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She fumbled with the lamp and a second later the room was flooded in light. “Gah!” she shrieked, covering her eyes.
I bit back a laugh, trying to cling to what remained of my extremely justified annoyance at having to track her down, which wasn’t easy with her being cute and wearing my flannel.
“What the hell, Nora?”
She peeked at me through her fingers, her face still scrunched up to protect her eyes.
“You leave a message telling me to get my ass to Suzie’s, so I do, only you’re not there. I haven’t been in an actual bed in forty-eight hours. I went from a mountain so wild it makes hell look inviting, to a hospital where they made me wait around for three hours just so they could tell me I’m perfectly fine, to the NPS station to finish the paperwork, to an airplane for four hours so I could get to you. Then, because you weren’t at Suzie’s, I couldn’t just make love to you and crash. I had to—”
I didn’t get another word out because she stood up and used the mattress as a springboard to launch herself at me. I grunted in surprise as I caught her, going back on a foot to keep us both from toppling over. And suddenly I didn’t care about all that. She was in my arms, her legs wrapped tightly around my hips. Nothing else mattered.
She clasped my face in both hands, so that we were eye-to-eye. “Please don’t be a hallucination,” she whispered.
I didn’t answer. My mouth crushed hers, my tongue spiking in. She held on tight as I tumbled us onto the bed, twisting as we fell so that I landed on my back with her on top. She tugged at my shirt, her message clear that she wanted it off.
I broke the kiss, panting. I pulled my shirt off over my head, because there wasn’t anything she could ask for right then that I wouldn’t give her, and then grabbed her hands, keeping her from distracting me, because we needed to talk first.
“I got your message,” I said.
Her body stiffened and her gaze lowered, focusing on the base of my throat. “I figured you did. But…you didn’t call me. You texted Suzie this morning, but not me. I didn’t know—”
“My phone died. I left the charger back in the hut, and no one had a compatible one. It was a whole thing. I wanted to call you.” I frowned. This wasn’t how I had pictured this going. I didn’t want to start things off with a convoluted story that was bound to set her insecurities ringing. I wanted her to feel good. To feel sure of me. “My phone is—”
“No, don’t,” she cut me off. “Don’t explain.”
I still had her hands, but her mouth was a different story, and she used it to press kisses against my throat. God, it felt good, and for a moment I let her distract me. But only for a moment. “Nora, please let me tell you.”
She sighed. “Can I have my hands back?”
I released them, but settled my own on her hips, in case she got any silly ideas about leaving.
“So your phone died. Okay.” She unbuttoned the top button of her—my—flannel. “That’s all I needed to hear. Because you’re here now. With me. And I know you wouldn’t be if I wasn’t who you wanted. You wouldn’t do that.” She freed the second button, revealing the slight curve of her breast. “You’re not my ex. I trust you.”
It was hard formulating a response with blood flow rapidly abandoning my brain. “You trust me?”
She nodded. “I trust you.” There went the third button. “And I trust myself to make that call. I know things are going to happen. Sometimes I’m going to wonder. That’s okay. I trust myself to work through it, and if everything goes to hell, I trust myself to survive it.” The flannel was completely open now. “I spent a lot of time thinking while you were gone. I was so scared of trapping myself in another decade of misery that I completely ignored the fact that Iwasmiserable, because I didn’t have you. I’m happy with you. So I’m going to do that. I’m going to be with you, because I love you.”
The simplicity of the statement filled me with hope. Maybe it could be that easy. “I love you, too.”
We smiled goofily at each other. I cupped her breasts in my hands, because I couldn’t resist. There were still things we needed to say to each other, but there was no reason they couldn’t be said with her breasts in my hands, was there?
“What else did you think about? You want a child. I can’t give you that.”
“I wantyou. I want a family. Youcangive me that. There are lots of ways to have children, and children are only one part of a family. We’ll figure it out. If biology fails us, we can adopt. If adoption doesn’t work, then we can still be the best aunt and uncle ever.” She cocked her head. “Didyouthink about anything while you were lost on the mountain?”
I gave her an appalled look. “I wasn’t lost. Jesus. There were three hikers. One of them figured since they were going to die anyway, he might as well smoke all their weed first. He got separated from the group, and by the time I found him he was all the way to Mount Jackson, paranoid as hell, and half frozen. He also managed to throw my radio God knows where when I tried to call in our location. It took me four hours to haul his stupid ass back to the hut.”
Nora laughed, her head tilting back. I couldn’t resist biting her, very gently, on her collar bone. Joy crashed over me like a wave. She was mine. Finally.
“So we’re doing this for real now?” I asked, just to be sure I wasn’t still stuck on that mountain, hallucinating all this. “We’re not temporary?”
She cupped my face in her hands, her fingers threading through my beard, and kissed me firmly. “No, we’re not temporary. We might even be forever.” Her voice turned soft. “I’d like to find out.”
“Forever might be shorter with me,” I reminded her.
“No one is guaranteed time. I’ll take what I can get. I’m in this with you, however long we have.”
“No take-backs,” I warned. “You’re stuck with me now.”
