Page 104 of Roadrunner

I laughed. It came out the way laughter did with him now. Easy. From somewhere real.

He turned and looked at me when I laughed and his face did the thing it did in private. Open and unguarded and completely his.

“There it is,” he said.

“What?”

“That laugh,” he said. “That exact laugh.”

I shook my head. “Stop.”

“I’ve been waiting to hear it again for years,” he said. “I’m not going to stop.”

I looked at him.

He was looking at me the way he had on that rock formation years ago. Like he’d made a decision and was entirely at peace with it.

“Riley,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Kiss me,” I said.

He did.

It wasn’t like the kiss at the hotel. That one had been tentative. Finding its footing. This one knew exactly where it was going. It had years of direction built into it.

When it ended I leaned my forehead against his.

“I wasted so much time,” I said quietly.

“Stop counting it,” he said.

“I can’t help it.”

“Then count forward,” he said. “Count what’s left.”

I pulled back and looked at him.

“A lot left,” he said simply.

I looked at him in the dark of the truck with the valley spread out below us and the stars doing their impossible thing overhead.

“A lot left,” I agreed.

He reached over and tucked the hair back from my face. His thumb stayed against my cheek.

Same as it ever was.

I closed my eyes and let it be everything it was.

We stayed like that a long while, the truck ticking quietly as the engine cooled, the valley below spread out in its scattered constellation of streetlights standing in for the real stars overhead. Somewhere far off a coyote called and another answered it, and neither of us moved to acknowledge it, because it belonged to the desert and we belonged, for the moment, to each other, and the two things had never once required comment.

When I opened them he was still there.

He always was.

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE