing tongues, but I want him to hear it, so I say it again, louder this time. “I love you.”
“God, I love you, too,” he repeats, twining his hands in my hair as he angles my mouth even more.
He thrusts up against me, and I gasp against his mouth. “More.”
He does it again, and I savor how sensitive I am, even with all of our clothes still on. My temperature rises, and I peel my shirt off between his hot kisses. His mouth is on the skin of my chest before I’ve untangled my arms.
“You’re so beautiful,” he breathes between the valley of my breasts.
Hands clutching my hips, he helps me ride his lap until both of us are gasping and sloppy.
“Should we move this to the back?” he says, reaching to unbuckle his seatbelt.
I hadn’t even realized it was still on, but I shake my head. “Right here.”
His eyes darken, narrowing on me as though I’m the only thing he wants.
And when he lets me stand to shimmy out of my shorts and underwear on the side of the road, mooning nature through the windshield, unbuckling his jeans and slipping them past his hips, he doesn’t take his eyes off me. When I rip open a condom wrapper we miraculously found in the last store we visited with my teeth and slide it down his shaft, he blinks but keeps his wanting gaze on mine.
And when I crawl back over his lap, sinking down over his hard length, taking every inch of him until we are deliciously joined, he never looks away.
We move together, meeting each other’s alternating thrusts and making up the difference when the other person is overcome by the pure headiness of this moment.
I think I know what it means to find myself.
It isn’t linear, fitting into a neat little timeline. It isn’t a puzzle you figure out and finish. And it isn’t meant to discover alone.
It’s the willingness to open yourself to the possibilities, to vulnerability, to love.
I don’t know how I missed this before, but I can see myself in the reflection of Rhodes’ eyes—the beauty and the shortcomings.
I see him.
I see me.
I see us .