Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Alice
The fire has burned down to coals by the time the conversation slows.
We've been talking for two hours. Maybe more.
I've lost track of time the same way I did on the trail, except this time I don't mind.
We've covered the fox, my editor, the particular challenge of drawing emotions on an animal face without veering into cartoon.
He told me about a pair of black bear cubs he's been monitoring this fall, how the mother keeps moving them further up the ridge as the tourist season winds down and the woods quiet.
He said it without sentimentality, just observation, but I could hear that he found them remarkable.
He finds a lot of things remarkable, I think, and keeps that mostly to himself.
"You should sleep," he says. "I'll take the couch. Bedroom's through there."
I should. I'm warm now, genuinely warm, the kind that has worked all the way into my hands and feet. The rational thing is to say thank you and good night and lie in the dark thinking about plot structure until I fall asleep.
I set my mug down on the table and stand up, and he watches me do it with an expression that is careful and very still, like a man making sure he understands what is happening before he responds to it.
I take a deep breath. I think I know what to do with the fox in my story now. He needs to be brave, take action, do something… new.
And so do I.
I walk around the table, toward Cal.
He doesn't stand, not yet. He just turns in his chair so he's facing me, and I stop in front of him, close enough that I have to look down slightly to meet his eyes. From here I can see the details I couldn't before: the faint weathering at the corners of his eyes and the line of his jaw.
"I don't do this," I say. My voice is steady, which surprises me. "I want you to know that. I never make hasty decisions. I research things. I make lists. I sleep on it."
"I know," he says.
"You can’t know that. You met me two hours ago."
"And yet, I do know it about you," he says simply. “With absolute certainty.”
Something turns over in my chest, slow and warm.
He reaches up and takes my hand, not pulling, just holding it. His thumb moves once across my knuckles. The touch is so quiet and so deliberate that it undoes me.
"Alice,” he says in a low, oh-so-tempting tone.
"Cal,” I say, my voice barely a whisper.
He stands.
He's taller than I registered out on the trail, or maybe it's just that there's no distance between us now, just the warmth coming off him and his eyes on mine, waiting. Patient in a way that makes patience feel like its own kind of intensity.
I close the last inch.
He kisses me the way I somehow knew he would. Without hesitation, without performance, like a thing he has decided and is now simply doing. One hand comes up to my jaw, tilting my face to his, and I feel the careful strength in it and stop thinking about anything at all.
When he pulls back it's only far enough to look at me. His thumb traces the line of my cheekbone.
"Alice," he says again. Just my name. Like it's the whole sentence. But I know what he’s asking.
"Don't stop," I say.
He makes a low sound and kisses me again, deeper this time, his hand sliding to the back of my neck, and the last of the evening's cold—the trail, the dark, the stiff fingers and the embarrassing fear—burns away entirely.