We don’t push ourselves on the return trip to Baalboden. I tell Rachel it’s to let my rib heal, and I think she believes me. But really, I just want time with her. Time to lie next to her at night, holding her against me while I watch the rotation of the stars. Time to walk beside her during the day and try to draw her into conversation so we can get what has hurt her out into the open, where it can start to heal.
I ache to hear her tell me she loves me, but forcing her to put words to how she feels pushes her further into the silence she seems comfortable calling home now. I tell myself to be patient and understanding, but inside there’s a longing only those words will fill, and it hurts to ignore it.
I’m restless. Hungry for something she keeps just out of my reach. It doesn’t help that Quinn and Willow are traveling with us. As grateful as I am for their assistance, having others within earshot cuts down significantly on the things I’d like to share with Rachel. So, at the end of another day’s journey, when Willow announces she wants meat for dinner and is going hunting, I look Quinn straight in the eye and say, “You should go with her.”
“Logan.” Rachel puts her hand on my arm.
“I don’t need help bringing down a rabbit,” Willow says.
“But there might be highwaymen out there. Or more trackers from Rowansmark. It never hurts to be cautious.” I look at Quinn. “You should go.”
They all stare at me in silence for a second before Willow says, “Why don’t you just come right out and say, ‘Hey, I want private time with Rachel so I can kiss her senseless like I did at the lake’?”
“Willow!” Quinn frowns at her.
“That’s not what he meant,” Rachel says, refusing to look at me.
Willow laughs. “Yes, it is. He’s itching to get his hands on you without an audience.”
“That’s not what he meant,” Rachel says again, pink flushing her cheeks.
“Actually, I meant—” I start to say, but Willow cuts me off.
“What? It’s true. He looks at you like he’d like to dip you in sugar and eat you up.”
“Willow Runningbrook, that’s enough.” Quinn’s eyes flash, and I catch a glimpse of something feral beneath his smooth exterior. It’s gone as soon as I see it, submerged beneath the calm he wears like a second skin.
Willow tosses her hands into the air. “Apparently, honesty is a crime in this group. Look.” She points at Rachel. “You’re all, ‘Revenge is all I want! I’ll figure out my love life later!’ and he”—she points to me—“is afraid revenge will kill you before he has a chance to really touch you—”
“No, he isn’t.”
I step forward. “Willow has a point.”
“Willow needs to learn to share only those observations that others ask her to share.” Quinn steps forward as well.
Willow shrugs and shoulders her bow. “I got tired of tiptoeing around the obvious.” She winks at me. “How much time do you need to kiss her senseless?”
“He’s not going to—”
“At least an hour,” I say, dragging Rachel into my arms and kissing her before she can say another word.
I don’t hear Willow leave or Quinn follow her. I can’t hear anything beyond the wild pounding of my heart and the soft catch of Rachel’s breath as I fist my hands in the back of her tunic and pull her against me like I can’t stand to have a single sliver of air between us.
“Logan.” Her voice is as shaky as the hand she puts on my chest, and I can’t bear it. I can’t bear to hear her tell me to stop. To pull back. I can’t bear to be apart from her when she’s all I have.
“Don’t,” I say, and she tilts her head back to look at me. “Don’t keep me at a distance.”
“Who said anything about keeping you at a distance?” Her smile lingers in her eyes.
But when she leans in to kiss me, I’m the one who pulls back because suddenly just being with her isn’t enough. Not nearly enough.
“Logan?”
I close my eyes and reach for the courage to ask her to give me the words I need.
Her lips brush mine, sweet and hesitant, and I open my eyes. She’s all I can see. All I can taste when I breathe in. Her body molds itself to mine like she was made for me, and I want her to feel it too. To acknowledge it.
To hope for it in the middle of so much hopelessness.
“Rachel, I need …” The words won’t come. I don’t know how to say that I need everything she is without making it sound like more than she can give.
Please don’t let it be more than she can give.
“What do you need?” Her face is luminous beneath the golden fingers of the waning sun.
And suddenly the words are there, falling into place like I always knew the way to reach her. “I need to know what you need. What you want. Not from the device, not from the Commander, but from me.”
She stiffens, shoulders lifting toward her jaw as if to protect herself from a blow she has to know I’ll never deliver.
“Please.” I can barely push the word out. “Please, Rachel. Look past the loss, the grief. Look at me.”
She closes her eyes. I feel like I’ve been slashed open inside where no one will ever see me bleed. But then she takes a deep breath, relaxes her shoulders, and looks at me, tears filling her eyes.
“I need you, Logan. Just you.”
I tighten my grip on her tunic. “Why?”
“Because I still love you.” Her voice catches. “I never stopped. I thought I had. I wanted to. But somehow … it’s like part of you lives inside the most important part of me, and I don’t know how to separate the two.” Tears spill over, tracing a glistening path down her cheeks. “I love you, Logan.”
Joy surges through me, brilliant and wild. I cup her face in my hands and wipe away her tears. “I love you too, Rachel. Always.” And then I do my best to use the full hour I’ve been given to kiss her senseless.