Chapter 41
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
REED
“ W e don’t have to start a fire if you don’t want to,” she says as she lays out a blanket in front of the hearth.
It’s amazing how much Hailey has learned to read me. She’s right. I don’t want it.
I slide two logs onto the metal grate and strike a match, touching it to the center of the pile of wood. It ignites in a ripple as it spreads across the timber.
I can barely look at it.
“I want you to be warm,” I tell her as I toss the match into the kitchen sink and carry over the picnic-style dinner I made.
“I’m not really hungry,” she says, staring into the hearth.
I don’t blame her. Eating is the last thing I can think about with Dean still in the hospital.
I shift the wooden charcuterie board to the edge of the checkered quilt.
“Have you heard from your dad?”
She taps her phone screen and shakes her head. “Not since Dean’s parents got there an hour ago. The surgery will take a while.”
When I sit, I pull a pillow with me and she lies down, resting her head in my lap. Her body is no longer blocking the fire, and I hate that it’s the brightest thing in the room.
“What are you thinking about?” she asks.
Do I tell her the truth? That all I’ve thought about since the moment they hauled us out of those woods is how much I want to leave this place? That everywhere I look I’m reminded of my shortcomings?
I study a frayed edge of wool on the rug beneath the coffee table. With Dean out for who knows how long, they ended our crew’s fire season a couple weeks early. I have no idea what I’m going to do with my life now, but I can’t just sit here waiting.
“Have you ever been to Silverwood?” I ask her, running my fingers through her wet hair. A waft of vanilla fills my lungs, and I take a deep breath of it.
Her eyebrows bend as she looks up. “No, why?”
I lean back on my palms. “We should go.”
“What?” Hailey pushes off my lap to an upright position.
I can’t tell if she’s good shocked or bad shocked by my suggestion, so I continue.
“Yeah, we could leave in the morning. Be there by noon tomorrow and come back tomorrow night.”
“Reed, you can’t be serious!”
Bad shocked I see, but I still smirk at her. “I thought you liked my spontaneity.” The last time she said that we were tangled up in a barn. A moment that seems infinitely lighter than this one.
“I do,” she says, gripping my hands. “I really do, but I also like what an incredible friend you are. What about Dean? We can’t just leave. And my dad… he won’t say it, but he’s a mess. He needs me.”
People never tell me the truth. Instead, they skirt around all of the reasons why they don’t want to go along with my plan instead of just coming out and saying what they’re really thinking. That if I don’t take life more seriously I’ll wind up alone.
But I tried that. I made up this vision in my head over the summer. It started out as more of a mirage of what Hailey and I could be, but then it morphed into this real idea that went beyond a few months. I saw us traveling the world together, seeing a sunrise in every city. I saw a future. But what I failed to consider was the fact that she’d left McCall once already. And for her, this summer was about making amends. It was about never leaving again.
“Yeah, no, you’re right. He does need you,” I say, trying my best to hang on to her fingertips when the idea of us feels like quicksand.
A look of fear drifts across her face, and she pulls the strings of my hoodie.
“And I need you ,” she says.
Isn’t that what I wanted? Someone to finally choose me? But the terrifying, selfish truth is that I wanted her to choose only me. I’ll forever have to share Hailey Hart with her father, her best friend, and anyone else who comes into her life. She keeps the people she loves close; she doesn’t run from them like I do.
“We never talked about it,” she says, her eyes shifting back to the fire.
“Talked about what?” I ask.
“What you’d do at the end of the season.”
Not what we would do, but you . That “you” stands out like a broken bone.
“Yeah, I guess we didn’t,” I say.
She holds my gaze and sweeps her thumb across my bottom lip. “Let’s just wait. See what tomorrow brings.”
“Okay,” I say. Because I’m afraid if we say anything else to each other, it will end in goodbye, and out of everything that might come next, what I want is her .
I reach over and draw her onto my lap. She smells like a candle, and I’m lost the moment I’m caught in her intoxicating flame.
My eyes snag on the single freckle that dots her cheekbone beneath her right eye. I brush my thumb across it, in awe of how beautiful this woman is, and wonder why she chose me. I study every crease, every hint of pink that spreads across her cheeks and lips. I want to memorize how it feels to have her in my arms, terrified this’ll be the very last time.
My palms drift to her backside and inch beneath her shirt. Her skin shudders under my fingertips as they lift higher and higher. I’m met with nothing but bare skin.
“Still driving me crazy, I see.”
A fractured giggle escapes her lips. “You said you liked it when it was off.”
I let my fingers explore. “ Oh , I do.”
She draws closer by the underside of my biceps, and we stay there for a long time, lost in each other’s eyes.
I don’t know how to face what comes next , mine silently tell her.
I don’t either , hers war back.
When our staring contest threatens to tip into tears, I want to run. I can’t cry right now. The only ability I have left in me is to lay her down on this quilt. I can’t think about the idea of Dean in the hospital or the thought of us losing him. But I can feel . I’d start with a kiss if I wasn’t so lost in my head right now. I sigh and touch our foreheads together.
“You’re the only place in the world I want to be,” she says, and it stops me in my tracks. I marvel at how she always says exactly what I need to hear. If she can do that for me, I can be vulnerable too.
I kiss the corner of her lips where she smirks when she thinks I’m funny and the spot above her nose where her brow furrows when she’s concentrating. I kiss the apples of her cheeks where, even now, she lets me see just how much I make her skin flush. I kiss her like it’s the last thing I’ll do on this Earth because kissing Hailey Hart is my favorite thing.
I’ve never asked her about her experience with other men. I don’t need to. The confused stare she gave me when she said she didn’t know what she liked was enough of an indication that no matter how many guys have had the privilege of being in her life like this, they took it for granted. They’ll never know the girl who melts at the brush of lips against her neck. And I’m glad they won’t. She saved that for me.
We take things slow, savoring the moment. The very definition of making love, and it terrifies me—the words hanging on the tip of my tongue. I don’t know how to keep looking in her eyes without them spilling out of me, so I flip her onto her hands and knees. She eases back against me, pressing her palms into the floor. I grip her hips and together we let the rush of tension take over. The spark between us urges our pace until we’re nothing but melting heat. A fire that burns brighter than all the rest. The only one I don’t ever want to put out.
When we collapse, spent on the blanket, I tuck her up against my chest so we’re spooning. We lie there for a long time, not saying anything at all. It’s not until she’s finally dreaming in my arms that I let go. I let her in. Nothing left to stop me.
“I’m in love with you, Red.”