Page 43

“I’ll save you the trouble, then.” He pulls out his phone and starts scrolling through old pictures.

I catch flashes of selfies at Alchemist, shots of Noah and a group of strangers posing at the summit of some mountain, pictures of beer and random dogs on trails.

Finally he taps one of the photos to enlarge it on the screen and passes his phone over.

It’s a professional headshot of a serious man in a white button-up shirt.

“Is this your dad?”

“You’re so funny, Sadie. Have I ever told you?” His tone drips with endearing sarcasm.

I barely recognize the Noah in this photo.

For one, he’s clean-shaven; I bet I could cut myself on the lines of his long, angular jaw.

His red hair is trimmed short on the sides, and though it’s longer on top, it’s too short to show off any of his natural curls.

He’s thinner than he is now, too. Without any of the masculine raggedness of his long hair and beard, he almost looks pretty.

Elegant. His features remind me of Loren, smooth and elven, but his unsmiling expression is nothing like Noah. The Noah I know is always smiling.

“I liked my imagination better,” I admit.

He presses his lips to my temple. “And what were you imagining, hm?”

“I was trying to remember whether I remembered how to undo the knot of a tie.”

“Mm.” He slides his hand up the side of my ribs, his thumb skimming the underside of my breast through my shirt. “It’s easy. I could show you.”

But I’m not ready to be distracted yet. “Why did you leave?”

“Truthfully, I liked the work fine. Accounting’s like a puzzle if you look at it the right way. Even now I still do some work for Dan. But the culture I was part of in Chicago wasn’t much fun. And I got tired of how cold it was.”

I don’t know if he’s talking about the people or the city—maybe both.

His gaze pans away for a moment as he looks into the fire.

He’s so beautiful in this light. The golden glow from the flames makes his hair shine that much redder, the light catching on each individual unbound curl. I’m so glad he grew it out.

When Noah looks at me again, there’s a soft vulnerability in his expression that wasn’t there before. I fix my attention on the way his lips part hesitantly.

“I moved away after a tough breakup,” he says eventually. “When I left, I didn’t know where I wanted to go. All I knew was that I wanted to get out.”

I don’t have time to ask whether he wants to talk about it. He just does.

“We were high school sweethearts, both grew up in a tiny suburb outside of Chicago. I begged her to come with me to Colorado for school, and I was really excited to try something different from what we were used to. She liked it fine, but the plan was always for us to move back home to be close to her family. That was always The Plan.”

He smiles at me like it’s an inside joke, but I’m on the outside of it.

“We went back after we graduated, and I followed all the steps as she laid them out. We’d live together in the city for a few years, her as a nurse at the hospital and me at a firm.

We’d adopt a dog, save up as much money as possible, buy a house, I’d get a ring…

” He ticks off each step on his fingers as he speaks.

“I loved her enough, I thought, that I was happy to go along with it. I don’t know how she got so sick of everything, when it was all her idea.” He reaches over to pat my thigh consolingly, as if I’m the one experiencing the breakup.

“She cheated on me with a guy from the hospital,” he says finally. “Took the dog and said she couldn’t keep living such a ‘railroaded life.’?”

“Not the dog.” My voice is small. What else am I supposed to say?

“That part was for the best, at least,” he says with a laugh.

It’s an empty echo of humor. “God, he was the most pitiful little thing, Sadie. The tiniest, laziest dachshund. I couldn’t take him on a walk longer than a mile.

He was devoted to her anyway.” Noah scratches his beard and clears his throat.

“So I decided that if she wasn’t going to live a railroaded life, neither was I.

When I first decided to leave, I just wanted a big change, you know?

Something that would give me the same open-air adventure feeling that college had.

” He exhales sharply, and I can’t tell if it’s another laugh or a frustrated sigh.

“I got over her, but I haven’t gotten over the rush of traveling.

I haven’t slowed down since. I don’t know if I know how.

“So.” He exhales the word in one great big rush. He reaches toward me and threads his fingers through my hair. “That’s why I left.”

I lean into his palm. “Thanks for telling me. I’m sorry—I’m so sorry it happened like that.”

“It was shitty. But I don’t regret anything I’ve done since.

” He caps a stick with a marshmallow as he continues.

“She gets the lion’s share of the blame for how things ended, sure, but if I’m honest, I was going through the motions as much as she was.

Of course she shouldn’t have cheated on me, but I wasn’t a good partner, either.

By that point, we’d both stopped trying. For years.”

“Did she ultimately shake things up, like you did? After it ended?”

Noah snorts. It’s loud enough that I jump. “No, she settled down with the PA. Last I heard from my sister, they’re still in Chicago with their second kid on the way.”

Fucking hell. As soon as Noah sees my sympathetic wince, he musses my hair. “It’s fine, Sadie, really.” He hands me the prepped marshmallow stick before getting to work on his.

“Have you ever been tempted to stay anywhere since then?” I ask.

We both stick our marshmallows into the fire. I let mine roast gently atop the tallest flames and watch it darken to a pretty golden brown.

Noah sticks his marshmallow right where the fire’s hottest. It immediately catches aflame, and he lets it burn.

“Not really. Everywhere I’ve been, I’ve always hit a point where it’s made sense to get moving again.

When I was a park ranger, I waited until the season was over.

In Montana, I left when my landlord started losing her marbles.

When I was a camp counselor, I left after the summer ended.

Or sometimes my friend groups would start to drift apart, or other people would start leaving, so.

Maybe I’m worried about getting stuck—rolling stone and moss and such.

I’m afraid to stay in one place long enough for it to get boring. ”

“Are you bored of Texas? Of our friends?” Are you bored of me? I don’t say it, but it hangs unspoken between us.

“No, Sadie, of course not. I’m waiting for people to get bored of me. ”

He’s squinting at the stars like the light pains him.

My chest clenches. Suddenly, my perspective on his extroverted demeanor and aggressive friendliness shifts.

What part does he feel like he has to play to keep people’s interest?

I wonder if that’s how his ex made him feel, when their relationship ended.

Like betraying his trust was somehow justified because she’d lost interest in the life they’d built—because she’d lost interest in him.

Just as I’m about to reach for him and draw his face back down to me, Noah jerks suddenly and blows out the flame boiling his marshmallow.

It’s completely charred, and it bubbles and drips like white lava.

He barely manages to nestle it in between the graham cracker and chocolate piece that I hold out for him before it melts clean off the stick.

I eye the obliterated marshmallow with suspicion and a sudden surge of affection.

“No one could ever get bored of you, Noah,” I say gently. You’re impossible to forget, Loren. “Not when you make s’mores like a psychopath.”

He finally turns back to me, and his expression is like sunshine again. “It’s the best way. Try it.”

Hesitantly, I trade the golden-brown perfection of my s’more for his monstrosity. I carefully bite into it. There’s a definite smokiness to it, and I’m alarmed to hear the crunch of the char flaking off. But once I reach the gooey part in the middle—

“ Fuck. ” Except my mouth’s full when I say it, so it just comes out as a grunt of satisfaction. Melted chocolate dribbles down my chin.

“I told you. I tried to tell you.”

I hold up the s’more. “This one’s mine now.”

“Consider it a gift.”

Within moments it’s gone, and I gaze into the night with eyes half-lidded in bliss.

“Sadie.” Noah laughs, turning fully to face me. “Sadie, you’re a mess.”

Even as I start to smile, I can feel the sticky remnants of the marshmallow on my lips.

“Let me help you.”

He grabs for my hand, his fingers easily circling my wrist as he presses a teasing kiss to the pad of my thumb. He sucks at it lightly, and his tongue draws a swirling wake of warmth along my skin, catching the last rivulets of dripping chocolate. I shiver on instinct, and he tugs me forward.

“You’ve got some here,” he murmurs, pressing another kiss to the corner of my lips. “And here.” He traces a line of heat down my jawline. “Here, too.” His teeth skim down my throat.

My laugh is low and breathy. “There’s no way.”

“You just taste so sweet, maybe I can’t tell the difference.” He burrows his nose in the space behind my ear and inhales. His hands move to snake behind my back, and once he’s wound his arms around me, he tugs again. I’m pulled flush against his chest as he hums into my shoulder, “Much better.”

Not quite. The line of my hips is tilted at an awkward angle against his, and a hidden rock under the blanket digs uncomfortably into the meat of my thigh.

I twist further into his hold, swinging my outside leg over his waist until I’m straddling him, my knees nestled on either side of his thighs.

Leisurely I twine my fingers behind his neck, my forearms resting lightly on the tops of his shoulders.

“Listen,” I say, leaning forward until we’re cheek to cheek. My voice is barely more than a sigh exhaled into his hair. “I feel like we were rudely interrupted last weekend.”

His words are muffled by the way his lips press to my neck. “Go on.”

I roll my hips deliberately forward against him. “I was thinking we could pick up where we left off.”

Something hard presses into the back of my thigh again, but this time I’m certain it’s not a rock.

He doesn’t answer immediately. Instead, he skims his palms down my back, and his touch is light, soft—just the barest brush of his fingertips.

I swear I can feel his grip tighten as his hands round my ass, but then it’s gentle again as his fingers trace the sides of my thighs, the backs of my knees, the arches of my calves.

His touch is slow and studious, like he’s trying to memorize the shape of my body.

He lightly pinches my heel, and I wonder if he’s hesitating.

I wonder if I read the situation wrong.

It wouldn’t be the first time.

But then he’s inhaling again, and his beard brushes against my bare skin as he noses the neckline of my crop top to the side.

He bites into the dip of my collarbone just as his grip tightens suddenly, his arms winding tight around my waist and anchoring me to him.

On instinct I rock my hips against him again, and he barely muffles the groan that rumbles against my chest. Through the thin fabric of my tight athletic shorts and the navy-blue nylon of his…

fuck, it’s like we’re not wearing anything at all.

Heat gathers between my thighs, and I can’t help but clench them tighter against his legs—except his are so much larger than mine, and an ache builds in my hips where they stretch to make room for him.

Where the hardness of him strains against his shorts, I slide myself forward in a slow arc, desperate for the friction.

It’s not nearly enough. I need more.

“The tent,” he says roughly, his voice strangled. “Get into the tent.”