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He gripped her chin again, needing her to look at him, needing her to hold still. “Honey,” he said. “Please tell me you’re not asking me to—”

“If you don’t want to, that’s fine.”

She looked small and sad and hurt, and he knew she thought he didn’t want her, but that wasn’t the issue. Not even close.

“I should not be anyone’s first time. Not yours most of all.”

“Why not me most of all? Is there really something wrong with me?”

“No,” he said fiercely, “there has never been anything wrong with you. You have always been the sweetest, most delightful part of my day here. Always. But there is something wrong with me. I can’t do a relationship. I can’t. I fucked that up so many different ways. And I just want... I can’t do another crutch.”

“I’m leaving,” she said, looking at him like he was crazy. Maybe he was. “I was never looking for a relationship here. But you know I realized when I went out with Mike... By the way, Mike is one of the guys who made fun of me and made photocopies of my diary.”

He took a step back. “You went on a date withthat guy?”

“I don’t know, I thought it might be healing. Or cathartic. But at the end of the day, I realized that I couldn’t kiss somebody just because I wanted to get a kiss. And I couldn’t sleep with somebody just because I wanted to feel like I had won some game. Like I’d beaten the level that I was stuck on in middle school. I want you. Being with you this past week has made it very clear to me what desire is. And that kiss... I think you melted the soles of my shoes. I just want you. And I feel like if you could be my first...”

“I don’t want to help you become a legend by letting you wave bloody sheets around in my name,” he said, suddenly feeling irritated when he didn’t have a right to be.

He was telling her flat out they couldn’t have a relationship, so why did it piss him off to hear her say the same? That she just wanted sex. Sex was all he had to offer, and dammit, he’d been celibate for too long. It wasn’t like he didn’t think he’d ever have it again. He was so hard right now he thought he might die of it.

He wanted this woman.

But he didn’t want to be a notch in her belt because of who he was to the town.

“Nobody needs to know. I realized something else after I climbed this mountain. After you told me all the things you did. I don’t need anyone to know. I don’t need them to know anything about me. I’m the only one that needs to know. What I want is to go into my new life with confidence that I’m strong enough to do it. I don’t want to regret anything. I wanted to kiss you, so I did, and it has nothing to do with a list. You asked me what I wanted to get out of this hike. I wanted to finish. That was it. Ask me what I want to get out of being with you.”

“What do you hope to get?” he asked, his voice low and raspy. “What do you think it’s going to get you, to let me lay you down in my bed and strip your clothes off you? To...to let me have you. What do you think that’s going to get you? Me, a junkie ex-soldier whose wife left him.”

He waited for her desire to turn to disgust. It didn’t. Instead, she drew closer to him, and he felt air rush out of his lungs in a gust.

“I want to,” she said. “I want to be with you. That’s it. That’s the beginning and end. Trying to scare me away. You’re doing that thing.”

He frowned. “I’m not doing anything. It’s me. This is just me.”

“Snowy plover,” she said softly.

“That only works when I’mnottrying to be an asshole.”

“Are you trying to be? Are you trying to push me away?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Because I think you might need to be pushed away.”

She shook her head. “I told you. What I want is just to be with you. To have the experience. Don’t you just want that for a minute? To just feel good? Up here on this mountain, you make me feel beautiful. I’ve never felt pretty in my life.”

“Fuck everyone that made you feel like there was something wrong with you, Rory Sullivan. Iwantall those things. The only thing holding me back is the fear that I could hurt you. I’ve already hurt too many people. If Lydia and my mother knew about my substance abuse and the time I spent on the street...”

“What’s between us is between us,” she said.

“My sister is your best friend.”

“You’remy friend.”

He’d had no idea how much he needed to hear somebody say that. How far that went in healing some damaged place inside him. Because his friend from the military, who had never checked on him again, was marrying his ex-wife.

It wasn’t Cassidy getting married that hurt. It was the way that whole group, that whole life, had rearranged itself without him, and done so effortlessly.

No one needed him. They didn’t even want him. Didn’t even miss him.