Steaks. Cast iron. Rosemary from Louisa's garden that he crushed between his palms. I sat by the fire with the whiskey —he'd packed a bottle of the good stuff, the one Ben Alvarez kept behind the bar at the Silver Spur — and watched him cook.
"You look like you know what you're doing," I said.
"I look like a man standing near a fire holding meat. It's genetic. Blackwood men have been fooling women into thinking they can cook for four generations."
"So the steak is going to be terrible."
"The steak is going to be incredible. But I need you to understand that's mostly the cow and the cast iron doing the work. I'm just here for the seasoning and the atmosphere."
"And the rosemary?"
"That's Momma's. I take zero credit for the rosemary."
I laughed until I tipped sideways in the chair.
We ate at the little table with the wildflowers between us and the sky putting on a show — purples and pinks bleeding into deep blue, the first stars puncturing through. He refilled my whiskey. His knee pressed against mine under the table, and neither of us moved it.
After dinner, he built the fire up. We sat in the Adirondack chairs with the cowhides draped over our legs and the cushions behind our backs and the valley dark below and the sky opening up into the kind of darkness you only get when you're forty miles from a streetlight.
"What did you want to be when you were little?" I asked.
"A cowboy."
"That's cheating. You are a cowboy."
"Fine. An astronaut cowboy."
"Better."
He reached across the gap between the chairs and found my hand. "What's the thing you're most proud of?"
"Maisie." No hesitation. "Everything else I've built, I had to fight for. Maisie, I'd burn the world down for." I turned my headto look at him. Firelight on the planes of his face. "What about you?"
"Right now? This." He squeezed my hand. "Being the man you trust with your Saturday night."
I got out of my chair. Climbed into his lap — knees on either side of his hips, the Adirondack creaking under our combined weight, his face tipping up to mine. He looked surprised for exactly half a second. Then his hands found my waist, and his eyes went dark.
I kissed him. Slow at first — whiskey-warm, the fire crackling. Then deeper. His tongue against mine and my hands in his hair, and the kissing turned into something that was rapidly leaving PG-13 territory, and the chair was groaning.
He pulled back. Breathing hard. "There's a tent."
"I see the tent."
"It has a bed."
"Does it."
"A very comfortable bed that I spent forty-five minutes setting up this morning, and I would very much like to use it before this chair collapses."
I laughed against his mouth. He stood — lifting me with him, my legs wrapping around his waist — and carried me across the clearing to the tent and held the canvas flap open.
Inside: the camp cot layered with sheepskin and blankets, a lantern casting warm light, more fairy lights strung along the frame. He'd thought of everything. He'd thought of me.
He undressed me slowly. Peeling layers like he had all the time in the world. Kissing each new inch of skin he uncovered — shoulder, the inside of my elbow, the dip of my collarbone. I undressed him the same way. Unhurried. My hands mapping the body I was learning by heart — the ridges, the dips, the places that made his breath catch.
We fell into bed, and he gathered me against him and for a long time we just lay there — skin to skin, breathing together, his hand tracing my hip.
"You're shaking," he said.
