Embarrassment engulfs me. How long have I been dry-humping him without realizing it? Just like after our hike, he’s offering me standard-issue medical care, but my body has drawn other conclusions. He told me plain and simple that he’s not interested, and if I knew what was good for me, I wouldn’t be either.
I open my mouth to apologize, but then his hips tilt ever so slightly—almost like he can’t help himself—and I register what’s between us. My breathing stops. The world stops, too, because…he wants this. He wanted this in his cabin, too, but we weren’t zipped skin to skin in a sleeping bag. Here, it’s easier than breathing to draw my thigh over his. To pretend we don’t hear each other’s muffled groans at the closer contact. His hand presses against my low back, and my mind flickers. His body is so warm. Enormous. Surrounding me, overwhelming me, but somehow still not close enough. Thick heat pools low in my belly like molten gold from a crucible, and I’m almost panting, fists tugging at his chest hair.
He arches into me again, on purpose this time, and the size and heat of him untether all my thoughts like helium balloons. What’s left behind is every feeling I’ve been repressing and denying. How badly I’ve wanted this. How much I secretly like him. How safe I feel in his arms. My mouth opens against his skin as his hips roll against mine again, a small cry breaking from my throat when he hits me right where I need him through our thin base layers. I tell myself it’s okay. That in the howling dark, it could just be the wind.
Then his hands slide lower, and there’s no pretending aboutthe way he grips my ass. I’m jerked upward, gasping between unsteady breaths as he brings my face on a level with his. In the dark, I can’t read his expression, but his thoughts are crystal clear, because they’re the same as my own.We shouldn’t be doing this.
“I know. I’m sorry,” I breathe, staving off the pain of another rejection from him with half-formed excuses. “I didn’t mean to—I was just so col—”
I never finish my sentence. His mouth finds mine in the dark, and every feeble excuse for my bad behavior is incinerated. I expect him to be careful—he’s so meticulous with everything else—but his kiss feels like a fever. His lips are hot, swollen, lusher than I’d even imagined, and I’m delirious. Lost in the slide of his beautiful mouth and the small, breathless gasps between every new way we fit together, until there’s simply no room left in this sleeping bag for all the reasons why we shouldn’t do this. Not when his hand is sliding up my naked back, and not when he grips my hair around his fist, angling my head back for easier access. On the contrary, my mouth is falling open for him like a fucking guest book, and I feel the responding growl he makes in my toes. I feel it rumble against my naked breasts, too, and at the first hot stroke of his tongue, every last trace of cold is burned from my body. When he sinks his teeth into my bottom lip, the moan I make is embarrassing, and I can only hope the other guests think it’s the wind.
But then I’m on my back, and Forrest’s heavy body is pinning mine to the cold ground, engulfing me, and I forget to be embarrassed. I forget all about my red flags and caution tape, too, because he’s licking my neck, his beard rasping my sensitive skin between hungry sucks, and my hands are finally buried in his thick hair. His burning palm scrapes up from my waist, higher and higher, until he finds the curve of my breast. He squeezes roughly and I arch, gasping cold air against his mouth when he brushes a soothing thumb across my nipple.
“Margot,” he groans, pressing his erection into me throughour base layers, and suddenly, my body is a welder’s arc beneath him, too bright to look at. I have the frightening thought that no one has ever made me want like this. Need like this. No one has ever been this rough or desperate with me. Not even Adam.
And with the worst timing in the world’s history of bad timing, my ex-fiancé’s face appears in my mind. I try to banish it like a bad omen, but he lingers. Reminding me that while it was definitely never this intense, this is exactly how it started between us too. A classic Just One Time, heat-of-the-moment trope. One single night that led to a casual, then not so casual, relationship, which turned into “Let’s move in together” and eventually “Will you marry me?”
At the memory, my heart decides to stop beating. Forrest must sense something’s wrong because his head rises from the center of my chest, where his bee-stung lips have been lighting a fiery trail south. He meets my gaze in the dark, and the situation feels all too familiar. I’m making the same goddamn mistake I made five years ago, only worse. Because, unlike Adam, Forrest isn’t a douchey journalist, one thousand percent convinced his next story will bag the Pulitzer. Forrest is humble and legitimately brilliant, if half of what Trapper and Jo have told me about his career is true. Even if they didn’t brag about him constantly, I’ve seen with my own eyes that he’s self-sacrificing to a fault and cares for his father the same way I care for Savannah. He’s beautiful and, very alarmingly, the best kisser I’ve ever had the pleasure of locking lips with.
Point being, if falling for Adam felt like tripping and landing flat on my face, falling for Forrest would be like skydiving without a parachute. After hitting the pavement, I’m not sure I’d get back up again.
Forrest’s own calculations of how badly we’ve fucked up seem to catch up with mine, and his eyes go wide in the dark.
“Shit,” he huffs, and for once, we’re in perfect agreement.
11MARGOT
The next morning, there’s a sharp sound, and I jerk into consciousness like a half-formed butterfly who’s just had her cozy cocoon ripped open. Forrest has unzipped the sleeping bag, and from the faintest suggestion of light in the tent, I’m guessing the sun’s been over the horizon for about fifteen seconds.
“Nooo,” I whine as my front side is exposed to the brisk morning air. I turn toward his warm body, but he’s already sitting up and ignoring my sleep-weakened attempts to get him back in my clutches. Too soon, he’s gathered his clothing from the foot of our sleeping bag and is unzipping the entrance to our tent, letting in a rush of even colder air. Before I can do more than gawk at the dim eyeful I get of his naked torso, he climbs over me with a gruff “Sorry” and escapes into the predawn light.
“Good morning to you, too,” I croak after him.
I yank the zipper of the sleeping bag back up and burrow in. I’m still half asleep and wondering what the hell I did to make him jump up and leave. Suddenly mortified, I dip my nose beneath the sleeping bag cover and sniff. But all I detect is him. Woodsy. Musky. Serious. My sleep-fogged brain vaguely wonders how anyone could possibly smell serious, while I inhale more deeply.I draw my legs up toward my stomach, wishing he were still spooning me, when—
Oh God.
My eyes fly open in the blue predawn light. Forrest was my big spoon. As in we fell asleep together. In the same sleeping bag. Shirtless. The last cobwebs clear as everything else that happened last night rushes back to me. His hot mouth on my skin. His rough, capable hands. And how it all came to a screeching halt. My limbs curl protectively inward as I remember our half-panicked agreement to pretend it never happened, and suddenly, it’s no mystery why he bolted. The mystery is how I managed to have an incredible night’s sleep after the most awkward goodnight of my life.
Because you were swaddled in a cedar-scented muscle blanket, you idiot.
I sit up, no longer able to stay still. I’m shaking with cold (and anger at myself) as I manage to corral my boobs into a frozen-stiff sports bra.Serves you right, I think down at them. Giving in to this attraction and (fine) thesefeelingsis exactly what I told myself I wouldn’t do. But last night, I lost control. And in the ruthless morning light, I know it wasn’t only because of how intoxicating it was to be touched by him. Just like the close call in his cabin, it was being cared for and held that was too much for me to resist. And whether I want to admit it or not, he’s been caring for me since the moment I met him and jumped into his arms.
From quietly leaving fire starters to keep me warm, to gently touching my face to test me for carbon monoxide poisoning when I nearly burned down my cabin with them, each moment with Forrest has been another falling domino leading to last night. I’ve never really been on the receiving end of all this concern, and unfortunately for me, it’s everything I never knew I wanted.
For a long time now, I’ve been the self-reliant caregiver. When I was growing up, work was always my mom’s priority, even beforeDad left us and the job of parenting fell squarely to me. I raised not only Savannah but myself, too, and usually, that’s a source of pride. But now nothing is certain. The hidden fault line of my career has been cracked wide open, and escaping to this brutal, beautiful place has left me craving a different kind of security. The kind of security you can only get from another person and which, despite all my efforts not to, I feel with Forrest.
I press my fingers to my closed eyes, rubbing them for some much-needed clarity. I need to get out of the scene of the crime. I don’t know what I’ll say to Forrest when I see him, but reestablishing some sense of normalcy feels almost as urgent as my need to pee. At the very least, I tell myself, we’re on the same page. Maybe it was the way he ducked and rolled out of the tent like it was on fire, but I get the impression he has his own reasons for needing a reset.
After bundling myself, I leave the Tent of Ill Repute and venture into the literal tundra, stiff and aching from snowshoeing. Looking over the edge of our tent pit, I see Forrest’s imposing figure at the camp kitchen. A confusing combination of relief and disappointment twists through me when I see he’s not alone. Ollie spots me at once, grinning and waving like I’m Punxsutawney Phil emerging from his hole on Groundhog Day. Technically, I do need to crawl out of a pit, so: fitting. Forrest doesn’t turn to watch my ensuing struggle, which is the first small mercy of the day.
“Morning, Margot!” Ollie shouts from thirty feet away as I make it to normal ground level, red in the face and panting.
Forrest turns to Ollie and sternly mouths something that looks like a rebuke. Then again, he’d probably manage to look stern saying “happy birthday” to a six-year-old. Stern is his baseline. He probably gave a stern look to the obstetrician who delivered him into the world. But my hunch is right, because Ollie seems to shrink and looks at Alice and Yoon’s tent apologetically.
By the time I reach the makeshift kitchen, Ollie is back tobeaming at me, and Forrest is very much un-beaming but handing me a thermos of hot coffee that more than makes up for his lack of social grace. “Thanks,” I say, meeting his gaze.
It’s a mistake. Huge. Because his too-handsome face is drawn, like he didn’t sleep a wink, but all the nervous defensiveness I’m expecting to be mirrored back at me is missing. The look in his eyes is raw. Somber. Like he’s resigned himself to not having the one thing he wants most. My heart kicks in my chest, and I’m possessed by the very alarming instinct to slide into his arms again. To smooth his brow and tell him everything’s going to be okay.
