“Wow,” I said, leaning on the railing, looking out into the endless green.

Ricky came up behind me. “It’s okay?”

He wore the same expression he’d had after we first had sex, that uncertainty and doubt, his eyes anxious, hair still mussed from the helmet. It made him look deliciously vulnerable, and I pulled him over.

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” I asked.

“No lake,” he said. “No swimming or boating. Definitely no jet-skiing.”

“Not really my thing.” I leaned back against the railing. “I like this. Completely quiet. Completely private.”

A hint of a grin. “It is private. No need to worry about the neighbors.”

“Not just that,” I said. “It feels like . . .” I looked around and felt the calm of the forest slide over me. “Beyond peaceful. I’m pretty damned sure I can’t get a cell or Internet signal. No need to check my phone. No need to feel like there’s something else I should be doing. A complete break from everything and everybody.”

“Except me.”

“You don’t count. You are the most low-maintenance guy I’ve ever dated, and this is the least demanding relationship.”

“I do make demands.”

“Sex would only be a demand if I didn’t want the same, which is never a problem.”

“I’ve noticed that.” He slid his hands under my ass, shifting closer. “I’m glad you’re okay with coming here.” He looked out into the forest, and something glittered in his eyes, a hunger, a yearning. “I love this place. When I was a kid, my dad had to mark our weekends here on the calendar so I’d stop bugging him about when we were going. I still bugged, because it was never often enough. I’d spend hours out there, tramping through the woods. It was like Disney World for me.”

“No place like it on earth?”

“Exactly. Even now, I come up here when I need a study break, and half the time I’m out there instead, walking around. It’s like . . .” He struggled for the words. “Like recalibrating. After some time here, I’m ready to deal with all the shit in the regular world.”

“I can understand that.”

He nudged me back onto the railing, hands still cushioning my ass. “I’ve never brought anyone here before. Not a friend, not a girl. It’s like . . . you have a place you love and then you bring someone, and they notice all the flaws and I feel like I’m being judged, too, for liking it. With you, I don’t need to be anything. To do anything. I can just say ‘this is me’ and you seem happy with that.”

“I’m very happy with that.”

He looked me in the eyes, and that uncertainty flickered again, as if he wasn’t sure I could be telling the truth. I pulled him into a kiss, but he resisted, leaning into my ear instead and whispering, “It’s the same for me. I’m very, very happy.”

I plucked at his shirt. “And there’s no way I can make you any happier?”

“There’s always a way.”

“Good.” I pushed his shirt up over his chest. “Then let’s get you naked. ’Cause that always makes me happy.”

He laughed, the sound echoing through the forest.

—

We’d come in at midnight, after hours of sitting around a campfire, drinking and talking. Lots of talking, one of the two things it seemed we never tired of. The other followed. By one, we were sated and asleep.

When I woke, refreshed and wide awake, it felt as if it must be morning. It wasn’t even 2 A.M.

I tried to get back to sleep, but something pulled me from the bed, tugging me to the window. Finally, I gave in and slid from under Ricky’s arm.

I didn’t need to open the curtain. Moonlight already streamed through the crack. It was a waning moon, maybe three-quarters, so bright it was like headlights flooding the room.

A branch scraped the glass, the leaves plastered against it. I reached up and put my fingers against them, the cool glass sending a chill down my arm. As I looked out, I could imagine that chill against my skin, like riding on the bike, the bite and the burn of the wind. I shivered and pressed my whole hand to the window. It was open an inch, and when I moved closer, the breeze tickled over my naked body. I could smell our campfire, and I imagined I heard our voices and Ricky’s laugh, and I shivered again, smiling.

I glanced over my shoulder at Ricky, sprawled over the bed, and drank in the sight of him, marveling at my luck in being here. I’d been telling the truth when I’d said how comfortable it was being with him. There was no jumping to get his attention. No struggle to make him smile. No treading warily, gauging his mood, tensed for the next betrayal.

I wanted to stay here. Tell the rest of the world to go to hell and leave me in this forest, alone with Ricky, at least for a little while.

Right now, though . . .

I turned back to the window. Right now I didn’t want to be here at all. Not in this cabin, that is. I heard the sigh of the wind and the creak of trees, and smelled crisp fire and pungent cedar, and I wanted to be out there. To walk. To run. To see . . . whatever there was to see, because I felt as if I was missing something in here, as warm and comfortable as it was.

“You, too?”

I jumped as Ricky’s hands slid around my waist.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.

I went to turn around in his arms, but he only tightened them around me. I tugged open the curtains, and moonlight poured into the room. Ricky pressed up against me, warming my back as the cool breeze chilled my chest.

He lowered his head to nuzzle my neck. We stood there, him pressed warm against me as we gazed out into the forest.

“I was up doing this a little while ago,” he said. “Woke thinking it was morning, and it turned out I’d only been asleep for ten minutes. It’s that kind of night.”

“It is.”

We stood there, my fingers pressed to the glass, his hand caressing my hip, neither of us speaking for at least five minutes. Then I said, “I want to go out.”

“Let’s get dressed and go.”

“I guess the dressing part isn’t optional?”

A chuckle. “I would like to say it is completely optional, but while the bugs aren’t bad, the underbrush is thick and the ground is rough. Jeans and sneakers are a must. As for the rest . . . I’m inclined to go with ‘totally optional.’”