Page 70 of Uncharted

“No rush,” he said, but I saw the hesitant hope in his eyes again.

“I know, but very soon,” I told him. Not because I didn’t know my answer, but because I already knew it. Hell, the worst part was that I’d known it all along, but I’d been too scrambled and terrified to admit it to myself. Except I had taken my sweet time getting to that understanding, and I didn’t want to do it. I wanted it to be special.

Maybe doing it after the first time he fucked me was special enough for some, but not for me. It was significant, there was no doubt about it, and it would be significant for the rest of my life. But I’d spent too long only being able to be with him when it was heavily sexually charged; I wanted the next step to be free of sex, and…significant to us both.

“Sleep with me tonight? The whole night?” he asked.

There was no other answer available but the one we both wanted. “Yes.”

10

JAKE

I breathed in the forest’s smell as I made my way steadily through the brush. I’d grown up in the woods, not these kinds of woods; mine were filled with trees that smelled sweeter, with the occasional bog belching out a foulness you grew used to. But I liked these woods, and that was why I liked being in them whenever I needed to clear my head or, sometimes, get my head on straight.

It was why it had felt like serendipity that the one person at the outpost that I ended up becoming good friends with was the one who spent most of his time out in the woods when he wasn’t forced into his lab. I remembered the first time I’d found him, almost half a mile out. It had been odd to find someone out there. The guys at the time stuck close to the outpost, except for Mav, who you weren’t going to see in the woods unless he wanted to be seen.

Reno had been sitting under an old tree, its roots spread in all directions and growing deep into the earth. He’d been in a crook of roots covered in soft moss, his legs crossed. The notebook in his lap was open, a pencil held in his slack hands as he slumped back against the trunk, breathing deeply. The sight had startled me, but I’d been enchanted, like stumbling across an elusive nymph in the woods rather than my newest team member.

He’d woken up about twenty minutes later and jumped out of his skin when he’d found me sitting a few yards away, muttering an apology. “When I was a kid, I used to…well, my house wasn’t the greatest place to be. But it was by some woods, nothing like these woods though. Just a patch that was broken up by people’s homes. But I loved going out there; I felt…safe. Just…finding new bugs I hadn’t seen before, or taking a book to learn about the trees and how they grew, where they grew, and the plants too. Even when I was a teenager, it was where I’d go, and I missed the hell out of the woods when I went to college.”

And so we’d found something in common. They already had their sense of humor, and Reno had proven to be silly enough to keep up with me and enjoy himself. But that was something else, something closer to our truer hearts than a love of a good joke or a harmless prank. It was something we could share in private, and it was the first time I realized I didn’t just have a new teammate; I had a new friend.

“Jake?” Reno asked beside me, and I looked up, realizing I’d been walking on silent autopilot.

“Sorry,” I said sheepishly. “Was, uh…thinkin’, were ya sayin’ somethin’?”

“Nothing important,” he said in amusement. “Just…checking to see where your head was at. Didn’t realize you were off on Pluto.”

“The not-planet,” I said with a grin.

He narrowed his eyes. “I don’t care what a bunch of idiot eggheads in lab coats say, it’s a goddamn planet.”

“Aren’t you one of those eggheads?”

“I’m not an idiot unless you ask Xander. And I don’t wear a lab coat.”

“True,” I said thoughtfully. “Still…kinda wanna see ya in a lab coat.”

“Why?”

“Hmm, and glasses.”

“Again, why?”

“Well, I mean. I always liked ‘dorky’ or ‘nerdy’ lookin’ girls. Kinda tracks that I’d like seein’ ya look like that.”

He squinted at me. “Not exactly sure how I feel about being compared to your previous women.”

“Kinda don’t have anythin’ else to compare things to,” I said with a shrug. “Just goin’ with what I got. Do you do that?”

“Huh,” he said thoughtfully. “That…makes sense now that you say it.”

“That didn’t answer my question.”

“I know. It just occurred to me you might be getting through our shenanigans because you’re able to make comparisons like that without wanting to rip your hair out. But I’ve been looking at…us. Like there’s the women I’ve been with, and then there’s just…you. I don’t really make the comparisons.”

I frowned. “That bad?”