EPILOGUE
AMY
“No.”
“Amy.”
“I want to be clear that I love you, I love this campsite, I love this tent, and I love all the things you are planning on doing to me in the tent. But the answer is no.”
Six weeks. Six weeks of living on his mountain — of learning the cabin, the garden, the man, of working remote from his kitchen table while he pretended he wasn’t rearranging his entire workday to stay within earshot of my chatter — and this was the first thing he’d asked me for.
Not asked. Lawson didn’t ask. He’d loaded the truck with camping gear, driven us down the mountain, and set up camp on a wide gravel bar beside the river.
The river. My river. He’d taken use to another place along the river.
Above the rafting office. Above Devil’s Bend.
At a spot where it spread out lazy in the warm August afternoon, moving slow over stones, barely hip-deep.
It didn’t fool me for a second. I knew what it was capable of. We had history.
History I had finally memorialized that week, in fact, in the five-star review I’d owed the rafting company all summer. It was simple. And cryptic. Lost a shoe, gained a mountain man. Would absolutely drown again. Jared had it framed behind the front desk within the hour.
Lawson stood at the water’s edge, shirtless, barefoot, patient as bedrock. “It’s August. The water’s low. You have to know how to handle it.”
“Just like I learned how to handle you, Bigfoot?” I walked closer to him, grabbing his cock beneath his shorts.
He responded instantly, growing hard and long beneath my touch.
It had taken a little while to let my bad girl side out, not knowing if he would want that or not. He’d encouraged her shamelessly.
He placed his hand over mine, but didn’t move it away.
“I handle the river just fine. I admire it from shore. It’s a whole system we’ve worked out, the river and I. Boundaries. Very healthy.”
“You had a nightmare Tuesday.”
I let go of him and took a step back.
“You told me once,” he said, “that you spent your whole life saying maybe next time.”
“That’s — using my own confessions against me is a war crime.”
“The water s warm her, I promise and ‘ll be touching you the entire time.” His voice dropped into that register I had never once survived. “Every minute, Minnow.”
I sighed as I looked up at his face. I knew the words were a promise. To keep me save. No matter the cost.
Which is how I ended up walking into the water holding hands with my very own Bigfoot.
The first ten feet were awful and I narrated every one of them.
The shock of the water as I entered, the gravel shifting beneath my feet, the way the current wrapped my calves like it remembered me.
I talked through all of it, high and fast, and Lawson didn’t tell me to calm down or breathe or relax, because he’d figured out long before I told him that the talking was the breathing.
He kept backing deeper, my hands locked in his, his eyes never leaving mine, huge and steady and planted in that riverbed so deep and so steady, the river could never wash it away.
“That’s it. Come to me.”
“If this goes badly, I want a headstone that says she was right about the river.”
“Deeper.”
“Isn’t that what I’m supposed to be saying to you? In fact, if we turn around right now, I’ll let you—”
He gave a deep, dark chuckle. “You let me do anything dark and dirty to that sweet body of yours, and we both know it.”
I rolled my eyes at him. He was right. He was always right.
“I hate this. I hate it. Are you aware that I hate it—” The water hit my waist and the fear went sharp — real now, the animal kind — and his hands tightened.
“Amy. Look at me. Who’s got you?”
“You do.”
“And what do you know as an absolute truth.”
I sighed. “You will protect me with your life.”
“Exactly.” Now open your eyes.
I hadn’t realized I had closed them. I opened them and looked around. We were standing the middle of the tidepool. Waist deep in river water.
“See. It’s not so bad.”
Past his shoulder I could see the river running slow and lazily behind him. In fact, I could see the river bottom. I could walk over to the other side if I wanted to, barely getting my feet wet.
“Now lie back,” he said, moving behind me, his arms coming around me, one broad palm flat between my shoulder blades and the other under my thighs. “I’ve got the whole weight of you. Lie back on my hands.”
And I did the bravest thing I’d done since I stepped onto that raft. I lay back on the surface of the thing that almost killed me, held up by the man who hadn’t let it. And never would.
The sky was bright blue, the water surprisingly warm.
My hair floated out around my head like a crown.
The water washed over my shoulders, my belly, my legs, and it held me — with his hands underneath, it held me — and the knot that had been in my stomach since that fateful day.
finally let go. I floated. I floated and the river hummed under me and above me was all that sky.
And, I … whooped. Once. Loud, up at the few white clouds — an actual, genuine, enthusiastic whoop, the very kind I’d promised myself I’d make, and heard Lawson make a low sound that I’d learned meant more than most men’s speeches.
“I’m doing it.”
“You’re doing it.”
“I’m — Lawson, take your hands away.”
A pause. “You sure?”
“Before I change my mind, take them—” and he did. He didn’t move away, just let his hands fall away. And I floated. Me. Alone. On the water, on my back, on the far side of the worst day and best summer of my life, held up by nothing but physics and faith.
I lasted eleven glorious seconds before I got cocky, tried to wave at him and started to sink.
Of course, he had me before my head went under, those strong arms hauling me up against his chest, water streaming off both of us, my legs going around his waist out of pure habit while I coughed and laughed at the same time.
“Eleven seconds,” I gasped. “New record. Somebody call the Olympics.”
“You waved.” He pushed the wet hair of my face.
“I was celebrating.”
“You sank.”
“Details.” I grinned at him, watching the grin he’d given up trying to fight curl up the ends of his mouth. I sighed.
This was my whole world now, standing hip-deep in the thing I used to fear — and my heart did the swoop it was never, apparently, going to stop doing. “Admit it. You’re proud of me.”
“I am proud of you,” he said, no hesitation. Then his hands slid down and gripped the backs of my thighs, hitching me higher against him, and his mouth moved to my ear.
“You know what happens now.”
“Hypothermia?”
“Reward.” He was already walking us toward shore, toward the tent, carrying me out of the river the way he’d carried me out the first time — except slow now, dLawsonberate, one big hand splayed over my ass, his voice a low scrape against my throat between words.
“You did your brave thing so know you get reward.”
“I do? With Smores? You know I love chocolate.”
“I do, but that’s not exactly what I had in mind.”
“Oh, do tell, Mr. Bigfoot?”
He chuckled. Another new sound he was making. “I’d much rather show you.”
He ducked beneath the opening of the tent and knelt down, placing me in the center of the bed he’d already made for us.
“See,” I breathed as I helped him peel the wet suit off of my curves before reaching for the waistband of his shorts. “this is why I do brave things.”