Chapter 28
DARCY
Finn is asleep facing me, his hand still pressed flat between my breasts where I put it last night and where it has apparently decided to live. He held on all night. I have the pins and needles to prove it, and I wouldn't trade them for full circulation and a feather bed.
I've never seen him like this. It occurs to me, studying him in the gray-blue light, that I've been in love with a man I've never once watched sleep this deeply.
Awake, Finn is always broadcasting. Asleep on the side of a mountain, the signal stops.
Lashes down, mouth soft, one line between his brows working at some dream problem he'll never report.
Last night when we made love, he kept his eyes open the whole way through.
All of it. He watched me as though closing them would cost him something he wasn't willing to pay, and being seen like that—at the exact moment I had nothing left to manage myself with—is a place I've never been to with anyone else.
After Finn, I don't know how I'll ever share myself so openly if not with him.
That's a truth I'm still adjusting to.
So I lie there with my hand asleep and my body pleasantly wrecked in places I plan to be smug about all week, and I simply watch him.
My thighs check in first, then my hips, then several muscles that also have strong opinions on my attempts to move, even incrementally.
Every single one of them votes to stay in this sleeping bag with Finn as long as possible.
There was never a list, he told me last night. There isn't one here, either. In fifteen years, this clearing has known exactly one guest accompanying Finn. Only me. I smile with the knowledge, with the warm disbelief that this is my life right now.
When I finally try to slide my hand free to go start the coffee, his arm tightens on me like a customs gate.
"Nope," he says, eyes still closed.
"But coffee."
"Coffee later. Stay here a while longer."
If he only knew how long I'd love to stay right here, with him. Suspended in this perfect moment after a perfect night together.
Eventually, we do get out of our little nest to have coffee and breakfast. We break camp slowly, because we both know what's coming even if we're not saying it.
We take down the tent together. Finn dismantles the fire ring stone by stone and carries each one back to wherever stones live, then scatters the cold ash, drags a pine bough over the flat spot until the clearing forgets we were ever here.
He does it without commentary, the same way he fixes my pack straps.
By the time we shoulder our packs, his oldest secret looks exactly how we found it.
Pristine. Secret. Now it belongs to both of us.
I follow him along a path through the woods that he chooses, one we've not been on yet. He pauses and turns to look at me. "Ready for the good part?"
I glance around at the ledge, the valley, at the astonishing beauty of our surroundings. "This wasn't the good part?"
He grins and points up.
The summit trail leaves from the back of the clearing and immediately stops pretending to be a trail.
It's rock, then bigger rock, then a slanted slab with the whole valley hanging off one side of it.
Two weeks ago I would have laughed at this itinerary and driven myself home. Today I put my hands where he tells me.
"Right hand to that flake." He's below me and to the side, unhurried, like we're browsing. "Now trust the boots. They're better at this than you think."
Halfway up the slab I make the mistake of looking past my elbow, and my hands independently decide to become part of the mountain.
"I'm stuck," I announce.
"You're not stuck. You're resting."
"It feels permanent."
"Your next hold is by your right thumb." His voice doesn't change at all. "You don't have to take it until you want it."
I breathe the way I tell my juniors to breathe before the AP exam, which I have always privately considered useless advice, and am now prepared to defend with my life.
Then I ready myself for the hold, and I take it.
My boot finds a comfortable edge, and then I'm moving again.
He never once puts a hand on me. I could kiss him for that, and plan to.
The last move is a step-up onto flat rock, and then there's no more mountain, just sky and wind and ridgelines stacked to the horizon, more world than I have ever seen in one look. I made it. All four limbs of me, on my own steam.
Finn stands beside me on the summit slab.
"Look at you," he says, smiling proudly at me. "You did it."
I plant my boots on the rock, fist my hands at my hips, and address the assembly.
"I'd officially like to thank my boots," I declare. "And my calves, who lodged a formal complaint at the flake and continued anyway. Honorable mention to the east stairwell of Mattichogue High for years of unpaid training. And gravity, for agreeing to look the other way."
The crowd is one man and zero chipmunks.
Finn applauds, grinning now. "Next time you'll be a pro at this."
Next time. I want to believe there will be a next time. And a time after that.
"Come on," he says. "We're not done yet."
We come off the back of the summit on a spur path he knows, down through spruce, and I hear it before I see it: a waterfall, maybe twenty feet of white ribbon dropping into a green pool, throwing cold air and spray uphill like the mountain runs its own weather.
It's magnificent. That's the only word I have for it, and even that isn't adequate.
"Worth it?" Finn asks, standing beside me, our hands brushing against each other.
I nod, trying to find my voice. I steal a glance at him, meeting his steady eyes. "So worth it."
We eat the last sandwiches down at the falls on a rock with our boots off and our feet going numb in the water. For a while, neither of us speaks. There's no need. The silence doesn't feel enormous or awkward between us. It feels comfortable. Relaxed. Easy.
After we've finished eating, I watch him dangle his big feet in the clear, cold pool below the falls.
"This spot is like heaven on earth." I sigh, breathing it all in. "If you could do anything with it, what would you do?"
I'm braced for Finn Bardot scale. High-ticket wilderness tours. Helipads, eco-lodges, a tasteful sign with his surname on it.
"Nothing," he says.
"Nothing?"
"A place like this is something you protect. Keep it exactly like this. Maybe one sign at the bottom that says pack out what you pack in. That would be the whole business plan."
"I like that."
He nods, quiet for a moment. "You know what I'd actually do?
Someday?" He's watching the water, not me.
"Bring kids up here. The ones like me. The ones drowning at a desk while everybody decides what that means about them.
Ropes, guides, leave-no-trace, all of it, but really just this.
" He tips his chin at the falls, the pool, the whole green room of it.
"The outdoors was the only library that ever let me in.
It taught me that I'm enough, that my future can be wide open. "
It doesn't surprise me that he thinks of nature as his library. I called it that to myself yesterday, on this exact mountain. His library. Hearing him say it on his own, I have to look at the water for a while.
"Maybe someday," he says quietly. He picks a flat stone off the bank and sends it skipping across the pool, subject closed, then reaches over and tugs my pack strap straight where it did not need straightening.
I watch him fold the dream back up and put someday in his pocket, and the sun stays right where it was, and I go cold anyway.
Because someday is a queue. He's never hidden what's standing at the front of it.
The land out west he spoke about, the surveys, the one meeting on his calendar he looks forward to.
I laid it all out for Annie a week ago, a company in one place and land in another and a life with a departure date printed somewhere on it.
Nobody has to show me the ticket for me to know that sooner or later, that day is coming.
"What time do we have to head down?" I ask, which is not the question.
He checks the sun instead of his phone. "Soon," he says, which is not the answer.
We let the small exchange stand in for the big one, the way you let a substitute run the class.
Our packs are on the ground behind us. We go to them, then he kneels in the dirt and re-laces my boots before the descent. "Heel lock," he says, threading the top hooks in a pattern I'd never have invented. "Keeps your toes off the front on the way down. Your knees will thank me."
I stand there getting my feet handled like a duchess. "This is some first-class level of service."
"It's not free," he says, smiling up at me. "There's a trail tax. First, a kiss."
"Happy to pay," I reply as he stands up and pulls me close for a sweet, yet intense, kiss.
When our lips part, he opens his eyes and holds my gaze. His is playful. "Plus one square of the s'mores chocolate."
"You're easy. After today, I would've given you the whole bar."
"I'd rather have more of you." He kisses me again, slower this time, then brings his hand down on my ass with a light smack. "Let's get down off this mountain."
He leads the way, and my boots, which two weeks ago were archaeology, carry me comfortably down the mountain. Somewhere in the past, a version of me bought these for reasons I no longer remember and buried them in a closet. I owe her an apology and possibly flowers.
We descend, tired but happy. Finn loads the Jeep with the tent and all our gear, then we head for the highway, and I watch the ridgeline shrink in the side mirror until a curve takes it.
Every mile toward Mattichogue is a mile toward Monday, and we both know it.
He takes my hand on top of the gearshift and holds on slightly too tight for a man just resting his hand there.
I hold back slightly too tight for a woman just letting him, and for a hundred miles neither of us adjusts the grip.
Then the trees open up and the Mattichogue water tower swings into view, silver legs and faded letters, standing where it's stood my whole life, and my heart does the thing it's been doing since the waterfall. The thing I keep pretending it doesn't do.
It's falling deeper. Irretrievably deeper.
Finn's hand tightens on mine at the exact moment the tower clears the trees.
So he's pretending too.
Twelve more minutes before he drops me at my apartment and real life begins again.
Neither of us lets go.