now. Didn’t she know he was learning how to read her?
She said, “Everyone is afraid of getting lost. Getting lost sucks.”
“I can teach you orienteering.” He flicked the compass hanging from the side of his pack. “Then you’ll always know where you’re going.”
“It’s unlikely I’ll ever find myself in a situation like this again.” She peered beyond the firelight into the growing darkness of the woods. “This is a one-off, that’s for sure. And out in the real world, there are plenty of street signs, thank goodness.”
“Is that why you live in your van?”
The question dropped between them like a felled oak. Metaphorical dust rose from the impact to form a scrim between them. She went still, her lips only a few inches from the rim of her coffee cup. He resisted the urge to make a joke, or tease her, or slip in a sexual innuendo to distract her from what he’d just asked. Coupling was easy between them, hungry and mind-blowing, and already his blood headed south as he thought about what they’d be doing tonight in that tiny tent. But the transactional nature of their fucking was just beginning to needle him. He wanted to delve into her, not just her gorgeous body.
Most of all, fool that he was, he wanted her to stop wielding their strong physical attraction as a shield to keep his interest at a distance.
The silence stretched, no longer the comfortable camaraderie they’d shared when setting up camp. She lowered the cup without taking a sip and stared into the flames as if mesmerized by the changing colors. Insects chirped in the trees. Somewhere in the distance, an owl hooted. Disappointment hung like a stone on his heart.
He’d pushed too far, too fast.
“That’s a great horned owl.” He raised his face to the night. “She’s probably checking out this unexpected source of light. There haven’t been a lot of campers pitching tents out here.”
She pulled her legs up, drawing even tighter into herself.
“Let’s hope we don’t hear an eastern screech owl.” He clutched his water bottle just to hold something against the regret. “It’s terrifying. It sounds like a child screaming in agony—”
“It’s not getting lost that unnerves me,” she interrupted.
He stopped his words but didn’t close his mouth.
“It’s not even the uncertainty,” she added, “of where we’re going.”
Questions gathered, choking him, but the cup trembled in her hand.
“It’s all the backtracking.” She dropped one hand to her side and traced a pattern in the pine needles. “All the walking in circles. The lack of forward progress is what kills me. I don’t like being…stuck in place.”
Not in a million years would he have guessed that. A fly whined in his ear, but he didn’t wave it away, not wanting any motion to distract her from the words she seemed so reluctant to say.
“I didn’t always live in my van.” She slid the coffee cup beside her and then embraced her knees, drawing them tight to her chest. “I had a home once. I knew the creak of every floorboard. I could set my clock to the sound of my neighbor’s lawn mower, nine in the morning every Saturday in the summer. Whenever I went up into the attic, I tracked the way the beams sweated resin, gooey little balls pressed out of the wood. I bound myself, every day, to the life in that house and the dreams I had and the world that I made so familiar.”
He ventured, “You loved it.”
“I did.” She pressed her chin between her knees. “I loved it…until my fiancé died.”
He heard many words, but they tangled in his head. He struggled to put them together, but they kept scrambling. She had mentioned a fiancé once, but not a loss. That ruffled up so many questions, so many conflicting emotions. Surprise and regret and sympathy and confusion and even a twinge of jealousy that he hadn’t earned the right to feel. Casey had loved another man. Of course she had. But it shouldn’t matter because the relationship was in the past when she didn’t yet belong to him.
Belong?
“Ian’s death was sudden.” She lifted her face, jaw tight. “He’s been gone nearly three years now. It doesn’t seem real, and yet it’s so very, very real. I think about him still. But when I do, I think less about Ian and more about the life we both built, the life we both lost.”
Dylan nodded, because this he understood. Back at his college reunion, along with Logan and Garrick,