"I was going to say something I shouldn't say."
"That's why I said don't."
He looked at me the way he'd looked at me last night in the barn door. The look that had cost both of us a night of sleep.
I leaned over the few inches between us and kissed him before he could say the thing he shouldn't say, because if he said it, I'd have to say something back, and I wasn't ready for that yet.
He kissed me back like a man who had been deciding whether to do this for the last seven hours and had finally made the call. His hand came up to the side of my face, the same way it had in the barn last night. His thumb settled at the corner of my jaw.
But this kiss wasn’t the same as last night. Last night had been a question. This was him answering it. His mouth was warmer and his grip was steadier and he wasn't holding the line he'd been holding for three weeks because there was no line up here. We were above the line. We were above everything.
I'd photographed him for weeks. The way he carried weight. The way his shoulders went still when he was holding back. I knew him by his outline and his silence and the way he stood next to a fence post like the post was something he'd built. None of that prepared me for what it felt like to put my hand under his jaw and feel his pulse going faster than mine.
That, more than anything undid me.
I made a sound. Something between a breath and a laugh. He pulled back just enough to look at me, and I saw the version of his face I had been waiting for. Not the locked one. The one underneath.
"You're a problem," he said.
"You knew that the morning of the trailer gate."
“You’re right.”
"Then this is on you."
"I'm aware."
He kissed me again, slower this time. His hand moved to the back of my neck and stayed there. My camera slipped sideways in my lap. I caught it before it hit the rock and we both half-laughed against each other's mouths.
I set the camera down on the rock beside me. The first time in three weeks I'd put a camera down on purpose.
He noticed.
"You can take a picture of the post on the way down," he said, against my mouth.
"I already did."
"Then take one of the horses."
"You're stalling."
"I'm enjoying myself. It's a different thing."
I laughed into his mouth, and he made a sound that was half-laugh, half-something rougher, and his hand slid from my neck down to my waist, and I lost the next minute somewhere in the gold light and the wind and the press of his palm against the small of my back.
He stopped first, though his hand stayed at my waist. He looked at me with the same focused attention he'd looked at the boundary marker… like I was something he was trying to read for accuracy.
"Rory comes back at one."
"I know."
"If she comes back at one."
"I know."
" And there’s a family rodeo clinic this afternoon that I have to be running by three.” He said it like he was reciting it to himself. "And tomorrow there's the equipment delivery I've been arguing about for a month. And the day after that there's the lockbox in a storage unit, I haven't decided what to do with."
"Jace."
