The cozy crackle of the burning wood pulls me from my sleep as the warmth of the fire fights to lull me back into dreams. The room is toasty and my body is surprisingly relaxed after the day we had yesterday. Not to mention the night.

Ryan kept me up late, moaning his name into the darkness until my body collapsed from exhaustion and bliss. After such a deep sleep, I’m ready to take on the world. I roll over and stretch out my hand, reaching for him, but I end up only patting at the empty space where I expect him to be.

I sit up and find him stoking the fire while he boils some water in a small, collapsible pot on top. Disappointment washes over me. I didn’t want to see his slightly stiff but dry clothes covering his tight, muscular body. They were perfectly fine on the floor.

“Good morning, sexy,” I purr.

Ryan smiles at me over his shoulder and stands.

“Same to you.” He walks toward me and I get ready to kiss him, but he saunters right past me, leaving me pouting at the air and wondering what he’s searching for in his bag. “There we go.” He tugs out a plastic glass and a mug along with some granola bars, a bag of coffee, and a sieve.

“What are you doing?” I sit up, holding the blanket over me for modesty.

“What does it look like? I’m making breakfast,” he jokes and tosses one of the granola bars my way.

My stomach gurgles at the promise of food and I tear off the wrapper like a kid sneaking into a bucket of Halloween candy. It’s such a simple thing, some nuts and chocolate all stuck together in a bar, but it might as well be some expensive French cuisine to my tongue. The flavors explode on my taste buds and I moan almost as loudly as Ryan had me moaning last night.

“Mmm, just like Grandma used to make.” I scarf down the entire bar and Ryan laughs at me.

“Gourmet cook, is she?” he teases and pours some of the hot water over a sieve full of coffee grinds into the mug, letting the water grow murky before he hands it off to me.

He makes himself a rough looking coffee using the same grounds into the cup and tears the plastic surrounding his granola bar open with his teeth and spits the wrapper onto the floor.

“My nana? No, she never had much time for big meals. She mostly cooked from cans and prepackaged stuff.” I take a sip of my coffee and Ryan sits on the blanket beside me. “Except once a week she’d always have a big pancake breakfast. Every Sunday before she dragged me off to church.”

“That’s how it was for my grandmother too. She didn’t have much money from my grandfather’s pension, so she had to really stretch her dollars. It sucks to think of how many sweet old ladies are forced to live like that at the end of their lives. So, you lived with your nana?”

“She raised me, and trust me, she’d be the first to punch you in the mouth if you called her a sweet old lady.” I laugh. “She’s just turned sixty now, so back when I was born she was young enough to be my mother.”

“What? How old was your mom when she had you? How old was your grandmother?” Ryan tries to figure out the math that haunted our family.

“I don’t remember my mother,” I answer matter-of-factly. I distanced myself from the pain of her abandonment a long time ago.

“I’m sorry.” Ryan touches my arm gently. “When did she die?”

I stiffen at the question. I could tell him she passed away when I was two. I mean, she might as well have. But I don’t want to lie to him. There’s something about Ryan, about the way his intense blue eyes search mine that makes my secrets bubble up from where I drowned them and spill from my tongue.

“She didn’t die. Well, she might be dead now. I’m not sure. The truth is, I don’t know what she did with her life. She was seventeen when she had me and eighteen when she left. When I first learned that she ran out on me, I thought it was because she was so young. But my grandmother had her when she was seventeen too. And the weird thing is, my great-grandmother had her when she was seventeen. So Nana was only thirty-four when I was born.”

“Wow.” Ryan doesn’t say it like he’s judging me. Not like he thinks less of me or my family. Just like he’s absorbing the facts and trying to understand my life.

“Yeah, so it felt like a big deal when I turned eighteen and still wasn’t pregnant.” I look down into my dwindling cup of coffee. “Like I’d broken a curse or something. I thought I was actually doing the right thing when I moved away. I was heading out on my own and thought I’d be the first woman in my family to do something with her life besides have children when they were still kids. Kind of ironic that I just ended up in the same situation, isn’t it?” I bark out a dry laugh.

“You’re pregnant?” Ryan’s eyes grow wide and search my belly for evidence of a baby.

“No, no! Not that part. I just mean that I ended up trapped in the same kind of life. In a dead end job trying to end things with an abusive piece of shit man.”

Ryan’s jaw clamps down and his shoulders tense up. “That’s not a real man. A real man doesn’t need to hurt women to prove himself.” Rage pulses in the air around him.

“You’re right. I’m glad I finally found one.” I drape my fingers over his balled up hand and he relaxes a little.

Ryan breathes in deep, like he’s trying to get himself under control and his eyes squeeze shut for a second. Then the tension passes, his muscles ease up, and he stares straight into my eyes. “Does Wolfe know where your grandmother lives?”

I shake my head, but I can’t help how my chin quivers at just the thought. It wouldn’t be beneath him to hurt her to get back at me. I know that. He’s done worse to people who “owed him.”

“No, he knows I grew up in Portland and that Nana raised me, but I never told him an address or anything. I mean, he knows our last name is Miller, but there are a million of them in the city. He doesn’t even know my real first name.” I realize just how little Wolfe knew about me. And how little he cared to know. In just over twenty-four hours, Ryan is already taking the time to learn more about me than Wolfe ever tried to in over six months.

“I figured Red was a nickname, you know, because of this.” He glides his palm over my hair and I close my eyes, enjoying how he can be so strong and powerful one second and so soft and sweet the next. “What’s your real name?”

“Patricia.” It sounds weird to say it out loud. Ever since I was a kid people have been calling me Red. Patricia sounds like one of those extra names some kids get to honor a dead relative. The kind that go on the birth certificate, but that no one ever calls them.

“Yeah, I like Red more.” Ryan furrows his brows and tosses the last of his coffee back.

“Me too.”

“All right then, if you’re ready to get moving, I’m gonna pack up here and dig the bike out of the barn so we can hit the road.” Ryan stands up and stretches his empty coffee glass toward the ceiling.

“Sounds good,” I agree.

Inside, though, I wish Ryan and I could find a little hideaway like this to make our own. A place we could both disappear to, where Wolfe couldn’t find us and where the outside world doesn’t matter. I know we need to go. I know my wishes are silly. Still, I find myself dreaming of a universe where Ryan and I aren’t bound by a destination or timeline. A fantasy where the only time that matters is the time we take to explore each other in a million ways and learn everything there is to know about our lives. Reluctantly, I force myself to abandon that dream and face reality. My nana never had time to read me fairy tales when I was a kid and there’s no use in starting to believe in them now. It’s time to get back on the road, time to keep heading west and leave my childish wishes behind.