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The closest that she had ever come was Heath in high school, but even then it had been about... Being young and close to the same sort of pretty and doing the things that felt right physically.
Who they were was in the gravity of this moment. The intensity of it. Their roots to this town grew down deep through the floor, all the way down through the earth. They were the two people least likely to make their way to each other. And yet they had. And they also seemed the two people most fated. Most likely. Most obvious.
And it was that fate that made her feel scorched.
He said nothing, instead he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her, while he somehow managed to work his way free of the rest of his clothes, bringing them both down onto the bed.
She shivered.
She had never been so extremely aware of all the places her body touched another person’s. In a way that went beyond just arousal or physical desire. But they were connected. Chest to chest, thigh to thigh. And she could swear she felt her heart beating against his own.
And then she was lost, in the way that his hands moved, skimming over her curves. In the way he kissed her, touched her.
As if he knew her.
This man, who did not believe the prevailing truths of Pear Blossom, treated her like a miracle anyway.
And her whole body sang with it.
He put his hand between her thighs, his eyes intently on hers as he worked her to the peak and then pushed her over the edge. She threw her head back and cried out, and he captured her mouth with his, swallowing that pleasure down as if it made it his own.
And then he was right there, thrusting hard and strong inside of her.
And it was like a piece of herself had suddenly been placed just there in her soul. Right where it hadn’t been before. Right where she had always needed it. But hadn’t realized.
And as his strokes built up yet more pleasure inside of her, she realized why this was different. So very different.
Because every other sexual encounter she’d had before had been about her. Finding herself. Learning about herself.
But this was aboutthem. Not what he could get out of it, and separately what she could get out of it. But about the two of them together, and the unique, inescapable alchemy that they created one with the other.
And when the wave hit the second time, they went over the edge together. And she clung to his shoulders, and let him take them both into his darkness.
Right then she felt closer to her own. But with him, she didn’t have to hide it.
1
RUBY
Only two truly remarkable things had ever happened in the small town of Pear Blossom, Oregon. The first occurred in 1999, when Caitlin Groves disappeared one fall evening on her way home from her boyfriend’s family orchard.
The second was in 2000, when newborn Ruby McKee was discovered on Sentinel Bridge, the day before Christmas Eve.
It wasn’t as if Pear Blossom hadn’t had excitement before then. There was the introduction of pear orchards—an event which ultimately determined the town’s name—in the late 1800s. Outlaws who lay in wait to rob the mail coaches, and wolves and mountain lions who made meals of the farmers’ animals. The introduction of the railroad, electricity and a particularly active society of suffragettes, when women were lobbying for the right to vote.
But all of that blended into the broader context of history, not entirely dissimilar to the goings-on of every town in every part of the world, as men fought to tame a wild land and the land rose up and fought back.
Caitlin’s disappearance and Ruby’s appearance felt both specific and personal, and had scarred and healed—if Ruby took the proclamations of various citizens too literally, which she really tried not to do—the community.
Mostly, as Ruby got out of the car she’d hired at the airport and stood in front of Sentinel Bridge with a suitcase in one hand, she marveled at how idyllic and the same it all seemed.
The bridge itself was battered from the years. The wood dark and marred, but sturdy as ever. A white circle with a white 1917, denoting the year of its construction, was stenciled in the top center of the bridge, just above the tunnel that led to the other side, a pinhole of light visible in the darkness across the way.
It was only open to foot traffic now, with a road curving wide around it and carrying cars to the other side a different way. For years, Sentinel Bridge was closed, and it wasn’t until a community outreach and education effort in the early nineties that it was reopened for people to walk on.
Ruby could have had the driver take her a different route.
But she wanted to cross the bridge.
