Ripley watches the other woman go still at the sight of James’s pin-striped pajamas tangled with Ripley’s pinkButte vs. EverybodyT-shirt.
“Oh,” she says, sounding so fucking disappointed.
James steps into view, miraculously fully clothed. “Mindy. I’ll be out in a moment.” There’s a terrible, heartbreaking note in his voice. Ripley recognizes it because she heard him say,I cannot, cannot be to you what my father was to my mother.And yet a moment like this happened for his parents the first time a colleague saw them together and realized what was going on.
“No rush,” Mindy says, her voice effortfully neutral. “Excuse me.”
Ripley hurries inside and bumps the door closed with her hip. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know she would do that.”
“It’s all right, Ripley.” He takes the cooling mugs from her hands and sets them on his little folding table, then wraps her in a tight embrace, his nose in her hair. “Did you know you smell like wind? I’ve never met anyone who smells the way you do, like you store up sun and fresh air inside your skin.”
“I can tell when you’re changing the subject, James.”
“Ah,” he says, his lips curving against her temple.
“Is it going to be a problem for you? Is this going to—I mean, your rules…” Ripley’s heart is in her throat.
“It’s all right, my darling,” he says, but she can feel the altered timbre of his voice through his chest. “Mindy and I have known each other too long for it to have stayed a secret. She would have figured it out another way.”
“Is she your ex?” God, she hates her unhinged mouth and missing filter.
“Yes,” James says steadily.
She shouldn’t ask any more questions. She should shut up and hold on to whatever fraction of her dignity is left. She should—
“Why did you break up?”
“I was…with Mindy when I met you in Atlanta. She was working on moving to London. At the time, I fancied myself the opposite of my father. Monogamous. Smugly faithful to a partner half a world away. And then I saw you.” He mimes an explosion, puffing out his cheeks—boom.That’s thunder, she realizes with deep unease. “I broke it off with Mindy not long afterward.”
“Oh, James.” She feels a hard pinch in her chest. Rigid, self-critical, upright James would have tried himself and come to a guilty verdict.
Beneath that, there’s an unexpected wave of sympathy for Mindy. To lose someone like James would be a thousand times worse than losing someone like Will.
“I decided to stay unmarried. I would at all costs avoid liaisons with anyone in paleontology. If I was doomed to be my father’s son, then at least I would not walk through the world carelessly destroying everything I touched. And, well…” A low, cynical sound escapes his throat. “You can see how brilliantly I succeeded at that.”
Ripley holds him tighter. “You’re not your father, James. I’m not your student and never will be. I’m hardly even in paleontology.”
“I know,” he says. “But I seem to keep hurting people even when I’m trying to help.”
“Should we stop—”
His arms tighten around her. “No!” he says, then a morecontrolled “No. We’re not bloody stopping. I will not give up a single day with you, Ripley. Not for anything or anyone.”
“Jealous much,” Ripley mutters into his shirt. She’s rewarded with a laugh.
“I’ll speak with Mindy. Again,” he says with a long, tense exhalation. “Then I’ll come work on Beauty. It’s time we get her out of the ground.”
31
July 23:
Thirty-Six Days Until the End of the Summer Excavation Season
“You need to stop, Ripley. It’s getting dark.” Cara tugs playfully at Ripley’s chisel. “Come on. You haven’t come to games night in a week.”
Ripley pulls the tool out of reach. “ ‘Clue is a mystery game suitable for two to six players,’ ” she says, quoting the packaging she now unfortunately knows by heart. “The crew will survive.”
“Surviving without you isn’t the same as not missing you. Everyone feels weird when you’re down here after hours. It’s screwing up the group dynamic.”
