Page 175 of That Rush

“Maybe on the cookout,” she says. “A genuine maybe.”

“I’ll take it.”

“And October is a distant theoretical concept.”

“We’ll revisit October.”

“Once it becomes a real month.”

I run my thumb over the arch of her foot and look toward the pocket holding the key to my house. She accepted the key, and the space I made for her. I think of how she comes apart in my hands, how she falls asleep against me like there is nowhere else she needs to be.

I understand that she wants me to ask. I do not understand why the question feels heavier to her than the key in her pocket.

Chapter 24

Paige

Two keys rest on my kitchen counter. One opens this cabin. The other, the one Aiden gave me two days ago, opens his house. I stir sauce on the stove and try to look at neither, the scrape of the spoon loud in the quiet room. He didn’t ask for anything when he gave it to me, but sliding it onto my ring feels like an answer I haven’t chosen yet. This evening was supposed to be mine—wine poured, windows open, a book waiting on the porch. I’ve been looking forward to the solitude. I still am. But the weight of that second key changes the shape of the quiet.

The ranch key does not ruin my solitude. Aiden did not demand that I use it or ask me to trade mine for his. He gave me access to a place where I already spend time, then cleared a drawer because he remembers that I bring the same bag every Friday.

I like knowing I can let myself in if he is late finishing work. I like the idea of starting coffee in his kitchen, choosing a book from the stack beside his bed, and hearing him come home to me. Access feels intimate because I get to decide when I use it.

It was thoughtful and romantic. The way he watched me close my fingers around the key made me want to kiss him until neither of us remembered that my tote was sitting downstairs.

So I did.

Then he showed me the closet.

I lower the heat and carry my bowl to the porch. The hammock shifts beneath me as I settle into my usual spot, but I leave the book untouched.

My cabin looks especially small from out here. The porch holds one chair, one narrow table, and a hammock that takes up more room than sensible furniture should. Inside, books fill the shelves I installed myself ...because the cabin came with exactly one, and the previous owner apparently had no respect for storage.

I chose this place because it asks nothing from me. I can come home, close the door, and spend three hours reading without anyone needing an answer. I can eat dinner at nine, decline an invitation, or wake early for a trail without coordinating a single detail. The quiet restores me. It has never felt empty.

It feels different tonight.

I reach for my wine and catch myself listening for tires on the gravel. Aiden has never arrived without being invited, and he will not tonight. I know the sound of his truck before it reaches the bend, the way his shoulders fill my doorway when he steps inside.

Missing him changes the quiet without changing what this place means to me. I can want his boots beside my door tonight and still want other nights exactly like this one.

That should be easy to explain.

Except Aiden hears permanence in every choice I make toward him. A key becomes belonging. A drawer becomes Fridays without a bag. A family invitation becomes an answer he can give for both of us because he has already decided we are an ‘us’ with one calendar.

I like being an ‘us.’ I want my own calendar.

Both are true. I’m not certain how to make them fit inside Aiden’s plans.

I finish dinner and take my bowl inside. The two keys still sit together on the counter, close enough that their metal edges touch. For the first time since Aiden put it in my hand, I pick up the ranch key and turn it over in my palm.

I could leave it here until Friday. I could put it in a drawer and wait for the discomfort to shrink into something easier to ignore. Aiden would notice the distance before I found the perfect words for it, then try to solve whatever he thought was wrong.

That would be unfair to both of us.

I slide the key onto my ring beside the one to my cabin. The weight changes, small and obvious against my palm.

Then I pick up my phone and text him.