He exhaled slowly, hand sliding up my spine in a long, lazy stroke that made me shiver. “Bad dreams?”
“No. Good one.” I pressed a soft kiss to the hollow of his throat. “You were in it.”
A small huff of laughter against my hair. “Tell me.”
“You were here. Just like this. And nothing bad happened.”
His fingers threaded into my hair, cradling the back of my head. “Nothing bad’s going to happen.”
I tilted my face up until our noses brushed. “You can’t promise that.”
“Well, I can promise I’ll be here if anything does.”
He kissed me then—slow, sleepy, achingly tender. No urgency. Just the quiet certainty of mouths that already knew each other. His hand slid down to cup my hip, thumb brushing bare skin where the hoodie had ridden up. I sighed into him, fingers curling into his shirt, holding on.
We kissed like we had nowhere to be, like the meeting, work, and the real world could wait another five minutes. He broke it first, resting his forehead against mine. “We should get up.”
“I know.”
Neither of us moved.
His thumb kept tracing slow circles on my hip. “You nervous?”
“For the meeting?” I exhaled. “A little. Mostly, I’m tired of being afraid.”
He pressed another kiss to my temple. “It’s all going to work out.”
We stayed like that a while longer until the sky outside began to turn the particular gray that meant morning was coming whether we wanted it to or not.
He kissed me one more time, then eased out from under me. “I wish I didn’t have to work today. I’d like to go to the meeting.”
“I’ll tell you all about it. It’s going to be fine.”
He got up, and I watched him move through the trailer in the half-light—broad shoulders, easy stride. He kissed me goodbye and told me to get some more rest.
By late morning, the campground was alive with movement. I could hear it from the porch—footsteps on gravel, low voices carrying on the cool morning air, the aluminum scrape of someone’s folding chair. It seemed as if Aggie had put the word out. I dressed and headed to her place. Her Airstream could hold a lot of people if everyone made concessions about personal space, and everyone did. The banquette table had been pushed against the wall. Every surface that could support a person was supporting one.
Gerald was nowhere visible. He had assessed the crowd arriving in his domain, made his decision, and disappeared.
Aggie sat at the fold-out table at the front, laptop open, the first slide readingRiver Corridor Land Rights: What We Know and What We’re Doing About It. She had spent the preceding weeks building a slide deck that cited three municipal codes, cross-referenced Carver Group operations in two other counties, and color-coded every finding by category of concern.
“You all know why you’re here,” she said. “Someone has been trying to acquire river corridor land in this valley. They’ve been doing it quietly, one property at a time, counting on us not to talk to each other.” A pause. “That was a miscalculation.”
The room was very quiet.
“I’m going to show you what we’ve found,” Aggie said. “Then we’re going to talk about what we do with it.”
She walked them through it—the color-coded findings, the planning documents, the pattern in two other counties. Same approach, same subsidiary names, same language buried in the indemnification clause on page six. The easement transfers. The properties that had already been sold.
A man from above the bend went still at slide seven. “My sister’s parcel,” he said. “That easement number is hers.”
“I know,” She said quietly. “I’m sorry. Slide nine is what can still be done.”
Luke McCabe, Levi’s brother-in-law, spoke before slide nine finished loading. He was standing near the back wall with his arms crossed. He was the kind of man who didn’t speak until he was certain of what he wanted to say.
“I need to put something on the table,” he said. “The inquiries on our south parcel—I reported those to Sweetbriar PD and wrote letters, and I thought that was enough. But two weeks ago, I got a phone call.” He paused. “They said they were calling on behalf of a land trust and wanted to discuss options. When I told them we weren’t interested, they said they hoped we’d reconsider. That the valley was going to change whether we wanted it to or not.” His jaw tightened. “They said it would be better for my family if we were on the right side of that change.” He looked at Aggie. “I took that as a threat.”
“Because it was one,” Aggie said.
