Outside, the woods were dark and quiet.
Inside the truck bed, we were wrapped in heat, tangled limbs, nervous laughter, and the kind of connection I didn’t know I was allowed to feel anymore.
We shifted again and both bonked heads, letting out matching groans.
“I think I’m concussed,” she whispered.
“I think I’m in trouble.”
“You are.”
She trailed her fingers over my chest, and her touch erased everything else.
And then she looked at me.
Not just my body.
Me.
And I knew.
This wasn’t just a fling. Not just tension unwinding. This was her letting me in, past the jokes and sass and survival lists.
And I was already in too deep to pretend otherwise, so when she kissed me again, I kissed her back with everything I had.
And this time, neither of us stopped…
Until we were just too tired to move.
I didn’t mean to fall asleep.
Not exactly.
But wrapped in Fifi’s arms, heat still humming through my veins and her breath warm against my collarbone, it was impossible not to let go.
It wasn’t just that we’d kissed each other senseless, or that she’d unraveled every wall I didn’t know I’d been clinging to; it was that for the first time in a long time, I wasn’t trying to outrun anything.
I wasn’t trying to get away from the past or the ache of guilt. No pressure to keep it together.
Just her.
Just this.
And that scared the hell out of me.
She was asleep now, curled into me like her body knew this space was safe. Her thigh rested across mine, and my hand had ended up cupped around her hip, holding her there like I couldn’t quite believe she was real, and maybe I couldn’t.
Not when she’d kissed me with that soft, sure hunger or when she’d whispered my name like a secret only she was allowed to keep.
And when she’d laughed into my neck afterward and asked if I wanted the emergency brownie now or in the morning, I was hers forever.
We’d eaten it immediately in silence, mostly naked, and it had somehow been the most romantic thing I’d ever done.
I stared up at the stars.
They blinked through the treetops, scattered and quiet, like they were watching and waiting for me to figure out what came next.
The answer, of course, wasnothing.
