The least January could do after not following through on her wants, her needs, for not going to Nat when it was clear he wanted her again from his attentiveness, his smoldering stare she had come to know as desire, his monumental erection, was to make their forced night of proximity comfortable.

He stayed with the animals for the better part of an hour. In that time, she shook out a moth-eaten quilt and laid it before the stove, found and cleaned a cast iron skillet, heated up the roasted vegetables she had brought with her, and fetched two fresh water bottles from her pack. One “belly” down—food and water. The other bellies, the one of the enemy—this time, herself, for wanting freedom—and the one that grounded her—Nat, always Nat—were a little harder to manage.

Her inheritance was scheduled to hit her bank account tomorrow morning. No other reason to stay. Her time here had been good, cleansing, like a reboot of the soul, but it only served to exacerbate the itch she had to move again. Nat wasn’t a casual lover. He was old-fashioned in his commitments—one thing that drew her to him all those years ago after she found out her father had no intention of reuniting with his family. One night to recapture the way she and Nat were with each other—generous, enamored, voracious—would keep him right where Mona had written to her that he remained: stuck. January wanted him so very much that the remembered taste of him sat on her tongue. But she loved him even more.

When he returned, he gave her a run-down on the animals. He had adopted her nicknames for the cow and donkey. For the first time, she understood the imprint of her being here. The realization was a heavy coat lined with burrs. She had hoped to drift in and drift out again. No emotional footprints, no evidence she had been back at all. Nothing had gone as planned.

“Are you hungry?” she said, feigning a brightness she struggled to pull off past the guilt.

“This is why you took forever to pack.”

He smiled, for the first time since things between them became so weighty outside, and settled across from her on the floor. Without his wet ball cap, his hair was untamed and sexy. January sensed another shift in their dynamic, both times inside the cabin. Clem’s hands on every nook and cranny. Meier descendants conceived and reared inside these walls. Love that stretched the span of lifetimes. January felt sure that if the great flood came and washed the cabin into the gulch, Nat would have his third “belly” here—his legacy. Forever, this stretch of earth would be his center point when things didn’t go as planned. God whispering in his ear.

A tsunami crashed through January’s body. In an instant, she flared hot and cold and wanted to be anywhere but inside her skin. She had no center point. Hadn’t for a long time. Quite possibly, wouldn’t recognize it if it showed up. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong anywhere. She was her father, both of them experts at disconnection. Adrift on conflicting tides of resentment and admiration, she rummaged in her pack for the utensils she kept there—one set because she so often ate alone—and fought back hot tears.

“Are you okay?” he whispered.

Of course he knew. Nat always knew. He was the most perceptive man she had ever known. The man all others pale in comparison to.

She nodded, not daring to speak. One stubborn tear made itself known. She brushed it aside with a casual swipe of her sleeve cuff. But, of course, he knew.

“Will the others worry?” she asked, handing him a fork and keeping a spoon for herself.

“They know there’s no cell service out here. Probably guess one of the animals was hurt in the storm and come at first light with a trailer. Willie knows about this place. And Mona knows you’re with me.”

As if that knowledge was synonymous with being safe. January didn’t mind the assumption. Largely, it was truth. She backtracked to a topic that didn’t involve her faltering sense of autonomy.

“So tell me about college. I want to hear everything I missed.”

Her question caught him at his first bite. Most people who spent an inordinate amount of time with animals would have lapsed in manners. Nat clenched a loose fist at his lips and waited until he had swallowed to answer.

“I studied ag sciences, worked on a few projects researching the intersection between technology and ranching. My roommate was a computer science major. We teamed up and wrote software that tracked herds, measured the vital signs of certain marker animals, and sent data back to a phone app. We were even able to pinpoint the precise window for Clem’s bull to breed that season based on the animal’s optimum body temperature.”

“That’s huge, Nat. Revolutionary. Did anything ever come of it?”

“Not really. Until they launch more and better satellites into space and rural networks improve, any kind of software to track in real time is useless. That project was really the only thing that held my attention, except…”

January was afraid to ask, but she had never held anything back from Nat. “Girls? Surely a few of them held your attention.”

“Are you asking if there were others after you?”

“Yes.”

He savored another bite, likely to give himself time to consider. Nat’s greatest gift and biggest downfall was soul-baring honesty, but he had a way of wrapping that trait in word packages tied with ribbons to distract from the message. Her stomach clenched.

“Three.”

January felt deprived of oxygen. That was it? The guy could rub sentences together that made her weep from joy and laughter and sorrow, but all he gave her was a number. Three. She was mildly horrified with herself that she should take that number to be three too many. He deserved companionship and intimacy and all the love she hadn’t shown him by staying.

“You?”

“Hoo…” January said on a gusty exhale. She reeled from the crippling entitlement her heart still held for him.

“That many, huh?”

Her turn to take a bite. “No. I mean, not really. No place has ever really been permanent for any length. And no one wants to love the girl who leaves.”

He swallowed. Visibly. Then became preoccupied with pushing a cooked carrot around with his fork. He had given her honesty. The least she could do was reciprocate. Trouble was, how to be honest about something she had been scared to tell anyone?

“Dear Agnes…”

He made eye contact. His mouth stretched, a ghost of a smile.

Her stomach recoiled as if she’d eaten habaneros, not cooked potatoes. “I’m afraid a certain person will think differently of me if he knows I was once intimate with a woman. Signed, One Time, Never Again.”

Nat didn’t flinch. He didn’t reclaim interest in the meal or unfold his long legs or even glance away from her confession. The consummate advice professional.

“Dear One Time, Never Again…”

Already she loved him. Before he offered up whatever gift-wrapped words he had for her, she felt a tingly rush of acceptance from across the blanket.

“Experimentation is natural. That you were honest with your certain person makes it more than okay.”

The rancid turn of her stomach eased. She realized he, as Agnes, shared that same acceptance with others. His column wasn’t just a silly diversion. Agnes allowed Nat to do what he did best—bring comfort to others.

“In retrospect, it was nothing,” she said. “Crazy, really. I thought I had feelings for her, but it turned out that loneliness is an insidious bastard. It masks itself as other emotions and tries to change you in ways you can’t imagine.”

He poked at his food but didn’t eat. “You’d be surprised.”

That they shared this maudlin state of loneliness all these years apart had to mean something. That she hadn’t felt it once since coming back had to mean something important.

Nat pushed his meal aside and reclined on the quilt, hands laced behind his head, knees bent and wide. “What did she look like?”

January wasn’t sure why he should want to know until his lips twitched in amusement. He ignited a playfulness that danced through her entire body. She came at him knowing full well he dissolved to liquid at the onset of the first tickle.

“Why? So you can picture it?”

“Purely…to keep the conversation…going,” he said, dissolving into unguarded laughter at her touch—first her hands, then her knees bumping his hips, then her hands pinning his wrists to the floor in total surrender.

“Change the subject before I die of mortification. Right here.”

“We can’t have that, now, can we?” he said, as soft as a secret. His gaze mapped her expression.

They were breathless. His chest filled strong and proud; his exhales mingled with hers, inches apart. She had two choices: lean in and fill the vacancy, if only for a time, or take the high road.

January backed away but curled up beside him, fingers linked. She propped her neck against his rigid bicep, and they settled into a comfortable silence. The occasional crackle of a flame to dry wood curled through her ears and eased her muscles. She struggled to recall a time she felt more content.

“Nothing held your attention in college, except…” she prompted, snagging the dangling thread of conversation to get her mind off of rolling over and straddling him, to distract her from her hunger for his hardness at her apex, his palms discovering what time had done to her body.

“Writing.”

“And you never did anything with it?”

“I had an English professor who went on to open an independent publishing house. At the top of my final work he wrote: Let me know when your first book comes out. That sentence? Man, he had no idea what that did. He was the first one who made me believe I had talent.”

“You should send him your manuscript.”

“Nah. His house acquires stories that preserve the Southern way of life. He’s also old-school. Only takes paper submissions.”

“You can’t get any more old-school and Southern than Nat Meier.”

“He’s not going to publish cyborg cowboys, J.”

“You don’t know that. He believed in you once. And if nothing else, he may have a connection to someone who would publish cyborg cowboys.”

“I don’t know.”

She did, but she knew enough not to push the subject after his resistance in the stable office. Instead, she turned into him, burrowed against his side, his heat. Her body felt light, grounded by their nodes of contact. Sleep would have come easily had arousal not had a formidable hold. She closed her eyes to it, the way a Hopi elder had taught her on an outcropping of red rock in Sedona. Alone isn’t a test, he said. With others, we know our truths. Right now, her truth came in the form of a beehive sensation at her core. Dizzying, spiraling sensations took flight, up her inner thighs, behind her navel, deliciously stinging all the spaces between. She breathed through it, as the elder had instructed.

The truth came stronger.

His lips nestled against her hair. Heat from Nat’s unsteady exhales against her scalp penetrated and slipped south to join the chaos.

Stronger…

Her knee moved of its own accord, to his body’s front plane, up and over and atop his button fly, a complete and unapologetic offering of her hips.

His free hand reached for her knee, gripped it in place. Through two layers of denim, his and hers, his dick pulsed.

Stronger still…

God help her, she wanted to make every inch of this space theirs and only theirs. Walls, broken chair, passages from the book punctuated by intimate explorations of the tongue. Her ability to give two fucks about tomorrow and beyond was close to shattering.

“J?”

“Hmm?”

“I can’t go through it all again.”

She stiffened, her muscles toxic, her body immediately plunged into an icy bath of rejection. The buzz at her core died. This time, when tears scorched, she didn’t try to hide them. On some level, she wanted him to hurt, too. And therein was her truth. She was broken. Nat brought comfort to others. She brought pain.

And loneliness really was an insidious bastard, hell-bent on changing everything.

“I know.”

He slipped free of her and stood. “I’ll sleep with the animals tonight.”

She closed her eyes to his retreating footfalls, hollow against the century-old wood. The moment the door closed behind him, a decade of regret leaked out. Against the quilt, her muffled sobs took the rest of her.

* * *

January didn’t know the hour, but she had to escape the four walls, find space, feel cool air against her heated face. A few hours of sleep had remedied the worst of her brain’s heaviness after a cathartic cry. She wrapped herself in the quilt, fetched her journal from her pack, and slipped on her boots before heading outside.

The night showed signs of lifting. Lighter blues encroached on the horizon. The moon made its return, post-storm, to illuminate nature’s surfaces. She found an oak tree near the cabin’s corner with blushing autumn leaves and plenty of footholds. The cabin roof seemed like the perfect place to add to her travel journal.

Nat’s warning about wood rot returned to her. His practicality, his fear of the unknown, denied him moments that he would circle back to in his old age. Breathtaking moments, like the one when she settled onto that roof Clem had built with his hands and joined the sky with the vantage of a bird. In moonlight, she added three pages—sketches of the trees growing spindly with the chill, poetry that made zero sense, Nat’s name scrolled in different ways because it brought her comfort.

When the first fingers of orange gripped their side of the world, Nat joined her. Being Southern, he asked permission, as if the cabin were a ship and she its captain, as if he had already made it hers. His generosity, his selflessness, sharpened her regret at leaving.

She shared the quilt. He sat close. She rammed her pen through the messy bun atop her head so it wouldn’t roll off the roof.

“Mae is good. She’ll be fine.” His voice was quiet, low, relaxed. Like they had all the time in the world when she knew they didn’t. This place was good for him. She never wanted him to lose the part of himself that craved the stillness.

January nodded.

“J, I—”

“Don’t,” she whispered. “I understand.”

She held out her palm for his. He took her hand and wrapped the ratty quilt tighter around them. Head tipped against his shoulder, she found she no longer held anxiety in her stomach at being honest with him. They were past that, right where they had always been.

“Want to know the real reason I’m going to Nepal?”

“Prayer flags and rickshaws?”

January smiled. “Someone once told me if I went to the right place, just high enough, I could see the curvature of the earth from there. Then, and only then, would I know my place in it.”

“Sounds like some advanced bullshit.”

A warm giggle originated in her chest. She let it out. It felt amazing. “It does, doesn’t it?”

“All you have to do is squint at the horizon to see it curve.”

She squinted. He squinted. Like a pair of octogenarians who had lost their glasses. Sure enough, Nat was right. Just high enough, in the right place, the world curved, and she felt her place in it.

“This epiphany calls for a celebration.” January wiggled off her right boot and sock then handed Nat the pen she had stuck in her hair.

His gaze settled on the path of tiny tattoos that circled her ankle bone and wrapped her foot.

“What are those?”

“One symbol for every place these feet have carried me that taught me a life lesson.”

He grasped her leg. She twisted position to give him a better look.

His close inspection sketched his brow into a scowl. “I wish it was lighter so I could see them better.”

“They’re simple. Nothing special but to me.” She pointed to the spot at the base of her shin. “This is the most recent—from Norway.”

“What is it?”

“A willow flute. One evening, I was headed back to the inn where I had a room, and I heard its sound from a distance. A shepherd in a distant field, a fisherman on shore, someone I couldn’t see. The notes were like messages from an angel—simple, enduring, unwavering, the purest form of human expression. True art. I stood there for the longest time, unable to move. The sound transported me in a way that I never wanted to end. Then it stopped, and I realized how precious it had been.” She brushed a fingertip over the tattoo. “It was a lesson to appreciate music—all music—because it’s a fleeting gift.”

“Where is Close Call on here?”

“It isn’t. Not yet.”

“You want me to draw your next symbol?”

She bit her bottom lip, positive that she wanted something from him on her forever, unsure if he would accept such a challenge. When he did and the ballpoint tip tickled her skin, she smiled and closed her eyes, relieved such a gesture ensured she would remember this moment.

As he finished, he drew circles around it with his thumb, an unmistakable caress.

“What did you draw?” She shifted beside him to get a closer look.

“It’s an eye with really long lashes.”

She laughed, the full-bodied, soul-emptying kind of release.

“Because Mae brought us to this moment. And there’s a heart inside the pupil because I love you, more now than I ever have. And I want you to take that with you.”

“I love it,” she whispered. “Thank you. You know, eyes are a symbol for enlightenment.”

“See? Sometimes enlightenment comes in the most unexpected places.”

January opened her journal to a fresh page, placed it in his grasp, and nestled her head on his thigh. “It sure does, Hugo.”

Nat didn’t seem to hate the name so much anymore. He put pen to paper and wrote.

She yawned and drifted asleep, content.

* * *

“I can’t do this,” said Nat.

His insides felt like a python had been let loose, alternately squeezing and releasing internal organs. They had doused the stove, shuttered the window, remembered to grab Riders of the Purple Sage because he wanted to reread it for inspiration. Their coats were donned, her pack weighed his shoulders, their pointy boots already aimed toward the door.

Still, he couldn’t leave.

January glanced around at the cabin’s interior, her expression as vacant as the space. “Do what?”

“I can’t leave here without…ah, Jesus.” The only speech his brain rehearsed made him sound like a pervert. Or a greeting card.

“For someone so gifted at words, Nat, you’re losing me.”

He set down the pack and paced the stripes of orange light that dawn pushed through the cabin slats.

“Be careful,” she said in a half-joking, half-genuine tone. “Floor might have wood rot.”

“I don’t care.”

“Nat, what’s wrong?”

“That’s just it—nothing’s wrong. Everything’s right. For once in a goddamned decade, everything is right. This morning, I crawled up on a wet roof after a rainstorm, and I watched a sunrise with the most important person in the world to me, and I wrote. God Almighty, the scene that had been giving me problems for eight months poured out of me like…like every sentence I’d written up to that point led to right here, right now. It was spontaneous and brilliant, and it was all because of you.”

“What are you saying, Nat?”

“I want more. More spontaneous. More brilliant. I want the taste of you to be more than a memory. I want us to make up for lost time and stop dancing around each other like we don’t know what the other wants because we do—we’re just too damned afraid of what comes next. And I’m okay with that. If you can gather moments and ink them into your skin, I can gather moments with you and ink them into my heart. At least they’d be there, which is more than I can say for being stubborn and letting you walk away without showing you how much you mean to me.” He was breathless, spent, but regret wasn’t an option. Before he lost his courage, he pushed forward. “I’m saying that I intend to make love to you, right here, right now, all over this cabin, so if you have any objection, you’re just going to have to stop me.”