Chapter 20
AREK
Saturdays came with anticipation ever since I’d developed the habit of driving up a mountain to see a man I couldn’t stop thinking about. But this Saturday was different, and the difference hummed under my skin like a low-grade electrical current.
We’d kissed.
Would there be more kissing? I was all in favor of more kissing. A lot more kissing.
The boys were at the Marsh house for the weekend.
Tyler had invited Kace for a camping trip in the Marshes’ backyard, which involved a tent, a fire pit, and an amount of junk food that made my professional self shudder.
Jules had been invited too and had, to my genuine surprise, accepted.
He’d packed his sleeping bag and three books and given me a look on his way out the door that spoke volumes.
“Have fun, Dad,” he’d said, with the faintest emphasis on fun that could’ve been my imagination but really wasn’t.
So I was driving up Bear Creek Road on a Saturday morning with an overnight bag in the passenger seat—just in case, I’d told myself, which was a lie so transparent it wouldn’t have fooled Kace, let alone Jules.
The May air that came in through my open windows was warm and sweet with pine.
With every turn and curve, the current in my blood buzzed louder, stronger.
Mac and I had seen each other twice since the phone call with Boden.
Last Sunday, for the second coat of paint with Jules, which had been warm and domestic.
And with Jules only ten feet away, Mac had pulled me into the shadow of the eaves and kissed me with a thoroughness that had left me bracing against the siding.
The second time had been when he’d passed me on Main Street, on his way to Collins.
We’d both been driving and had only had time to raise our hands at each other, but I had felt his gaze for hours after.
We’d texted, and the texts had gotten warmer, more frequent, occasionally edging into a territory that made me lock my phone screen when the boys were nearby. An understanding was building between us, though none of it had a label yet. I didn’t need a label, I told myself. Another transparent lie.
Mac was on the porch, which was expected. What wasn’t expected was the table. As I walked up, I could see all the details, and my stomach went all fluttery.
He’d dragged the dining table from inside onto the porch and set it for two.
Plates, actual cloth napkins, a mason jar with wildflowers—purple lupine and white yarrow, the kind that grew along the trails—and a cast-iron skillet sitting on a trivet with something in it that smelled so good my stomach audibly responded.
Mac was leaning against the porch railing with his arms crossed and a look on his face that I’d describe as carefully nonchalant if I didn’t know that Mac didn’t have a nonchalant bone in his body.
“You cooked,” I said.
“I cook every day.”
“You set a table. With flowers.”
“They were growing by the trail. It’s not a thing.”
“It’s absolutely a thing.”
“Are you going to stand there analyzing the table setting, or are you going to come eat?”
I climbed the steps and stood in front of him.
He was in a clean Henley—black this time, which did things to his silver hair and his blue eyes that I couldn’t process on a full stomach, let alone an empty one.
His hair was combed. The leather jacket was nowhere in sight, just the shirt stretched across his shoulders and chest. It did a lot of work, that Henley.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hi.” The corner of his mouth did the thing, the almost-smile that I’d learned to read as genuine pleasure.
I kissed him. Right there on the porch, in the morning light, standing up with my hands on his chest and his arms uncrossing to settle on my waist. A brief kiss, warm and firm, and when I pulled back, his eyes were soft in a way that still startled me every time—the granite gone, the blue clear and unguarded.
“The flowers are a really nice touch,” I said.
“Let’s eat.”
He’d made a frittata—eggs, potatoes, onions, peppers, plenty of cheese, and some of the herbs from his garden—and it was perfect, every bite a delight for my taste buds. We ate on the porch with the valley below and the coffee hot and the May morning unfolding around us like a gift.
“What do you want to do today?” I asked him.
“What do you want to do?”
I wanted to spend all day in bed with him, but I kept that to myself. “I’ve been inside all week, so maybe we could go for a hike?”
He immediately nodded. “We can hike to the falls. Did you bring your boots?”
I had brought them, knowing Mac would most likely say yes. Once breakfast was done and we’d cleared everything away, I got changed.
Mac took the lead, as always, and I was content to watch him. I’d been watching him for weeks, but it felt different now. I was staring at him with permission, with acknowledgment, without the filter of “He’s straight, stop looking.”
His forearms in the pushed-up sleeves, the way his shoulders moved under the Henley.
The lean, efficient lines of his body, built not for show but for function, every muscle earned through labor.
The scar on his left forearm, pale and jagged, that I still didn’t know the story of.
The silver hair at his temples catching the light.
He caught me looking. Twice. The first time, he looked over his shoulder, held my gaze for a beat, and then turned his head again and continued walking.
But something shifted in his posture, like a heightened awareness, a frequency change.
The second time, he stopped and looked at me with an expression that was so direct, so stripped of artifice, that my skin went hot from my chest to my hairline.
“You’re staring,” he said.
“Yes. I like looking at you, Mac.”
His expression softened, and I stood still as he stepped in. I barely dared to blink as he cupped my right cheek in his rough hand, then leaned in and pressed a soft, lingering kiss on my lips. Oh, it would take me a while to get used to being allowed to kiss him.
“Thank you,” he whispered, and I smiled at him.
We didn’t say much as we hiked, but we didn’t need to. The silence between us was more than okay. It filled me, brought calm and peace to my head that I hadn’t felt in forever.
At the falls, we stood on the rock shelf.
The thundering sound of the water made conversation impossible, but we didn’t need words.
Mac put his arm across my shoulders, pulling me against his side, and I leaned into him and felt the solid warmth of his body along the length of mine.
We stood there for a long time, the water falling and the mist drifting. Everything was all right.
We hiked a little back to find a spot to sit and eat the snacks I’d packed in my backpack. With two always-hungry teenage boys, I carried food with me everywhere.
“Boden has been texting back,” Mac said, leaning his back against a tree trunk as he munched on an apple.
“That’s good.”
“He’s curious.”
“About you?”
“Yeah, but also in general. He likes to know how things work, he told me.”
“Well, that should sound familiar.”
Mac took another bite of his apple. “I didn’t want him to be like me, you know? Thought he’d be happier if he took after his mom.”
This man. He kept breaking my heart in a million ways, yet my love for him only grew. “What is she like? How did you guys meet?”
“I served with her brother. She came to an Airborne event and we hit it off. To this day, I don’t know what she saw in me.
She’s smart and funny and she was always way out of my league.
She was a family lawyer back then, but now she’s a law professor at a community college.
She’s…” He threw up his hands in a helpless gesture.
“She’s truly wonderful. Our divorce was all me.
She would’ve stood by me if I hadn’t left, even after…
” He swallowed. “Even after what I did to her. I didn’t deserve her. ”
I understood what he was saying, yet it didn’t sit well with me. “Why not? Why don’t you deserve someone wonderful and special?”
He stared at the ground for a long, long time, but I let him gather his thoughts. There was no rushing Mac. Finally, he looked up at me, his eyes full of pain. “I’m not there yet, Arek. I don’t believe that I could be worthy of you.”
I heard what he was saying. “Yet.”
He nodded. “Yet.”
I reached for his hand, and after a brief hesitation, he took it, and I threaded our fingers together. “Tell me more about Boden.”
And Mac did. Haltingly, sometimes, but raw and honest, and then, finally, smiling as he recounted memories of Boden as a little boy. He wasn’t a talker, my Mac, but he was sharing now, so I sat and listened until my legs went numb and my ass was sore from the rock I was sitting on.
Our hike down was different. Mac walked beside me instead of ahead of me, his hand finding mine on the flat sections of the trail and releasing it on the rocky ones, a practical intimacy that made my insides sing with its simplicity.
When we got back, we had some more snacks on the porch, talking or letting the silence between us bring comfort to both of us.
“Are your parents still alive?” I asked as the sun had started its descent.
“No, they both died when I was deployed, back in 2004.”
My eyes widened. That long ago? “They must’ve been very young.”
“They were fifty-nine and sixty-two. Gas leak at their neighbor’s house. Guy didn’t notice and lit up a cigarette. Blew up his house and took out my parents’ house too. It was a Sunday morning, and they were both home.” He sighed. “They never felt a thing, so there is that.”
“Were you close?”
A nod. “I was an only child, and my parents tried for years before they had me, so I was a bit of a miracle. My dad served too—Vietnam. He was very proud of me.”