He nods, absentmindedly. Runs a hand through his hair again and then leaves it on top of his head like he’s thinking, lit by the golden orange of the fire in the wood stove and the piercing brightness of an electric lantern we’ve got on the mantle. He’s solid, wearing tight base layers again, his muscles highlighted in the strange light, and he’s lovely with those pretty eyes and the graceful lines of his body; he’s standing there like he’s cautious, uncertain, but earlier today I watched him calmly wrestle a young male deer free of the grouse net with barely a flicker of alarm.
“Is that enough wood or should I put more in?” he asks, nodding at the wood stove.
“I don’t think you can fit more.”
“Sure, I could.”
“It’s fine,” I say. I’m sitting on my mattress and wrap my sleeping bag around my shoulders. “Come to bed.”
The tiny smile that ghosts across his face at that might be the sweetest thing I’ve seen all day. “We should get more wood tomorrow,” he says as he kneels at the edge of the mattress and arranges his own sleeping bag. I do the same and also get my pile of blankets in order, because some of us are going to need seventeen layers to get through the night.
“Do we have to chop it?”
“What? No. There’s a huge pile out there,” Gideon says. “It’s right by the shed, you didn’t see it when you were digging out the sled?”
I probably did. Mostly, I was hoping I’d get to watch Gideon chop wood.
“Oh, right,” I say. “I guess it’ll last a while.”
“We just need a few more days,” he says, on his back, staring at the ceiling. “They’re still working on clearing the Parkway, but a road crew should be able to come up and deal with us before long. And if not, the hike out isn’t too bad and once the Parkway is good to go, someone can meet us at the Hogswallow trailhead and get us back into town. I can come back later for the truck if I need to.”
I know I need to go down the mountain and back to every day life, for a shower if nothing else. I’m also excited for light switches, the internet, and using a microwave again. I can’t take infinite time off from my job, even though I’m lucky and the university I’m a grant writer for is on winter break anyway.
But out there is also a mess. I still have to go contend with the fact that I impulsively chained myself to a tree so I could make friends with someone who didn’t even stick around. When I go back, I’m going back to my aunt Lucia’s spare bedroom, which is also currently my home office. After I came down to help her out when she broke her knee six months ago, I didn’t mean to not leave, I just… didn’t leave. I thought I’d have a plan by now, but I don’t.
Not to mention that plenty of people will have plenty of questions about what’s going on with me and Gideon and whether it’s a good idea.
But that’s all out there and right now I’m in here, and in here has the dreamy quality of a snow globe or a town on a Christmas-themed model train set. It feels charmed and untouched and uncomplicated, and there’s an appeal to trading one kind of ease for another.
“I know your parents are worried,” Gideon says, finally turning his head to look over at me. “I could hear Rick asking how old you think the subflooring in here is when you talked last night.”
“He’s positive it’s completely rotted and I’m one heavy step away from falling into an old mine shaft or something. I don’t know why he thinks this cabin is built on top of an old mine,” I add, because Gideon’s frowning and I don’t really want to get into my stepdad’s neuroses right now.
“It’s not,” he says, sounding a little defensive.
“Hopefully,” I say, and he snorts, and then before I can stop myself, I ask: “Have you talked to yours?”
“Only the once,” he says, so he must be talking about four or five days ago when I overheard a conversation that couldn’t have been longer than three minutes, tops. I’d be worried about him, but he seems to be in constant contact with everyone in Sprucevale that’s not his parents: his brother Reid, at least two of his sisters, a group chat that blows up his phone at least once a day until he turns it off, and Forest Service dispatch. Gideon’s been doing a lot of grumbling about how the solar-powered batteries he’s been using aren’t meant for this kind of heavy use.
“It’s improper,” he says, after a bit. He rolls onto his side and looks at me, one arm under his pillow, all warm and rumpled in the firelight.
“What is?” I ask. At this point, there’s a list.
“Sleeping in the same room as a woman I’m not married to,” he says. His voice is a soft, deep rumble. “I might be tempted. People might talk.”
“I don’t think avoiding the bedroom worked to avoid temptation,” I point out, and I can see Gideon’s blush even in the low light. He doesn’t break eye contact, though.
“No,” he says, simply. “Sometimes,” he starts, then stops. Thinks. “Things can get so ingrained in you as wrong that after a while, you forget to think about why it’s wrong and it just is.”
Something pops in the wood stove. I think a log falls. Gideon adjusts his head on the pillow, his eyes never leaving mine. I don’t move and barely breathe for fear he’ll stop talking if I do.
“And even after you know better, even after you’ve learned, that wrong feeling isn’t gone. It fades, but it’s always this—this dread in the back of your mind, and it’ll disappear when you shine a light on it, but the second you look away, it’s back.”
I watch him for a long moment. Gideon’s quiet and lovely in the firelight, and I don’t want to think beyond that. It’s easier, right now, to pretend that there’s nothing complicated about him or about this; that this morning’s family drama is entirely separate from him, gloriously naked and coming in the bathtub with my name on his lips.
It’s dreamlike here, unreal, weightless. It feels like these moments couldn’t possibly have consequences.
“Does this feel wrong?” I ask, voice low, even though I’m not sure I want to know.
Gideon sucks in a long breath.
“Yes,” he says. “No. Not for good reasons.” He pauses. “Feels right, too.”
I don’t know what else to say, on the floor of a cabin, cold outside and warm in here, in these moments that feel like a dream. Everything I think of sounds like an empty platitude, like I’m telling Gideon something he already knows, and it’s not like knowing is the problem.
In the end, I don’t say anything, but I reach out and push his dark hair behind one ear. He catches my wrist and presses a kiss to my palm, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t break my heart a little.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
GIDEON
“So anyway,” Andi says, shaking the bag of trail mix like she’s looking for something specific. I don’t point out that this behavior is against the rules of trail mix. “That’s why it’s the Sunday crossword’s fault that Lucia broke her knee.”