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"Fuck, Jake, right there, right there..."

She comes again with a cry buried in my shoulder. The clench of her pulling me over the edge with her. Hips stuttering, emptying into her, release so intense my vision goes white and my arms shake with the effort of holding myself above her.

Tangled in moonlight. Breathing hard. Heartbeats slowing. Her head on my chest, my fingers in her hair, the cottage quiet except for the wind in the pines and two people relearning what it sounds like to breathe.

"Jake."

"Yeah."

"That was not boring."

Laughter. Real, full, shaking through both of us. She smiles against my skin. Unguarded. Permanent. No armor in sight. My arms tighten. Lips pressed to the top of her head.

Gonna spend my whole life making sure this woman never settles for boring again.

Chapter Eight

Selene

Morning. Flannel sheets. Warm skin.

Jake's arm heavy across my waist, chest pressed to my back, breath slow against my neck. Mountain light pouring through the window, October gold turning everything soft. The peaks dusted with first frost, white against blue sky.

For a few seconds, not a single reason to be afraid.

Then the fear.

It starts small. A flutter behind my ribs, familiar, chemical. Richard's voice, smooth and reasonable, sliding into my thoughts like it always does when I'm close to happy: You'll be back. You don't know how to want anything for more than a week.

Counting weeks. Four since the sandwich. Four since a twenty-seven-year-old lumberjack grinned at me over a stolen turkey club and refused to disappear.

Jake stirs. His arm tightens, pulling me closer. Something soft against my hair that might be my name or might just be a sound that means stay.

Eyes closed. Letting the warmth hold me. Just for now.

The week between that night and the festival passes in sandwiches and Jake's hands and the growing terror that I am falling in love with a man eight years younger who treats the age gap like a fence he stepped over without looking down.

He doesn't push. Doesn't move in, doesn't stake claims, doesn't rearrange my life around his presence. Shows up at Shelton's with the sandwich. Texts good morning with whatever ridiculous thing the sunrise is doing over the ranch. Picks me up Saturday, works the festival setup shoulder to shoulder with me without ever making it feel like a date. Touches me like something he's been given permission to hold. Carefully. Gratefully. With the same precision he gives every board he places.

But in his eyes, every single time. Depth. Certainty. Looking at me like I'm the clearing at the end of a timber run. The open sky after the last tree falls.

He's in love with me. Hasn't said it. But it's in every sandwich. Every sawdust-curled text. Every time his hand finds the small of my back and stays there like it belongs.

And I'm in love with him. Know it the way you know the ground's under your feet. Not because you checked. Because you're standing.

Terrifying.

Friday night. One day before the festival. Making dinner in my quiet kitchen, pasta water on the stove, radio playing something old and warm. Phone rings.

Portland area code. Not Claudia's number.

"Selene." Richard. Smooth as polished marble. The voice that told me what to think for eight years dressed up as concern. "I heard you moved to Oregon."

"I moved eleven months ago, Richard. That's not exactly breaking news."

"I know. I gave you space. Thought that's what you needed." The careful pause, the one he uses when he's about to make something unreasonable sound generous. "But I've been thinking about us, and I wonder if we should talk."

"There is no us."