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And reading your last letter . . . Charlee, if I ever see you one day in the flesh, trust me when I say I’ll spend hours, days, mapping every inch of you like I did with your neck, just so I can go back to you in my dreams when you’re not with me. I’d breathe in your smell and live on it for weeks until I could get my next fix. Do you know what I imagine you smell like? Something sweet and warm. Something that, in the dead of winter, would take me back to summer days spent basking in the sun. I know you have a tough shell when you’re around people, but deep down, I like to think your spunky personality hides a gentler side of you. And when I think about what it’d be like to have you by my side, my mind goes exactly to that. How easily I’d be able to coax out your softness because you’d know you can be truly yourself around me, just like I am with you. You make me want to be so gentle with you, Charlee.

I’m not delusional, right? I don’t know when, and I don’t know how, but at some point, we became way more than just friends, and you can’t convince me otherwise. And I say that with so much certainty because I know you feel it too. I dare you to tell me you don’t. This whole journalistic exchange thing has become so secondary to reading your words that I sometimes forget that I’m still supposed to send you articles I’ve written. Although the article I’m sending you today makes me think of us in a way, so even with the assignment, I find ways to connect it to you.

So yeah, while you were out on a date, I was miserably hoping he’d be the biggest dick. I can’t believe he didn’t pay for the restaurant, although I’m not that surprised. Any guy who doesn’t treat you like a queen doesn’t even know how lucky he is to be in your company. I would never waste a chance like that.

Would it be a deal breaker if I told you I was, in fact, a grinch? I’m kidding. Christmas is my favorite time of the year. My grandparents and I have a unique way of celebrating. We have a big homemade dinner on the 24th, just the three of us. We open presents on the morning of the 25th, and then we head to the restaurant where we serve a Christmas meal for everybody who’s alone on Christmas Day or for those who want to come and celebrate with us. It’s my favorite part of it all.

I know Christmas isn’t the same for you this year, and I’m sorry about that. There’s not much I or anyone else can do, but I hope you’ll still get to enjoy it and all the moments spent with your mom and your sister. I’m sure your mom will be happy with her girls taking on the family traditions this year.

I miss you too, so much.

Until I get another letter from you, I’ll imagine what it’d be like to have you here, in the same room as me. Maybe even waking up next to you, if I could ever be so lucky.

Merry Christmas, Char,

Your Oli

Attached article

The science of romantic gravity: The universal law with a love twist

Chapter Eighteen

FIRE AND THE FLOOD

Oliver

By the fifth day of filming, it feels like every dent in the floor has been molded into my skin, the cot from the lodge hardly making any difference. I get up, stretching my sore thighs and arms, and hear a crack in my lower back. But the stiffness in my body isn’t the reason my legs refuse to move.

No, that’d be because of the woman lying in bed in front of me.

She looks so soft and small in the white sheets, one leg draped over the duvet. She’s not wearing much, just a simple T-shirt and shorts, but the way she’s sleeping makes her shorts ride up her thigh, giving me a glimpse of the curve of—

What am I doing? I turn around. I’m not a fucking creep.

I pinch the bridge of my nose and close my eyes, trying to chase away the images settling in my mind: Charlee breathless under my palms, Charlee soft and pliable as I knead my fingers into her skin, Charlee slick and warm from the fervor of my lips.

Erase, erase, erase.

All I’m left with is a growing headache and an uncomfortable bulge pressing against the front of my pants.

I’ve been waking up with thoughts of our almost-kiss by the campfire for the past four days, though it isn’t helping the situation. But how can I not when the hot brush of her breath still lingers on my thumb? When her scent still clings to where she was pressed against me under that blanket, the sweetness of peaches and vanilla floating all around me?

When she dared to look at me for the first time, stripped of all animosity, something flickering in the depths of her green eyes, I felt it too. The tug between us. That thin thread wrapped around my soul and connecting me to hers. I thought that it had snapped over the years; at one point, I realized I couldn’t find that comforting, grounding feeling I used to have every time I read her letters.

Until four nights ago.

Until we started talking and reminiscing, falling back into that steady, familiar rhythm.

A soft click. That’s how it sounded in my mind, how it felt in my bones, when Charlee burst into one of the goofiest laughs I’ve ever heard. That’s when the realization sank in that, despite the years stretching between us, that thread is still there. Brittle and frail, but still there.

That was enough. Enough to make me stare at the ceiling every night since, wondering if she felt it too and hoping like hell that I won’t lose that feeling again. If Charlee was affected by it, she didn’t let it show. And it’s her soft snores that have been lulling me to sleep just when night turns into morning, the blanket smelling like her warming my body.

I inhale deeply and grab my coffee mug off the table, padding across the small space to reach the counter where the kettle is. I fill it with water, turn it on, then dump two spoonfuls of instant coffee into my cup and wait for the water to boil.

I glance out the window and frown. Despite the early hour, I can already see the thick clouds darkening the sky.

Fuck. Today was supposed to be clear.