Chapter Nineteen
CHAPTER NINETEEN
T HE NEXT MORNING , he was feeling a mix of emotions over last night’s admissions. He felt wrung out. Lighter in some ways. Angry in others. He scrambled up some eggs in a frying pan over the fire, in preparation for the trek back down, and when she emerged, she looked like she hadn’t slept.
“Good morning,” he said. He was feeling short and grumpy, and he knew it might not even actually be real. Just his stupid brain.
“Good morning.”
She moved over to him, and reached out and took his hand. Then she put her hand on his cheek. Her eyes were searching as she looked at his face. And then she did something completely unexpected. She stretched up on her toes, her fingertips still pressed against his cheekbone, and kissed him.
It was hesitant. Soft. Almost featherlight, and he should’ve let her leave it at that. Should’ve let her pull away, but without even thinking, he wrapped his arm tight around her waist and pulled her body up against his. With his free hand, he gripped her chin and pressed his mouth hard to hers.
He’d said all that to her and she wanted to kiss him. The roar that went through his veins was like a triumph. Like a battle cry. He parted her lips with his tongue and tasted her. She gasped, her hands going to his shoulders as she held on to him tightly.
She wasn’t pulling away.
He kept hold of her face, his other arm tight like a vice.
And he kissed her.
It had been years since he’d kissed anyone.
Years since he’d been touched.
He hadn’t realized how much he missed it. How much he was starving for it.
And it felt right that it was Rory.
Even though he never would’ve said that if he’d been asked weeks ago.
But she wasn’t a kid now.
Not even close.
She made a small noise, and it was like that sound penetrated the fog of arousal rattling around his skull.
He released his hold on her and took a step back, breathing like he had just run a marathon or climbed the damn mountain.
“Oh,” she said.
“Sorry,” he said. “That was probably more than you bargained for. I... I lost control.” He just looked at her beautiful face. How could he not lose control? He couldn’t be himself around her.
Or maybe this was himself now. More of a beast than a man.
Driven by elemental need.
“I’m good,” she said. “I promise. I’m not upset. I...” She took a step toward him and touched his face again. Like he was a spooked horse and she was trying to still him. “I wanted to do that last night. But... I did feel that maybe there was another conversation that had to go with that.”
“And what’s that?”
“I’ve never been kissed before.”
Everything in him went still. “What?”
“I’ve never been kissed before. I had a huge crush on you, and then I was shamed for it. Then my dad left and devastated my mother, confirming for me that men were maybe trash. Then I tried to get a kiss in college, and I was just humiliated. So I have a very bad track record, and I kind of gave up. But that was why it was on my list. It wasn’t just about getting a kiss in front of people. It was about actually getting a kiss finally. And not being traumatized by my past. Not carrying that forward with me into my new life.”
“Rory...”
“I’m a virgin, obviously. I would like to not be. Before I leave. I...”
He gripped her chin again, needing her to look at him, needing her to hold still. “Honey,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not asking me to—”
“If you don’t want to, that’s fine.”
She looked small and sad and hurt, and he knew she thought he didn’t want her, but that wasn’t the issue. Not even close.
“I should not be anyone’s first time. Not yours most of all.”
“Why not me most of all? Is there really something wrong with me?”
“No,” he said fiercely, “there has never been anything wrong with you. You have always been the sweetest, most delightful part of my day here. Always. But there is something wrong with me. I can’t do a relationship. I can’t. I fucked that up so many different ways. And I just want... I can’t do another crutch.”
“I’m leaving,” she said, looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was. “I was never looking for a relationship here. But you know I realized when I went out with Mike... By the way, Mike is one of the guys who made fun of me and made photocopies of my diary.”
He took a step back. “You went on a date with that guy ?”
“I don’t know, I thought it might be healing. Or cathartic. But at the end of the day, I realized that I couldn’t kiss somebody just because I wanted to get a kiss. And I couldn’t sleep with somebody just because I wanted to feel like I had won some game. Like I’d beaten the level that I was stuck on in middle school. I want you. Being with you this past week has made it very clear to me what desire is. And that kiss... I think you melted the soles of my shoes. I just want you. And I feel like if you could be my first...”
“I don’t want to help you become a legend by letting you wave bloody sheets around in my name,” he said, suddenly feeling irritated when he didn’t have a right to be.
He was telling her flat out they couldn’t have a relationship, so why did it piss him off to hear her say the same? That she just wanted sex. Sex was all he had to offer, and dammit, he’d been celibate for too long. It wasn’t like he didn’t think he’d ever have it again. He was so hard right now he thought he might die of it.
He wanted this woman.
But he didn’t want to be a notch in her belt because of who he was to the town.
“Nobody needs to know. I realized something else after I climbed this mountain. After you told me all the things you did. I don’t need anyone to know. I don’t need them to know anything about me. I’m the only one that needs to know. What I want is to go into my new life with confidence that I’m strong enough to do it. I don’t want to regret anything. I wanted to kiss you, so I did, and it has nothing to do with a list. You asked me what I wanted to get out of this hike. I wanted to finish. That was it. Ask me what I want to get out of being with you.”
“What do you hope to get?” he asked, his voice low and raspy. “What do you think it’s going to get you, to let me lay you down in my bed and strip your clothes off you? To...to let me have you. What do you think that’s going to get you? Me, a junkie ex-soldier whose wife left him.”
He waited for her desire to turn to disgust. It didn’t. Instead, she drew closer to him, and he felt air rush out of his lungs in a gust.
“I want to,” she said. “I want to be with you. That’s it. That’s the beginning and end. Trying to scare me away. You’re doing that thing.”
He frowned. “I’m not doing anything. It’s me. This is just me.”
“Snowy plover,” she said softly.
“That only works when I’m not trying to be an asshole.”
“Are you trying to be? Are you trying to push me away?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Because I think you might need to be pushed away.”
She shook her head. “I told you. What I want is just to be with you. To have the experience. Don’t you just want that for a minute? To just feel good? Up here on this mountain, you make me feel beautiful. I’ve never felt pretty in my life.”
“Fuck everyone that made you feel like there was something wrong with you, Rory Sullivan. I want all those things. The only thing holding me back is the fear that I could hurt you. I’ve already hurt too many people. If Lydia and my mother knew about my substance abuse and the time I spent on the street...”
“What’s between us is between us,” she said.
“My sister is your best friend.”
“ You’re my friend.”
He’d had no idea how much he needed to hear somebody say that. How far that went in healing some damaged place inside him. Because his friend from the military, who had never checked on him again, was marrying his ex-wife.
It wasn’t Cassidy getting married that hurt. It was the way that whole group, that whole life, had rearranged itself without him, and done so effortlessly.
No one needed him. They didn’t even want him. Didn’t even miss him.
He was human. That sucked.
“Let’s get the camp packed up,” he said.
“Are you saying...?”
“I’m not saying anything just yet. We’ve got a mountain to climb.”
T HEY GOT CAMP packed up, and headed back down. Rory didn’t have time to be shocked and embarrassed by her own behavior because she was nervous about the narrow section of the trail again. She did try to make it as much as possible without actually physically clinging to him.
She couldn’t decide then, after they got on the wide portion of the trail that didn’t scare her, whether or not she was proud of herself or horrified.
She had gone for what she wanted. She had woken up with the burning need to kiss him like she hadn’t done last night. And when he had tightened his hold on her, and taken the kiss deeper, she’d been lost.
And she’d known exactly what she wanted.
Gideon needed to be her first.
Her only.
She ignored that whispered thing inside her.
She wasn’t going to be naive. Or that silly. She wasn’t thirteen. She knew that kissing somebody, sleeping with them, didn’t mean it was going to be forever.
But she wanted him.
And it felt something like fate that they’d been brought here together. That he’d helped her climb that mountain, and shared everything he’d been through.
And maybe they were here for a reason. To help each other through the things that life had done to them.
Just maybe.
But now she was a little embarrassed. Also. In addition to being proud. Becoming a legend in your own mind was complicated. She had meant what she said.
She didn’t need anybody to know. It could always be a secret between the two of them, and it would be lovely.
Wonderful.
She wasn’t going to beg, though. There were lines. She couldn’t beg him. She had too much pride for that. She thought that maybe he wanted her.
There was just too much other stuff.
The way down was easier in some regards, a little bit harder in others, and she winced every time her toes hit the front of her boots. Especially when her brain decided to add a word to that little rhythm. When her foot hit the ground, then her toe hit the boot.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid.
Stupid for kissing him. Stupid for revealing herself that way.
She wanted to hide.
He had rejected her. And she had taken most of the hike to really, fully take that on board.
He didn’t want her.
Stupid.
They made it down to the truck, and he moved toward her like he was going to help unbuckle her pack. She did it quickly herself, even though when it fell off her shoulders, she almost fell backward.
Then she hefted it into the back of the truck on her own and got into the passenger seat.
He didn’t say anything as he took his own gear off and got into the truck, starting the engine.
He drove her back toward his house.
And the silence between them was so thick and painful she felt nearly dead of it.
He pulled his truck up next to her car, and when he turned the engine off, she scrambled to get out, but by the time her boots were on the ground, he was over there.
He looked at her for a long moment, and then he was moving, closing the distance between them, and he took her in his arms, kissing her like a savage thing. Wild and untamed, and beyond the kiss they had shared on the mountain.
She clung to him, to the front of his shirt, her heart beating hard as his tongue invaded her mouth, sliding against hers.
She didn’t know what she was doing, but she knew she wanted this. She wanted him.
The space between her thighs pulsed with need, and she could feel him, hard and insistent against her stomach as he continued to kiss her, deeper and deeper.
When they parted, her lips were swollen, the skin on her cheeks tender from being burned by his whiskers.
“Come inside,” he said.
“I would love to.”