Page 96 of Curvy Cabin Fever

“Maybe you should have been.” He reaches up, pushes my hair back from my forehead with gentle fingers. “Listen to me.Stop trying to make this fit into some predefined box. It won’t. This is bigger than that. Messier. More beautiful.”

“Since when did you get so wise?”

“Since I fell in love with my best friend and had to figure out how to live with it.”

The simple truth of the words hit me in the chest.

The years of quiet longing behind them.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “For not seeing it sooner.”

Morgan shrugs, the movement easy and forgiving. “You weren’t ready.”

“And now?”

“Now you’re here.” His voice holds nothing but certainty. “That’s all that matters.”

We stay like that, trading quiet words as the afternoon light fades around us. I tell him about the moments when I almost knew, almost admitted to myself, what was hiding beneath the surface of our friendship. The night in college when he stayed up with me to study, falling asleep on my couch with his head on my shoulder. The weekend at his parents’ cabin when we went fishing, and I couldn’t stop watching the way his hands moved as he tied flies.

He laughs, fingers tracing patterns on my back. “Rhett, it’s okay. All is forgiven.”

“Is it?” I ask, suddenly serious again. “All those years wasted.”

“Not wasted,” he says firmly. “We needed them. To become who we are now. To be ready for this. For Aria. For everything that’s happening.”

I think about the cabin behind us. About Damien and Aria, probably wondering where we’ve disappeared to. About the conversation we had last night, the three of us, planning a life I never imagined possible until now.

“We should go back,” I say reluctantly.

Morgan nods but doesn’t move. “In a minute.”

“Do you think they’ll understand? About us?”

“Aria already does,” Morgan replies. “She sees more than she lets on.”

“And Damien?”

“Damien’s known since the first night the four of us spent together. He cornered me in the kitchen the next morning and asked point-blank if I was in love with you.”

I pull back, surprised. “What did you tell him?”

“The truth.” Morgan smiles. “He just nodded and said, ‘Makes sense.’”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.” He squeezes my waist. “He understands complexity, Rhett. Better than most.”

The sun has set, painting the snow in shades of gold and pink. We should go in and get warm, join the others.

But I need to say one more thing first.

“I don’t know how to do this,” I confide. “Any of it. Being with a man. Being with two people. Building something that doesn’t follow any rule book I’ve ever read.”

Morgan reaches up, cups my face in his hands. “None of us do. That’s the beauty of it. We figure it out together.” He smiles, and it’s the same smile I’ve known all my life, but now I see everything it’s always held. “One day at a time.”

I nod, something settling inside me. “Okay.”

“Okay?” His eyebrows lift slightly.