Page 33 of Falling

I felt ill-equipped for this situation and like the worst possible person to be handling it. For a wild second I wished Joel had handled it—but then I didn’t know him. Maybe he would’ve screwed it up anyway. Maybe he had screwed it up.

Either way, Miles must have been thirty or so and it turned out he had a lot of unanswered questions about himself that he maybe hadn’t even asked yet.

“You want water?” I asked, heading for the cooler I’d packed while he’d been showering earlier. “I also have fancy rose lemonade.”

“Is there something wrong with me?” Miles blurted out. When I looked up at him again, he had those piercing blue eyes turned on me and a look in them that made me want to wrap him in a blanket again.

“No,” I said without hesitation. “No, there’s nothing… wrong with you.”

Miles bit his lip.

“There’s not,” I said, gentler this time, grabbing a bottle of water for him. “And you’re not alone, either. You’re not the only person who feels like you do. And even if you were, it wouldn’t be hurting anyone and therefore it’s not wrong, right?”

“The voice of reason,” Miles smiled wryly, accepting the water, then frowning and handing it back. “Can you open that for me? I don’t have enough hands.”

I laughed and cracked it open for him, tucking the cap into the pocket of his actual tweed blazer. Standing like this, he looked like a man out of time. Like I’d accidentally stepped back to the eighteen hundreds or something. He had those classical, vintage good looks, too, and with the sunlight hitting like it was right now…

No. Nope. He was relying on me to be a friend. Especially right now.

“Thank you,” Miles said softly, fingers brushing against mine as he accepted the water again.

“I wasn’t stepping away because there’s anything wrong with you,” I said, standing closer than I otherwise might have so he’d know I meant it. “I’m just trying to figure out how to give you the answers you’re looking for. Again, full permission to push me into the river, but have you ever… I dunno, looked at any stranger and thought maybe you wanted…”

There’d been a time in my life when I was good at talking frankly about sex and sexuality, I was sure. As recently as a couple of weeks ago, even. Something about Miles just tied my tongue into knots.

Miles was quiet for so long that I thought maybe he was actually thinking about pushing me into the river, but then after what felt like a decade he took a breath to speak.

“Not a stranger,” he said slowly, as though he was weighing each word in his mouth. “But—holy shit.”

“What?” I asked, suddenly on full alert.

“The—” Miles gestured at the fishing rod. I watched the end bend as something tugged on it. “Book, what do I do?”

I’d never seen a person so panicked by the thought of catching a fish, but I couldn’t stop myself from grinning at him. “You’ve got one!”

“But what do I do?” Miles asked, the last word jerked out of him as the fish gave another strong tug on the line, hard enough to make him slip a little way down the bank in his absolutely, one-hundred-percent indoor shoes. “I thought you said they were small?”

I took a breath to tell him they were small, it was just fighting him, all he had to do was fight it back. Unfortunately, I never got to say any of that.

The splash of Miles falling into the river stopped me.

13

MILES

“Okay but it was at least twenty-five inches. Maybe thirty,” I said as Booker handed me a hot chocolate and adjusted the blanket he’d insisted on wrapping around me. The fire was roaring, almost too warm for the day, and the whole cabin felt cozier than ever. Booker had been so worried about me that I was half-waiting for him to take my temperature.

I’d tried to tell him I hadn’t really been cold on the drive back. I’d explained that wool actually puts off heat when it’s wet, but I could tell he felt guilty for the accidental swim I’d taken earlier.

I supposed he hadn’t expected me to be able to swim, but that was one of the few physical activities I was actually good at. I’d been fine. The river was calm, it wasn’t that cold. The most danger I’d been in had come from the trout I’d caught.

And I had caught it, ultimately. With my bare hands, after it dragged me into the water to fight on its own terms.

Booker had helped me get the hook out, taken a picture, and thrown it back in. Just as well, because I’d developed a warrior’s bond with it and I didn’t think I could’ve eaten it.

He chuckled as he sank down on the couch next to me and I tried to suppress a shiver. I hadn’t been cold. I wasn’t cold now.

I pulled the blanket a little closer around myself and wrapped both hands around my mug.