“Tell me something you haven’t told anyone here yet,” he says after a quiet stretch.
“I was going to leave San Francisco a year before I did,” I say after thinking for a minute. “I even packed boxes. Then I unpacked them because leaving without a plan felt like failing.”
I pick at a loose thread on my jeans. “I wish I hadn’t waited so long.”
He turns that over, serious.
“I wish I’d asked for help here sooner,” he says. “I thought I had to carry everything by myself, or I wasn’t the right man for the job.”
He huffs a small, self-conscious laugh. “Turns out I was just a tired one.”
“You’re allowed to be tired.” The words come out softer than I intend. “You’re allowed to want things.”
He looks at me then, really looks, and I can feel honesty settling between us like a warm blanket. “What do you want, Tricia?”
You.
“I want… roots,” I say instead. “To make things that last. To wake up and not feel like I’m late to my own life.”
He nods once, a muscle jumping in his jaw. “Me too.”
He reaches up, slow enough to back out, and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. His knuckles graze my cheek. My breath stutters; his does too.
“Can I—” he starts.
“Yes,” I say, already gone.
The kiss is nothing like the earlier ones. Those were all spark.
This is a slow flame, deliberate and deep.
He tastes like cinnamon and apples and something that makes my head swim.
His hand slides to the nape of my neck, anchoring me to him.
My fingers curl into his flannel shirt, holding him tightly, as if I’m afraid he’ll escape.
When we break for air, we’re both smiling like we’ve gotten away with something.
“Hi,” I whisper.
“Hi.” His voice is a scrape of velvet.
We kiss again, and again, conversation dissolving into the kind of language that doesn’t need words. The candles gutter lower. The space heater clicks off.
The world pulls in tight around the couch and the quiet certainty that whatever we’re starting is real.
Rain starts while we’re still wrapped in the soft thrum of our stolen kisses. Light at first, then steadier, drumming a rhythm on the metal roof. Pumpkin lifts his head once, decides we’re safe, and resettles with a sigh.
Trailing his lips down my neck, my top somehow disappears. His lips work against my chest, teasing my nipples into peaks.
At some point, my pants are gone. I’m lying on the little bed in the back of the trailer, naked as the day I was born.
Quinn is leaning back on his heals. “Can you do something for me?”
My body is tightly wound from his caresses, but I nod. “Of course.”
“Show me how you like to be touched.”
