And then he’s muttering a curse and she’s in his arms, her face pressed against his ruined shirt, and she’s ruining it some more with tears and mascara and the city rain on her face, and she’s pressing the rock into his back with her clasped hands, holding him tight.
“What if I came to Montana every summer,” he says, and it’s not a question. “I would do anything for more time with you, Ripley. I want to sayOh, botherjust to hear you laugh. I want to argue about nothing because you’re never so clever as when you argue, and I love you so terribly much when you’re clever. I want to see your face when you make your next big discovery, and every discovery after that. I want to marvel at your courage and feel like anything is possible for us as long as we don’t give up. I’d set fire to everything I own for one more night to make you come and watch you sleep.
“I don’t care what the chances are for us. The chances of us ever meeting were so much smaller, and yet we found each other. Life finds a way, Ripley.”
She sob-laughs into his shirt. “You arenotthrowing my favorite quote in my face.”
“I am,” he says with a tender, rueful sound. “I won’t make enough money with my art to leave my job for a while, but I set up a website, and I got my first commission already. Can you believe someone is willing to pay me two hundred euros for character artfrom a dragon-shifter series? Plus fifty extra to make it, erm, not safe for work.”
She laughs into his chest, and with a sigh, he wraps his body more fully around hers.
“I can take a sabbatical from Oxford as soon as next fall. That’s a whole year for me to be where you are. Although maybe we want to save that year for when we have children. If you want children. I don’t have to have them; I only need you. I will make it work, Ripley. I will…I will dolong-distance,” he says, not quite able to suppress a shudder. “Just—please. Please say we can love each other as much as we can for as long as we can. There’s never been anyone like you for me, and there never will be again. I can’t let you go without trying everything.”
Ripley grips the rock in her fist and leans harder into his body, smelling laundry detergent and lemon and vetiver and James.
This rockisa snapshot of a moment in time, like he said. That’s what life is—a series of moments, a handful of snapshots. The rock was who they were, and it could be part of who they are, and who they will be.
But they won’t be anything unless Ripley lets go of what she thought she wanted and reaches for what she needs.
“I love you too, James.”
Underneath her cheek, a little shock ripples through his chest, a fault line sending a tremor into the world as it settles into a new shape. His arms grip her tight, his fingers spreading out against her shoulder blades like feathers. Like wings.
“Ripley, I—”
“But what about Daisy?” Keeping her arms around him, she leans back so she can see his beautiful, fractured, kaleidoscope eyes.
He snorts. “Daisy told me to get my head out of my arse. Thereare such things as scholarships, apparently,” he says, his voice taking on the cadence of an aggrieved teenager. “I have enough set aside for her first year. When I’m on sabbatical, I can let out my flat; that’s another year right there. She and I will find a way.”
Ripley nods thoughtfully. “I’d want to spend summers in Montana, like you said. And come with you to England sometimes in the winter.”
“But your dad.”
“Dad’s getting better every day. Shockingly, he doesn’t want a grown daughter hovering over him. He might get sick again eventually. But I don’t want to wait for the perfect time, because life’s not like that. I want all the time you can give me. Good times. Bad times. This moment. Now, James.”
He reaches for a strand of straightened hair that’s pulling back into a curl and tucks it behind her ear. “Classic Ripley,” he fake-grumbles. “Zero patience.”
In her opinion, he moves with quite insolent deliberation as he drapes her arms over his shoulders. The way he lifts her up high and hooks her thighs around his hips is offensively leisurely. He practically strolls over to the pretty blue door of the candy shop next to the bus stop and ducks under the scalloped pink-and-white awning.
He puts her back against the door, rattling it in its frame.
“That didn’t sound very patient,” Ripley says, a little breathlessly.
“I’ll show you patience,” he says.
He kisses her like a car isn’t honking as it drives by. He kisses her like time has no meaning. Like he wants to spend days, years, a lifetime excavating all her secrets, every one of them a treasure.
“I love you, Ripley Adams,” he says against her mouth.
“I know,” she says.
“Wait. Back up. What do you mean, you know?”
She nips his mouth and grins. “I feel it.”
“Really? Isthiswhere you feel it?” he asks, pressing his hips against her where it definitely makes her feel something.
“No. Well, yes, but no.”
