“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Stop apologizing. It’s not yours to be sorry for.”
“I know. But I’m sorry anyway.”
She looks at the pool. The light moves across the water. A bird calls from somewhere, high and sharp.
“The fog was the best part,” she says, quieter now. “On fall mornings. It would fill the valleys so thick you couldn’t see the next ridge. Then the sun would burn it off, and the hills would come through one at a time, like they were being drawn.” She pauses. “I used to sit on the porch and watch it happen. Every morning. It never got old.”
“And now?”
“Now I’m less of a dreamer. I keep moving. That helps.” She looks at me. “These hills aren’t bad, though.”
“High praise.”
“Don’t push your luck.”
I grin. She gives me one back, the expression surfacing fast and real. It warms something inside me.
The light shifts on the water. A breeze moves through the canopy, scattering leaf shadow across the pool. I can feel the warmth of her arm near mine, and her face is turned toward the water. Her profile against the hills is something I’m going to remember whether I want to or not.
“Willow.”
She turns. We’re close. Closer than I realized. Her eyes are on mine, and for once, there’s no assessment in them. No calculation. Just the woman, present and real, with the canyon walls around us and the spring murmuring and the rest of the world somewhere else entirely.
I lean in. Slowly. Giving her time to pull away, to make a joke, to put the wall back up. She doesn’t. She stays exactly where she is, her breath warm on my mouth, and I close the last inch and kiss her.
It’s nothing like the Railhead. Nothing like the truck. Those were collisions—urgent, graceless, driven by a need that didn’t have time for softness. This is slow. My lips against hers, light, almost a question. She answers by leaning into it, one hand coming up to rest against my chest. Not pulling me closer. Just touching. Feeling the heartbeat under her palm.
I cup the side of her face. Her skin is warm from the sun. She tastes like creek water and the coffee she had this morning, and the kiss stays gentle. No teeth, no urgency, just the slow exploration of a mouth I’ve already had but never taken my time with.
She makes a small sound against my lips. Not a moan. Something quieter. The exhale of a woman who’s been holding her breath and didn’t know it.
Then she pulls back. Not far. An inch. Her hand stays on my chest, and I can feel it trembling, just slightly.
“We should—” she starts.
“Yeah.”
Neither of us finishes the sentence. She drops her hand. Looks away, brow furrowed. Takes a breath that I hear her control, measured and deliberate, the way you breathe when you’re trying to slow your heart down.
I don’t reach for her again. Whatever just happened troubled her. And for some reason I can’t fathom, I don’t want her troubled.
We sit by the pool for a while longer. She asks about the spring. I show her where the water seeps through a crack in the wall, the rock wet and dark and green with moss.
“Touch it,” I say.
She reaches out and puts her fingers in the flow. Her expression changes, the cold hitting her, then the surprise.
“It feels like—”
“Like the rock is alive. Yeah. My grandfather used to say the Hill Country breathes through its springs. That the water is the land’s pulse.”
“Your grandfather was a poet.”
I scoff. “ I already told you about my grandfather. He was a mean son of a bitch who shot at trespassers. But I’ll admit, he had his moments.”
She laughs, the sound echoing off the canyon walls. It does something to my chest that I’m not going to name because naming it makes it real, and real means I’m in deeper trouble than I already know I am.