She lights. “God, no. You’re a pine. I’m going to string lights on you and scandalize the forest.”
I choke on a laugh and give up pretending I don’t want it. Her joy. The lights. The scandal. It terrifies me how much I want it.
A car passes outside. The headlights slide across her profile—cheek, mouth, the soft place under her jaw I won’t touch. The rental hums. Everything in me is too full.
“Come here,” I hear myself say, and my voice is lower than it should be.
“Why,” she says, but she’s already rising, socks whispering over warped floorboards.
“Test the heater vent,” I lie, and then I don’t pretend at all. I slide my hands around her waist and tug her between my knees, my thumbs fitting the curve where sweater becomes skin.
She breathes in, surprise soft and bright. “Clay.”
“Just this,” I tell us both. “Let me hold you a minute.”
She comes willingly. Arms loop my shoulders like she’s known this map forever. Her body fits the frame of me too well for two people faking a thing. I tuck my face against the side of her neck and breathe her in—citrus and clay and whatever wild thing wind leaves on skin when it blows off the ridge.
“I’m not trying to fix you,” she says into my hair.
“I know.”
“I’m not trying to replace her.”
“I know that too.”
“And I’m not leaving you alone with this,” she adds, and the bold certainty in her voice knocks the breath out of me. “Not tonight.”
That vow says more than the word fiancé ever could.
I ease back enough to look at her. “You’re going to get me in trouble.”
“With who?”
“Myself.”
Her smile turns slow and dangerous. “Good.”
I hold her a heartbeat longer and then let go, because if I don’t, the rules we just wrote will be ash by morning. She feels the choice and nods, like she heard it happen.
“Okay,” she says. “Go before I do something brave and ridiculous.”
I stand. “You? Brave and ridiculous? Never.”
She bumps my hip with hers. “You can flirt, Walker. Careful.”
“I wasn’t flirting.”
“You were.”
“Don’t fish.”
She grins like a cat in a sunbeam. I grab my jacket off the back of her chair and head to the door because if I look at her another second, I’ll be feral enough to forget the outline and draw something we can’t erase.
My hand hits the knob. Her voice finds my back. “Clay?”
I look over my shoulder.
“Thank you,” she says. “For the heat. And the truth.”
