I turn wild at the thought, knowing I can’t have it, knowing this is it. Our shared secret, a truth we’re only telling each other. My fingers slip into his hair and tighten, and he groans so deeply I feel it between my legs. I press into him, where he’s hard for me already.
“Fuck,” he says against my mouth, dragging his hands down my body until they’re at my hips. His fingers dig in hard, then he pushes, pinning them against the door. “Just kissing.”
“Sorry,” I groan.
He moves his mouth from mine, across my cheek, panting against the spot where my ear meets my jaw. “Your rules.”
Right. Kissing, just this once. Dry humping is not on the approved list, but god, it felt good.
We have to stop, though. Eventually I’ll remember why.
I rest my head against the door, staring up at the fire alarm blinking silently down at us. “Okay. Okay. That was—okay.”
“Is okay your review, or did I kiss you into speechlessness?” he whispers into my neck. I feel his smirk against my skin.
I groan. “Oh my god, you have to leave.”
He goes still before pressing a soft kiss to his spot. No one will ever be able to touch me there again. When he pulls back, mouth damp, his expression is unreadable.
“You have to leave,” I repeat, “because I’m going to shove you into my room otherwise.”
The naked lust on his face is devastating. I should have a street named after me for all this control I’m showing. “And we can’t do that.”
“No.”
“Because of the . . .”
“The everything.”
“Right.” He blows out a breath, running a hand through his wrecked hair. “Okay.”
“Yes, okay.”
Tucking a strand of wild hair behind my ear, he says, “Okay to the other stuff, not the kiss.”
“Yes, the kiss was five fucking stars, Spencer, now go away.”
I push at his shoulder, laughing in exasperation as a smile spreads across his face when he stumbles back. His mouth is swollen, shirt wrinkled where I grabbed it. He looks like a mess, like he belongs in Vegas. He’s all sin.
He walks backward as I stick my keycard into the slot. “You never answered my question earlier, by the way.”
I pause halfway into my room. “What question?”
“Whether two fingers would be enough to satisfy you tonight.”
It’s a good thing he’s too far to grab. “I’ll let you know tomorrow.”
And then I shut the door, locking it behind me.
Sixteen
It was a tactical error letting that kiss happen. I can barely meet anyone’s eyes the next morning when I join Paul and Theo for breakfast. Theo curls two fingers through the handle of his coffee mug at one point, and my imagination sets off down a long, dark, dirty road. When we load up the car to drive to our Airbnb outside Zion National Park, he catches my eye and smirks. Infuriating.
I do my best to ignore the vibes as we make our way into southern Utah. Paul hands over a letter, which is really a bullet point list of Gram’s ideas to make their family dinner less horrible. It reminds me of her grocery lists, except instead of milk, it’s don’t bring up war. I laugh, missing her so much it hurts. I soothe it by telling Paul and Theo about the time I ran into a towering display of macaroni and cheese at Safeway and got buried under the boxes, and how hard Gram laughed as she was digging me out.
Theo’s laughter sounds like hers did, incredulous and amused, and it’s almost like she’s here.
The landscape flies by as we drive through St. George, Hurricane, and a funny little town called La Verkin. We wind toward Springdale, the location of our Airbnb. On each side of us, massive rocks of brilliant red, rusty orange, and fawny brown rise up against the brilliant blue sky. It looks like someone took a paintbrush to every part of the earth and saturated it with beautiful, vibrant color.
It’s going to be my favorite place this whole trip; I can feel it. Peace settles in my chest. I roll down my window so I can inhale it, too.
After we get everything unloaded, I’ll work on editing my Yosemite photos. Tomorrow we’ll go into Zion for the first of our three full days here, and Paul promised he’d let me have some time with his Hasselblad, which is generous considering I’ll probably just ruin his film.
The cautious optimism blooming in my chest feels new. In reality, it’s simply something I haven’t had for months.
When we roll up to the Airbnb thirty minutes later and I catch my first glimpse of the home we’re temporarily calling ours, the cautious part of my optimism flies out the window.
I jump out of the van, my hands clasped in front of me. The house is smaller than it looked in pictures, but the front porch is wide, with three pine rocking chairs lined up, colorful throw pillows sitting sweetly on each.
“Great, right?” I say as Theo and Paul climb out of the van, appraising it with varying levels of enthusiasm. Theo, of course, is largely unmoved, but Paul’s face lights up.
“It’s fantastic. What a find.”
“And not too expensive, either.” When I found it, I was so taken aback by the price that my fingers tripped over themselves to fill out the booking information.
We bring our bags into the house and spread out to explore. The main room is open concept, with the living room, kitchen, and dining room in one brightly lit space, decorated in a southwestern style. The dining room table is made of roughly hewn, pale wood, big enough for me to spread my equipment out over later so I can get to work on my editing—and maybe finish my next TikTok. Out the large picture window, pink and red rocks sweep toward the sky. I press my fingers against the glass, gazing out at the incredible colors I’ll get to capture tomorrow. I can’t wait to wake up to that.
There’s a long hallway that goes back to the bedrooms and, I assume, the bathroom. Theo heads that way, my and Paul’s suitcases trailing behind him.
Paul putters around in the kitchen, pointing to a French press. “Oh, this’ll be handy for our early mornings.”
“Yeah, I brought a bag of Blue Bottle coffee, we can use it—”
“Hey, Shepard?” Theo yells from the back of the house. His footsteps rattle the floor like an earthquake, and I brace myself for the problem. There’s a raccoon family living in one of the bedrooms. The air conditioning is broken. A—
He strides around the corner, his eyebrows arched in surprise. “Want to tell me why there’s only one bed?”
* * *
Paul, Theo, and I stand at the foot of the bed, hands on our hips.
“The listing said it was two bedrooms,” I say for the fourth time.
Theo follows the script to a tee. “Are you sure? Because there’s definitely only one bedroom. And only one bed.”
With a sigh, I pull my phone from its haphazard tuck in the waistband of my leggings. I go to the app, clicking on the reservation. “Right here. It says: sleeps four, one bedro . . .”
I trail off, my blood turning cold.
“What was that?” Theo takes my hand in his, pulling the phone up so he can read the listing details. The disorienting heat of his body and the reality of my mistake make me jerk against his grasp, but he won’t let me go. “One bedroom, Shep. It says it right here. The other bed is a pullout in the living room.”