7. Porter
seven
Porter
I told him I'd come find him once I had my head straight. I meant it. I just didn't know yet what straight was going to look like.
The clarity comes on the trail.
I go up the north ridge by myself, which I've never done — we always go together, that's the ritual — but I need to think without his shoulder warm against mine. I climb to the first lookout and stand there until the light goes properly gold.
Here is what I know.
I've been in love with Walker Danes for fifteen years.
I've known it and decorated it with other names — friendship, history, best-friendship, the specific ache of loving someone in the abstract — because those names were safe.
Because Walker is constant and I am not, and I've always been afraid that reaching for more than what we had would cost me the ground we stood on.
Thomas wasn't a mistake. Thomas was what I did with the part of me that wanted a life in the present tense. But I wanted a life I could bring Walker into, and you can't do that and also be with someone else. Some part of me knew that at the kitchen table in February and wouldn't say it out loud.
I've been so careful, for so long. And Walker has been standing in his hardware store for fifteen years, the most patient man I've ever known, not saying a word — and this morning I paid him back for that patience by leaving before he woke up.
No note. No explanation. Just gone, the way I've always been the one who leaves.
I'm not doing that again.
I walk back down and go straight to his store.
He's behind the counter when I push through the door, and he looks up, reads my face, and doesn't say anything. Waits. Which is so specifically him that I feel it land in my sternum.
"I have something to say," I tell him. "The whole thing this time."
"I know."
"Don't rush me."
"Wasn't going to."
I stand in the middle of his store, between the display case and the window with the festival banner still taped crooked in the corner, and I say it plainly, because we've always been plain with each other and this isn't the moment to be anything else.
"I think it's been you this whole time. I think I knew and I was too scared to ruin what we had.
" I stop, make myself hold his look. "That's why I ran this morning.
Not because last night was wrong. Because it was so right it scared the hell out of me, and running is the only thing I know how to do with feelings that big.
But Walker — what we had was always this.
We just hadn't done anything about it. I don't want to run from you anymore. Not this morning, not ever again."
He's quiet for the count of three. Then he says, "Yeah."
"Yeah? That's all you've got, after I just gave you that whole speech?"
"I've had fifteen years to prepare an answer and it's still yeah.
" He comes around the counter. "And I'm not letting you apologize your way through this without saying my part.
I built a version of tonight where you told me to forget last night ever happened.
I was ready to give you that, if that's what you needed.
I'd have hated every word of it, but I'd have said it.
So don't ever think you're the only one who was scared today. "
"We're a mess."
"We're fifteen years late. That's different from a mess."
He crosses the rest of the store to me. I don't move back and he doesn't slow down, and when he kisses me it's different from the festival grounds, different from last night — it's the way you kiss someone when the question is finally, actually settled.
His apartment. His bed. The same off-white ceiling I’ve stared at a hundred times without ever imagining this.
He comes down over me, all heat and solid muscle.
I press my hand flat against his chest, holding him still for a moment just so I can look—Walker Danes, thirty-five, laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, the old scar on his left knee, that raw, unguarded expression he only lets me see when something matters.
He’s looking at me the same way, drinking in every inch like he’s still trying to believe this is real.
“This is very strange.”
“Very good-strange,” he says, voice low.
“Yes. That.”
He kisses my jaw, my throat, the curve of my shoulder, slow and knowing.
He already knows exactly how I like his mouth on my throat; he sucks lightly, then harder, tongue dragging over my pulse until I moan and tilt my head to give him more.
His hands settle on my waist, thumbs stroking my skin, and he draws that same helpless sound out of me again on purpose, watching my face with dark satisfaction.
His hand slides down my stomach and stops just above where I’m aching for him.
“You keep making those little sounds,” he murmurs, voice rough. “Drive me fucking crazy.”
“I keep being startled you’re actually here.”
“I’ve always been here. Waiting for you. For this tight little pussy that’s been mine for fifteen years.” He presses two thick fingers into my slick heat, slow and deep, curling them just right. The sudden fullness steals my breath. “Don’t stop,” I manage, hips rolling up to meet his hand.
He laughs and it vibrates through my body. He works me with his fingers, stroking that perfect spot inside while his thumb circles my swollen clit with devastating precision, building me higher and higher until I’m right on the edge, thighs shaking.
Then he stops.
“Walker,” I whine, the sound of pure frustration.
“I told you I’d take my time. Been dreaming about this for years. I’m not rushing a single second of burying my face in this sweet cunt.”
“You could take your time faster.”
“Could,” he agrees, but the wicked curve of his mouth says he won’t.
His mouth trails lower—stomach, hip, inner thigh—then he settles between my spread legs.
The first slow, deliberate lick over my clit makes my back arch off the bed.
He takes his time, licking and sucking, fucking me with his tongue before sliding those two fingers back inside me.
When he finds the spot that makes my whole body jerk he stays right there, humming against me.
“Right there, baby. That’s it—let me hear you,” he murmurs, low and satisfied, and doesn’t let up until I’m gripping the headboard, thighs trembling around his head, coming hard against his mouth with a loud, shameless cry.
He lifts his head, lips and chin wet, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
“Don’t,” I pant.
“Didn’t say anything.”
“You were thinking it very loudly.”
He moves up my body and I reach down, wrapping my hand around his cock. He’s rock-hard, thick, and pulsing in my grip. The rough, involuntary groan he makes is the most unguarded sound I’ve ever heard from him.
“Come here.” I tug at his hip. “I mean it this time.”
“You always mean it. But I’ve waited too damn long to be inside you.”
“Walker.”
He pushes inside me in one long, slow stroke, stretching me open until he’s buried to the hilt. I exhale everything I have, dizzy with how full I feel. He stays there, forehead pressed to mine, both of us just breathing through the overwhelming rightness of it.
Then he starts to move—deep, deliberate thrusts that drag against every sensitive spot inside me.
His eyes stay on my face the whole time, watching every reaction like he’s still learning me after fifteen years.
I wrap my legs around his waist and he groans, driving harder, the wet slap of our bodies filling the room.
“Tell me,” he rasps against my ear, voice dark. “Tell me whose pussy this is.”
“Yes. This. You. Fuck, Walker, don’t stop.”
He catches my hand, laces our fingers, and pins it to the mattress. The restraint makes me clench around him. He does it harder, watching what it does to me with dark hunger.
“Fifteen years of wanting you,” he growls low in my ear, thrusting deep, “fifteen years of jerking off to the thought of stretching this perfect cunt and filling it up. And now I finally get to. Look at you—taking every inch like you were made for me.”
I stop breathing for a second.
“Walker…”
“Don’t make it weird.”
“It’s not weird. It’s…” I turn and find his face, eyes locked. “I’ve been driving toward August for fifteen years without knowing why. You were the reason it was always August.”
His expression cracks open—raw, undone, every last wall stripped away. For a heartbeat I see everything he’s held back for fifteen years.
Then he fucks me harder, faster, hips snapping with raw need. One hand slides between our slick bodies, fingers finding my clit and rubbing tight, relentless circles exactly the way I need it.
“Fuck, Porter,” he groans, voice rough and low. “Come on, baby. Let me feel you. I want this pussy milking my cock when you come.”
The pressure builds fast and overwhelming, coiling tighter with every brutal thrust. I hear him groan my name against my shoulder, the sound wrecked and desperate, his rhythm turning ragged as he fights to hold on.
“Mine,” he rasps, breath hot against my skin. “This is mine. Say it: tell me who you belong to.”
His fingers tighten on mine, almost bruising. The combination of his words, his cock driving deep, and the relentless pressure on my clit sends me over the edge. I come hard around him, clenching and pulsing, crying out his name as pleasure crashes through me in wave after wave.
Walker follows with a deep, broken groan that vibrates against my throat. “That’s it—fuck, just like that. Take it all.”
His whole body goes rigid, muscles locked tight, then shudders violently as he spills hot and deep inside me.
His hips jerk in small, helpless thrusts like he can’t stop even after he’s finished.
He buries his face in the curve of my neck, breathing hard and ragged, his heart hammering wildly against my chest like it’s trying to reach mine.
We go still together, tangled and slick. I’m draped across his chest, his hand moving slowly through my hair.
"I think I'm moving back to Silver Ridge."
His hand stills. Then it starts again.
"Okay," he says.
"Not only for you."
"I know."
"I mean partly for you."
"I know that too." A beat. "Move in here. With me."
"Walker."
"I'm not asking you to find your own place five minutes from mine so we can keep doing this like we've got something to hide. Fifteen years is enough waiting. I don't want to wait through an apartment search too."
"That's very fast, even for us."
"We've been slow for fifteen years. I think we've earned fast." He tips my chin up so I'm looking at him. "I'm serious, Porter."
"I know you are. That's the terrifying part." I press my palm flat against his chest, feel his heart going. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yes. Move in with you. Not okay-I'll-think-about-it. Yes."
"Good." He says it like he's closing a deal, and then ruins the effect completely by grinning at the ceiling like an idiot.
I prop myself up on his chest and look at him, and he looks back with that particular Walker expression I now understand was never patience. It was fifteen years of love wearing patience like a coat.
"You could have said something," I tell him.
"So could you."
I consider that. "Fair."
He pulls me back down. I go.