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Cupping her crown, I pulled her into me, giving her a long, wet kiss. With Elena, I could never predict her reaction. So far, this was better than I’d hoped.
“So, this is camping.”
“It’s not the kind of camping I’ve done in the past, but I guess it qualifies.” I had the tail end of her braid in my fist, stroking the silky threads with my thumb, content as hell.
We’d made dinner in the open-air kitchen and eaten it in the back of my truck, where I’d spread out some blankets. Now, we lay gazing up at the stars—exactly what I’d been wanting to do with my girl.
She rolled into me, curling her arm around my middle, propping her chin on my chest.
“Are you trying to turn me into an outdoor girl?” she asked.
“Not trying to turn you into anything. This is something I like to do, so I’m sharing. If you don’t like it, that’s okay.”
“But if I don’t like it, then I don’t get to count the stars with you. You’ll do that with someone else.”
“I’m not gonna go stargazing with Theo, but next time I want to spend some quality time outdoors, I’d go with him.”
Her mouth twisted. “I like it so far. I’m not one-hundred-percent sure I could get on board with more than a night of this, but with you, maybe.”
She settled against me, and we got quiet, watching the shifting sky. Or were we shifting? Sometimes it was hard to tell.
“What’s the sky like in Wyoming?” she asked.
I sucked in a breath, hit hard and sudden with a wave of homesickness. “During the day, the sky is pure blue, and the air is crisp. You know, they call it Big Sky Country because the sky seems like it goes on forever.”
She shivered, pressing herself deeper into me. “I don’t know why, but that gives me the creeps. I think I’m too much of a city girl.”
I chuckled. “I get that. It makes you realize how small you are when you’re there. Especially at night, when it’s just you and space. You can see the Milky Way like you’re looking through a telescope. There’s nothing like it.”
She groaned and gently scratched my scruff. “You’re going to go back there and never leave. We won’t even get to have you for a visit.”
I took her hand, kissing her palm. “If you still like me enough in a year and a half to want me to visit, then I will. That’ll be my life, but I’m not gonna forget everything that came before it. Maybe you’ll come out to the ranch and I’ll get your fancy ass on a horse.”
She took her hand away from me, scoffing. “I’ve been on a horse. I took riding lessons through middle school.”
I reared back so I could look at her. “You never told me that.”
“I don’t show you all my cards. I have to keep you coming back for more.”
“That’s never going to be a problem.” I touched my lips to the top of her head. “Did you like it?”
“It was my mother’s thing. I don’t have a problem with horses. Some of them are sweet. But riding wasn’t my hobby of choice. My mom always dreamed of having a whole dressage team, but she only got me.”
“Why didn’t they have more kids?”
Her sigh was heavy, and it said a lot without any words.
“You really want to hear this?”
“I do.”
“My mother was pregnant once before me, and it ended in a late-term miscarriage. I don’t know what that was like for her, but I can only imagine it was terribly sad. Then she had me, and my parents were hopeful that meant her body was capable of carrying more children. That the first one was just a fluke. That wasn’t the case, though. She got pregnant again when I was three. That was a brother, Jonathan. He was stillborn. I have memories of her round belly. They’re vague, but I can remember kissing it and talking to the baby. There were two more after that, but no happy endings. I was ten during her final pregnancy, so those memories are pretty clear. After she came home from the hospital the last time, our house was like a tomb.”
My chest constricted like it was being squeezed from all sides with a vise. I didn’t know Elena’s mom well enough for this reaction to be for her. This was all for my girl, thinking of her living through that turmoil, the confusion when the brother she’d been expecting didn’t come home. Fuck, I hated that for her.
“That must’ve been tough to live through.”
“It wasn’t easy, that’s for damn sure.” She fiddled with the collar of my T-shirt, hooking her fingers around it. “I don’t know what my mom was like before that, but she went black each time she lost a baby. That’s what I called it when I was a kid. I still think of it that way, even though I know her diagnosis now. She’s been institutionalized a few times, and it’s helped, but she still struggles. My dad tries to keep her insulated from everything ugly, but what she really needs is him, and he’s not there enough. From the time I was little, I was expected to pick up his slack.”
