Chapter 24
DARCY
Iam sitting very carefully today.
I was counting.
He wanted to make me breakfast. He made his case at dawn wearing nothing but loosely tied, light gray sweatpants, a sleep-wrecked version of his hair, and a cocky grin that should require a warning label.
I wanted to say yes. God, how I wanted to say yes to every debauched suggestion that lingered in his sexy morning-after kiss.
But I had a first-period class between me and that fantasy, so instead we showered together then he drove me home to my apartment.
At the curb under the peach-and-lavender sunrise, he put me against the car door and kissed me like we hadn't just spent an entire night taking our fill of each other.
"Better get out of here before I persuade you to play hooky with me," he said against my mouth. "I'll call you."
So here I am. Teaching my class like I'm not a changed woman on a primal level today.
It isn't just the delicious way every muscle and tendon in my body aches with the best kind of soreness.
It's the replays. His voice in the dark saying "Look at me.
" The concentrated way he went about learning me, like I was something he intended to get exactly right.
Finn does everything at full attention or not at all, and last night I had all of it, every megawatt, for hours. How on earth is a woman is supposed to just stand at a whiteboard the next day and discuss symbolism like her entire nervous system hasn't been renovated?
I'm managing decently, all things considered.
The one wobble comes at the end of third period, when Lisa stops at my desk on her way out, hugging her binder.
"Have a good weekend, Ms. Gable," she says, and the two girls waiting for her at the door dissolve into giggles that have nothing to do with weekends.
"Thank you, Lisa," I say, serene as a lake. "Reading journals are due Monday."
They go out groaning, and I permit myself one small private smile at the attendance sheet.
The whole town saw me kiss him on Main Street.
Of course the whole school knows. Three days ago the idea would have kept me up at night.
Today I write MONDAY: JOURNALS on the board in my best handwriting and let myself sink into the memory of last night like it’s a warm bath.
At 12:14, one bite into a sad desk lunch, my phone lights up.
Finn: Are you free this weekend?
Me: Which part of it?
Finn: All of it. The whole thing. Tonight at 5 through Sunday night.
I put down my fork.
Me: That's very open-ended. What did you have in mind?
Finn: Not telling. It's a surprise. Trust me and be ready at 5.
I stare at the screen. I know what I'm teaching on a Wednesday three weeks from now. He is offering me a blank page and a departure time.
I barely hesitate.
Me: Okay. I'm in.
Finn: That's my girl. Pack light. You won't need a lot of clothes.
That’s my girl. I read that sentence grinning like a woman who has recently escaped from somewhere. The runner-up’s not bad either: You won't need a lot of clothes.
Two days with no class bells, no essays, no dawn drive home in yesterday's dress.
Two nights of that filthy, wonderful mouth and those strong, skilled hands.
Two days and nights with a man who treats slow like a discipline he's studying and my body like a subject he's decided to get a doctorate in. I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be.
I pull myself together and go back to interrogating him.
Me: That is not packing guidance. I need parameters. Dress code? Climate? Are we leaving the country?
Finn: No passport required. One more question. Do you have hiking boots?
Me: I think so. Why?
Finn: Broken in?
Me: Enough. WHY, Finn?
Finn: That's all you get. 5 o'clock, Darcy. I'll pick you up.
Me: You're impossible.
Finn: That's not what you said last night.
I laugh to myself, grateful that my students have left the room and aren't here to witness my snort and the full-scale blush that floods my face.
I sit with my cooling lunch and my heart racing in a way that only Finn seems capable of causing.
But there's fear in there, too. I'm not going to pretend there isn't. A blank weekend with no exits marked is everything I've organized my life against. But it's sitting in the same seat as something bigger and warmer that keeps crowding it toward the window, and I think, with some astonishment, that this must be what brave feels like from the inside.
Less like a decision. More like appetite.
At home by four, I stand in front of my closet and confront "pack light" as a concept.
Packing light for a destination is a skill.
Packing light for a mystery is a personality test, and mine comes back with notes.
I pack underwear that's probably not appropriate for a weekend that also involves hiking boots—a lacy bra and the kind of panties that exist for a five-second window of being seen.
I pack layers, because whatever else this weekend is, it is apparently outdoors.
A jacket. Wool socks, because a man who asks about boots means it.
Then I get on my knees and excavate the back of the closet.
The boots are there, behind the winter bin, exactly where I left them after the spring I decided to become a person who hikes.
I wore them a handful of times, enough trail walks to soften the leather and teach them my feet, before the school year swallowed the project the way the school year swallows everything.
They're dusty. I sit on my bedroom floor and wipe them clean with an old T-shirt, and something about it feels ceremonial.
Armor polishing, if armor came from a sporting goods sale.
Two days. No plan, no map, no town watching. Just Finn, and me, and whatever he's been building in that handsome head of his since he asked about my boots.
I set them by the front door, side by side, pointed out.
Then I go finish packing with a big, stupid grin on my face.