Chapter Fourteen #2
“I run back again,” I snap. “Running helps. It keeps me out of jail. It gives me the strength to control one thing in this world, even if it’s only me.
Even if it’s only the desire to go around stealing milk.
Or pushing people into the water.” I imagine my hands on Fisher’s kayak, strong enough to flip him and hold him upside down, so he has to abandon his boat and the idea he stole.
“Why would you want to push someone in the water?” He doesn’t sound horrified or judgy, just curious.
I shift from foot to foot, like I’m still thinking of bolting, but also thinking of staying. “For justice , Lyle. To show the assholes some consequences.” I kick the water, miserable. “But I can’t. I’ll never have that power. Not socially, not physically.”
Water curls around my feet, no warmer than it has to be to keep flowing. It never yields, not one degree, and never will, not until the glaciers that feed it are gone.
I wish I were half as strong. You don’t fuck with the river.
I look over my shoulder, expecting Lyle to end this conversation.
He’ll say something about energy or balance and head back to the campfire.
But he tucks his thumbs in the pockets of his shorts and waits.
The warm western sky touches him with liquid gold, underlining the shadow on his T-shirt where his bone necklace hides, lighting up his freckled collarbones, glowing from his hair.
I can’t be imagining the look on his face, like he wants to chase me even when I’m furious and freaking out. As if he likes me when I’m angry—wants me to march out of the river, climb up on a log, and kiss him hard.
“You could push me in the water, if you needed to.” God, the softness in his voice. Withstanding his compassion is the hardest thing I do around here.
I set my jaw, trying to set my soul along with it. “I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“You’re too strong. Too big. I could work out for a million years and you’d still be twice my size. I don’t want to feel stupid when I push and you don’t fall down.”
He wades closer, catching my hand and bringing it to his chest. I can’t help spreading my fingers into the soft cotton of his T-shirt, over the skin and negative spaces I imagine underneath.
He looks down at my fingers across his sternum, then back up, a strange light in his eyes. “Try it, Stellar J.”
“Ugh. Fine.” I sigh, making my shove sullen and half-hearted.
The whole time he’s falling, I’m certain he’ll take a step back, grab an overhanging branch, pull up at the last second. I believe it until a sheet of freezing water soaks me up to the nipples.
I scramble to where he bobs in the shallows. “Shit, Lyle! You didn’t have to actually fall down!”
He lets me pull him to sitting. “How else would you have known how strong you are?”
I respect him, so I don’t roll my eyes, but it is a very close call. “Cute, but you let me knock you over. I couldn’t actually do that to someone your size.”
“You could do that to me ,” he says, his eyes fixed to mine so firmly it feels permanent.
“Why does power only count if you take it from someone? Why doesn’t it count if someone gives it to you?
Shares it with you?” He gets to his feet, rivulets sluicing off his water-darkened hair.
A sharp shiver grips my spine at the way his T-shirt clings to his shoulders, his chest, the curve of his belly over—
I stop the downward slide of my gaze.
“It doesn’t count because if they give it, they could take it back. They will take it back, if I don’t bring what they want to the table.”
“And what if I like what you bring to the table? What if we’re stronger together?”
He’s standing so close, his head tilted down, mine tilted up.
I’m hot and cold, desperate to both cool off and steal his heat.
I want to drag him to the tent, skip evening chores, and earn every sly comment at breakfast tomorrow—and I want to stay here and push this moment as far as it can go, until he’s looked at every ugly thing about me and not turned away.
“All right. If we’re stronger together, then you push me in the water. It’s only fair.”
He takes a half step backward, face blanching. “No, thanks.”
“Why not?”
He shakes his head. “People get scared when I’m forceful. I’d rather find ways to be kind, even when others aren’t.”
I frown. “So when you’re most generous, that’s when you’re most furious?”
His eyes darken. “Not always.” The yogic breath again, and suddenly I see it: he’s angry too. He hides it so well, I didn’t see it. Nobody sees it. I accused him of having a fake personality, but it wasn’t the weird stuff that was fake.
It was Lyle admitting to every emotion but one, afraid to be angry.
And me denying every emotion but one, angry because I’m afraid.
We need a place where we can be brave, and we need that place to be with each other.
I grab his hand and put it on my body. His thumb brushes the tender skin of my neck, fingers meeting the strap of my sports bra.
“What are you doing?” His breath turns unsteady, his eyes shadowed like the river at dusk—quiet green water not without its secrets and perils.
“Push me in. Believe I won’t run when you’re angry.” I tug his hand over my shoulder, the heel of his palm tucking in below my deltoids. “Trust me to be as strong as you say I am.”
He hesitates.
“Don’t pretend you’re fine, Lyle. You’re furious! You deserve to say it out loud.”
“I’m furious,” he says softly, as if testing the feel of the words in his mouth.
“He hated that idea.”
“He hated all my ideas. He ignored me until my research went viral, then tried to stop me from graduating. I want to shatter his goddamn boat with my bare hands. And maybe I…” He takes his hand back, looking at the broad palm, the fingers cocked with angry intention.
“Maybe I could. Maybe I would . Maybe it’d be exactly like when I was seventeen. ”
“Or maybe,” I say, my voice vibrating with urgency, “that was half a lifetime ago. Maybe you’re older, and you can trust yourself to handle it. Trust me to handle it.”
Our eyes meet, his face full of hope and fear, his lips pinned between his teeth.
I nod.
I’m sure he’s going to push me, but his arms sweep me up instead. And then we’re spinning and falling, together.
His back hits the river first. Displaced water rushes at me from all sides. I come up coughing, chest tight with cold. “What the hell? This was supposed to be only me.”
“No. This was supposed to be us , together.”
I blink gritty-feeling drops out of my eyes, the water blurring my vision. When he says together , it doesn’t sound like this is strictly business.
It doesn’t feel like it, either.
I’ve wanted to not want him this way. I’ve tried to ignore him, dismiss him, feel anything but this yearning that won’t stay down no matter how I try to defeat it.
But maybe I was wrong. Maybe we have something we can grip with both hands. Something solid, that wants to be held.
The gentle current ripples at my back, floating me into his lap. His body tenses, his eyes casting downward to my lips, droplets glistening like diamonds in the rose-gold bands of his lashes.
Nothing has to happen.
But when my vision clears and my eyes meet his, I want it to.
“You don’t have to give everything to everybody all the time.
You could keep something for yourself.” I bring my thighs to either side of his, wrap my arms around his neck, and inhale chocolate and spice from his lips.
It’s another of those lingering, breathless touches I’ve never shared with anyone but him. I don’t want them from anyone but him.
“Stellar,” he says, and the thing about Lyle is that when his voice goes low, it goes all the way down to the center of the earth. It’s a tectonic plate shifting, groaning under the heat and strain, forecasting the big one. More than ripples—a tsunami. For my body.
For my heart.
“I’m afraid we won’t be able to hold on,” I whisper, my lips so close to his, there’s hardly a point in keeping them apart.
“But I want us to try. If all we have is you and me, then I want us to promise we won’t walk away from this.
Or from each other. Anyone can get in a boat and talk about love, but they can’t be the Love Boat, because they aren’t us.
No one can beat us as long as neither of us walks away. ”
“I wouldn’t walk away. Not ever,” he says, a little breathless. Every movement of his chest moves mine. Every piece of our clothing is wet and clinging, needing to be stripped off.
His back burns underneath my hands; below the water, my skin sings with cold, the ache between my legs promising to wake up in a burst of sparks if he gives it some heat.
I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want him, here, now.
I want hours of his skin underneath my lips.
Days of watching his mouth fall open and his eyes drift shut.
Weeks of him whispering my name and me screaming his. His body and mine, everywhere, forever.
“Let’s get out of the river. Go… warm up.” It’s clear what I’m asking for.
I’m not sure why that was the wrong thing to say, but he tenses underneath me, pulling his face away with an indrawn breath.
“You’re right. We should get warm.” He sets me aside, then stands in a single smooth motion. I take the hand he extends downward, flying to my feet when he pulls. The loss of his touch is a wretched, bone-deep chill.
“You want the shower, or the sauna? Pick one and I’ll take the other.” He sloshes to shore.
I scramble after him, embarrassed and confused. “Um, I thought…”
His hands clench. “Yes. I know. But we’ve gotten cold and impulsively fallen into bed once already. We can’t go through that aftermath again. Not here. The guests have to be our first priority.”
I wipe hot shame from my face with the cold, wet collar of my shirt. “Yeah. You’re right. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have… I shouldn’t have.”
“I’m not judging you for wanting what you want. And I’m not asking for forever.”
We both look at his ring, then at each other, the jolt of the empty symbol passing between us.
“But I’m at a place in my life where I need sex to mean something. Something good . For everyone involved. Is that what you want from me?”
I used to think I didn’t want meaningful sex with anyone. Then I thought I wanted it with Jen. Then I tried not to have it with Lyle. Now…
Now it’s been fewer than two weeks since I sat in Liz’s nursery, not trusting myself to make decent decisions about one-night stands, much less sex that came with a future and not just a present. It might feel like we’ve known each other forever, but there’s plenty we don’t know about each other.
I want him, but he’s right. You can’t apply the same fix over and over and expect a problem to solve itself. That’s not how it works.
The only solution I can try is honesty. He deserves to have that from me.
“You probably guessed I’ve been… struggling. For a while. I haven’t been able to think about what I want in a lot of ways. Including sexual ways. It hasn’t been an issue since… for the last year, honestly.” I watch his body shift as he does the math from the night of the concert to now: one year.
“That’s fair,” he says, his voice threaded with compassion. Oh, god, here comes the rejection. “I’m glad you told me. And I think it makes even more sense to stick with the boundaries until you know what you want.”
Until you know , he said. Not until we know .
I nod, my insides jumbled up and aching. “Okay. I’m sorry that got out of hand. I’ll take the shower.” I shiver, but it’s his body I’m imagining under the gloriously warm water, not mine.
“It wasn’t just you. I was there when it got out of hand, too,” he says, striding away. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
We’ll see each other during evening chores, and at the wash station, and in the tent, but I know what he means.
A year ago we had sex and both of us woke up alone.
He’ll see me in the morning because this time, we have no choice but to wake up together.