I bent down and softly licked the powdered sugar from her skin... She went very still. For a second, I thought I’d done something wrong. Then her breath hitched, barely, and she leaned forward, tasting sugar off my lips like it was the most natural choice in the world.
We didn’t ride the wheel. We sat on the hood of my truck and watched it instead, slow lights turning above the field. She tucked into me, and I learned the exact shape of her head against my chest, the way she hooks her hand in my shirt when she’s happy without announcing it.
“Say it,” she murmured against me, teasing.
“What?”
“That you like this. The noise. The mess. Me inhaling three thousand calories of fried dough.”
“I like all of it,” I said before I could stop myself.
She pulled back enough to look at me. The green was back now, searching, assessing, and I realized I’d given away more than I meant to. So, I didn’t take it back.
I let it stand between us and watched her decide not to run.
The Perseids came mid-month. She texted me at 1:07 a.m.You awake?And I was before the phone buzzed. We drove out past the old quarry, climbed onto the tailgate with a blanket and thermos coffee that tasted like burnt hope, and watched the sky throw sparks over our heads.
“I used to make wishes on these,” she said.
“What do you wish for now?”
She was quiet long enough, I thought she might not answer. Then: “Not to have to wish for anything.”
“Ambitious.”
“Selfish.”
“Honest,” I said.
She turned her face toward me. The starlight found her cheek. Something in my chest did that painful expand-and-catch thing again.
I could’ve said it then. I could’ve folded her name around the word that had been pacing the back of my tongue for months. But I heard my own voice from July on the tailgate and obeyed it.
Let it grow on purpose.
So, I kissed the corner of her mouth. She chased me for the rest. The meteor shower didn’t notice and kept burning itself, hopeful overhead.
I paid attention that summer. To how her shoulders dropped half an inch the second she crossed my threshold. To how she hates air-conditioning set too low because it reminds her of hospital hallways. To how she likes peaches cold from the fridge and hates the sound of ice clinking in an empty glass. To how her eyes go almost sea-green when she’s bracing for bad news and slate-blue when she’s laughing so hard she snorts and then threatens violence if I bring it up later.
I learned her. Not to keep her. To meet her.
By the last week of August, when the sun started losing its nerve a little earlier and the cicadas gave ground to crickets, I knew two things with a clarity that didn’t scare me like it should have.
One: I loved her. Quietly. Completely. The kind that isn’t a firework but a pilot light that never goes out.
Two: I was going to wait until the words didn’t take anything from her to say them. Until they were a gift she could put in her pocket and not a weight around her neck.
So, I held them. I let the summer hold us. And when she fell asleep on my chest after a day that had taken too much from both of us, I pressed my mouth to her hair and told the ceiling fan the truth.
On purpose.
CHAPTER 25
HARLAN - DIFFERENT KINDS OF FIRE
The clinic smelled like cheap coffee and lavender disinfectant. A strange combination, but not unpleasant. Comforting, in a way I hadn’t expected. Summer’s cling had finally started to loosen. The air outside carried the faintest hint of coolness at night, and the pecan trees along Main Street had begun to give up the first copper-tipped leaves.
Remi was already at the front desk when I walked in, leaning over a printout, reading glasses sliding down her nose like she’d forgotten she needed them. She wore a gray sweater that swallowed her shoulders and leggings that had clearly survived more than a few twelve-hour shifts. Hair piled high, tendrils loose from humidity. And still, she looked steady. Composed. Like a force of nature disguised as a woman who colour-coded her binders and refused to say no to anyone who asked for help.
