Page 11 of Wild Harvest Mountain Man

Someone knocks.

Daniel's there with his hat in his hand and rain still on his shoulders, and he doesn't come in until I step back.

“Hi.”

"Right." He turns the hat over. "I'm going to say this badly.” He lets out a breath, but the nerves don’t leave him. “I went quiet on you because I was scared." He looks at the window, then makes himself look at me instead, and I watch what that costs him. "Not cautious. Scared. Every year I've told myself October takes people off me, and the true thing is I take myself off them first, and I've done it enough times I stopped being able to see it." His jaw works. "I don't want to be the man who's already leaving. I've been him twenty years and I'd like to try stopping in front of you, instead of somewhere you can't see it."

"Come here," I say.

"That's not — I didn't come here for—"

"Daniel. Come here."

I put my hands on either side of his jaw, wet from the rain, and hold his face until he stops.

"I'm not going back," I say.

He sucks in a breath, his mouth opens and closes, like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

I turn the laptop around. "Sit down."

He sits on the end of the mattress, he looks huge on it. I type it in front of him and he reads it as it goes.

Yves, thank you for the six weeks. I'm not coming back on the twentieth, or after it. There's no counter I'd take. I'll clear my locker when I'm down for my things. It was a real education, and I mean that with no edge on it. — Lena

I read it twice. I send it.

The sound the laptop makes is very small and very final and my whole body goes hot and cold at once.

"There," I say.

Daniel hasn't said anything.

"Odile Tremblay offered me sous five days ago," I tell him. "The Larch House. I've been sitting on it because I wanted to be sure I was taking it for the right—"

Words don’t do justice. So I do the next best thing: get my hands in his collar and pull.

He laughs into the kiss and it changes everything about it. He's easier tonight. Both of us are. The thing that was sitting on our chests has been said out loud and taken out of the room, and what's left is a wet man in a lodge bedroom with his hat on the floor.

"This bed squeaks," I warn against his mouth.

I push him back onto the bed and get my leg over him and he lets me, hands going to my hips, and I sit up and pull my sweater and the shirt under it off in one go. He puts his hands flat on my ribs and looks at me, and the looking is worse than anything.

"What," I say.

"Nothing. You're—" He gives up on the sentence and sits up under me and puts his mouth on my sternum instead, which is a better answer anyway.

He gets my bra off one-handed, which I intend to interrogate later. Then he flips us — quick, an arm behind my back and the world rotating — and I make a sound that is frankly undignified.

"That was extremely rehearsed."

"Take your leggings off."

I take my leggings off. He gets rid of the rest of his clothes standing at the end of the bed, watching me watch him, and neither of us hurries.

Then he's over me and his mouth goes to my throat, my breast, the inside of my elbow, my hipbone, and lower.

He puts two fingers into me and works them slowly and puts his mouth right at my ear.