7. Mila
seven
Mila
Saturday night. The festival's closing ceremony.
The bonfire is built on the flat ground west of the competition area — a proper fire, eight feet high, the kind that throws heat and light in every direction and makes the tree line glow amber.
The whole town comes. It's the part of the festival that's been running the longest, before the competition structure and the vendor row, back when it was just a logging community marking the end of summer.
I stand at the edge of the firelight with Macie on my hip.
She's tired and she's fighting it, the way she does — propped against my shoulder, heavy-lidded, watching the fire with a fixed focus that is partly wonder and partly the determination not to miss anything.
I've wrapped her in the zip-up fleece from my bag and she has her thumb in her mouth, which she mostly doesn't do anymore, only when she's very tired or very overwhelmed.
Tomorrow I was going to drive back to Kelowna.
I don't know if that's still the plan.
He's been quiet today. Not cold — just inward, a man thinking through something complex. We met at the festival grounds in the morning and he ran the final competition heats and Macie and I watched and ate festival food and he came to find us at every break. But something in him has been waiting.
I check my phone. No texts.
"Log man," Macie says drowsily against my shoulder.
"He'll find us," I say, not knowing if I believe it.
The fire crackles and spits. Around us the town is gathered — old men in canvas chairs, families with children, young people on blankets.
A woman near the edge of the crowd is selling hot cider from a thermos.
The festival committee has set up a microphone for remarks nobody's listening to.
The air smells like woodsmoke and late summer — the particular smell of August ending, something sweet and something leaving.
I hear him before I see him.
His footstep is specific — I've learned the sound of it over four days, the particular weight of him on grass, on gravel, on a wooden platform. He comes through the crowd from the direction of the main stage and he's carrying something.
A small carved wooden figure. An animal — I can't see it clearly in the firelight, but he turns it as he walks and the firelight catches it. A bear. Small enough to fit in a toddler's hand.
He stops in front of us. He looks at Macie first — takes in the tired weight of her, the thumb, the fleece.
"Hey," he says.
"Hey."
He holds out the carving to Macie.
She unstuffs her thumb and looks at it. Then she reaches out and takes it in both hands, turning it the same way he was turning it — her own instinct to feel the shape. She examines it with the serious focus of someone conducting an appraisal.
"Bear," she says.
"Bear," he confirms.
She clutches it to her chest and her eyes close for a moment — not sleep, just the satisfaction of something received. The thumb goes back in.
He looks at me.
"I was gone all afternoon," he says.
"I noticed."
"I was fixing up the spare room."
My chest tightens. I wait.
"Macie'll need a nightlight," he says. "I figured that was a reasonable assumption. I bought one. It's a moon."
I can't speak for a moment.
"She does need a nightlight," I say.
He nods. He looks at the fire and then back at me. He is not a man who makes speeches. He is a man who drove to the hardware store and bought a moon-shaped nightlight and put it in the room he'd been using for storage.
"I missed three years," he says. "I'm not missing any more. Whatever that looks like — you here, me there, some version between — I'm in. All the way."
"Colm —"
"I know what I'm asking. I know it's fast and I know it's not simple. I'm not asking you to decide tonight. I'm asking you to know that when you decide, the spare room has a nightlight in it and the bed's made up and I've learned the story voice."
Macie's weight shifts on my hip. She's going, finally — that particular loosening that means sleep is winning.
"I've been doing this alone since before she was born."
"I know that too." His voice is level. "I'm not going to let you do it alone anymore. That's not a promise about logistics. That's just a fact about who I am."
I look at him. The firelight is on his face — the steadiness of him, the particular patience of a man who knows something and is waiting for you to know it too.
"We'd need to figure out the practical things," I say.
"Yeah."
"There's a lot of practical things."
"Yeah."
"I'm not easy," I say. "I haven't had to account for anyone else's preferences in two years. I'll probably be difficult."
"I've run festival logistics for eight years," he says. "I have a high tolerance for complicated."
I laugh despite everything.
Macie makes a small sound in her sleep. The bear is still clutched against her chest.
"Okay," I say.
"Okay."
He reaches out and puts a hand on the side of my face, the way he did at his house, and kisses me very gently so as not to wake the sleeping toddler.
It's a different kiss from any of the others — not urgent, not desperate, not the release of three years.
This is the first kiss of something that has time. Something that is going to go on.
He pulls back. Takes Macie from my arms without asking, and she goes boneless against his chest without waking, the bear still in her fist.
He stands there at the edge of the bonfire holding his daughter.
They're going to be fine, I think. We're going to be fine.
I lean into his side. He puts his free arm around me.
The fire burns.
Later, after the babysitter settles a still-sleeping Macie in her bed, I walk back to his cabin. He opens the door and looks at me like a man who has already decided exactly how the night is going to go.
We don’t talk much.
He walks me straight to his bedroom. The room smells like him—pine, woodsmoke, and warm skin. Moonlight and the distant mountains fill the window. He turns on the lamp so there’s no hiding, then undresses me slowly, piece by piece, eyes tracking every inch of skin he reveals.
“I want to see you,” he says, voice low. “All of you.”
Lights on. No shadows. I let him look.
His gaze is hungry and serious at the same time.
He runs both hands over me—cupping my breasts, thumbs brushing my nipples until they ache, sliding down to grip my ass and pull me against him.
His cock is already hard, thick and heavy against my stomach.
I missed the weight of it, the way it curves up slightly, the flushed head that’s already glistening.
I drop to my knees.
He groans as I wrap my hand around the base and take him into my mouth.
He’s thick enough that my lips stretch around him, and I taste the salty bead at the tip before I slide deeper, working my tongue along the underside.
His hand fists gently in my hair, not pushing, just holding on while I suck him—slow and wet, taking as much of his cock as I can until it bumps the back of my throat.
The low, wrecked sounds he makes are addictive.
“Fuck, baby…” he breathes.
I look up at him while I work him with my mouth and hand, and the raw want on his face makes me even wetter. After a few minutes he pulls me off with a shaky breath and lifts me onto the bed.
He spreads my thighs and settles between them, but first he leans down and licks a slow, filthy stripe up my pussy, tongue flicking over my clit until my hips jerk. Then he moves up my body, lines up, and pushes inside me in one long thrust.
The stretch is so good I moan loud against his shoulder.
He’s thick and hard and perfect, filling me completely.
He doesn’t start slow—he fucks me with deep, steady strokes, hips rolling so every thrust drags against that spot inside that makes my toes curl.
Skin slaps against skin. The wet sound of his cock sliding in and out of me fills the room.
He grips my thigh, spreading me wider so he can go deeper. “That’s it,” he murmurs against my neck. “Take every inch.”
I wrap my legs around him and meet his thrusts, nails digging into his back.
The pace builds—harder, faster—until the bed is creaking and I’m gasping his name with every stroke.
He feels even better than I remembered, thick and hot and relentless.
God, I missed your cock, missed how full it makes me, how it hits so deep I can’t think straight.
He fucks me like that for a long time, steady and deep, until sweat slickens our skin and my moans turn ragged. Then he pulls out, flips me over, and pulls my hips up so I’m on my knees. I arch my back for him, pushing my ass higher, and he groans at the sight.
“Fuck, look at you,” he says, voice rough.
He grips my hips and pushes back inside in one smooth thrust, even deeper from this angle.
The new position makes me cry out—his cock drags perfectly along every sensitive spot.
He starts fucking me hard, hips snapping against my ass, the sound of skin on skin loud and obscene in the quiet room.
One of his hands slides around to rub my clit in tight circles while he drives into me.
I push back to meet every thrust, taking him as deep as I can.
The angle is filthy and perfect, his cock stretching me wide with every stroke.
He leans over me, chest against my back, and growls my name against my ear.
The pressure builds fast and overwhelming until I come hard around him again, pulsing and shaking as my arms give out.
He keeps fucking me through it, chasing his own release with deep, punishing thrusts. A few strokes later he buries himself to the hilt and comes with a low, broken groan, hips jerking as he fills me.
We stay locked together, breathing hard, his weight warm and grounding on top of me. The cool night air drifts through the cracked window, but in here everything is heat and skin and the steady beat of his heart against mine.
“Stay,” he says against my hair. Not just tonight.
“I’m staying,” I whisper.
His arms tighten around me, and we stay like that—still joined, breathing together—through the long, quiet aftershocks.
When it's over, we lie in the dark and listen.
"I'm going to need to find a job in Silver Ridge," I say.
"What do you do, anyway?"
"Marketing. Freelance mostly. I can do it from anywhere."
"There's a woman who runs the festival promotion," he says. "She's been doing it herself for twelve years and she's been looking for help since spring."
I lift my head and look at him in the dark. "You can't know that."
"I run the festival. Of course I know that."
I put my head back down. He pulls me closer.
"I'll introduce you Monday," he says.
"I haven't officially decided yet."
"You said you're staying."
"I said I'm staying. I'm also making you work for it."
A pause. Then: "Fair enough."