He grinned. “What do you do? When you’re not on a girls’ trip getting displaced by plumbing emergencies.”
“I’m an events coordinator. Corporate events, mostly. Galas, conferences, product launches. I plan everything—venue, catering, timelines, vendor management, contingency plans for the contingency plans.” I took a sip of water. “I’m very good at making other people’s events perfect.”
“What about your own events?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you plan everyone else’s big moments. What do you do for yourself?”
I didn’t have an answer. Not a good one. Not one that didn’t make me sound like exactly what I was—a twenty-three-year-old woman who’d poured everything into being useful and organized and indispensable, yet had somehow never gotten around to building a life she was actually living.
“I reorganize lumberjacks’ kitchens, apparently.”
He laughed—a real one, not the half-grin from yesterday. It changed his face entirely.
“You’re the most organized person I’ve ever met,” he said. “And I mean that as a compliment.”
“That’s not usually how people mean it.”
“It is how I mean it. My whole life is improvised. I quit my job because it felt stupid, moved to a mountain because Evan said yes, built a business because we didn’t have a better idea. Everything I’ve ever done right, I did on instinct.” He turned to look at me, and the late-afternoon sun caught his eyes in a way that made my breath hitch. “You’re the opposite of everything I am. And I can’t stop looking at you.”
The words landed in my chest like a stone dropped into still water—heavy, spreading, impossible to ignore. I stared at the creek below us because looking at his face right then felt dangerous.
“I should tell you something,” I said. “Before this goes—wherever it’s going.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve never been with anyone.” I said it to the water, not to him. “Not like that. Not at all. I’ve been so busy planning everyone else’s everything that I just… never got around to it. Which sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud. Like I forgot to schedule it between the catering walkthrough and the venue walkthrough.”
I was deflecting with humor. I knew I was doing it. It was easier than sitting in the silence and letting the vulnerability breathe.
Dash was quiet for a beat. Then his hand covered mine on the warm rock—just rested there, steady and unhurried.
“It’s not ridiculous,” he said. “And it doesn’t change anything for me. If anything, it makes me want to be more careful with you, not less.”
“I don’t need careful. I need?—”
I stopped, because I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. I needed someone who didn’t treat my inexperience like a problem to solve or a fragile thing to handle. I needed someone who just showed up and let it be what it was.
“You need someone who doesn’t overthink it,” he said. “Good news. I’ve never overthought anything in my life.”
I laughed, and it came out shakier than I wanted. His thumb traced a slow line across my knuckles, and the warmth of the boulder beneath us, the sun on my skin, and his hand on mine all merged into a single feeling I couldn’t separate into parts.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said.
Not a question. Not a request for permission. Just a statement of intent, delivered with the same easy certainty he brought to everything—like he’d already made the decision and was giving me a courtesy heads-up.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine, and the creek and the sunlight and the scavenger hunt and every plan I’d ever made went completely quiet.
His hand slid from mine to the back of my neck, tilting my head, deepening the kiss. He tasted like mountain water and warmth, and when I made a small, involuntary sound against his lips—something I’d probably blush about later—he pulled me closer, one arm circling my waist, and kissed me harder.
When we broke apart, I was breathing like I’d hiked another mile uphill. His forehead rested against mine, his hand still warm on the back of my neck.
“For the record,” he murmured, “I don’t overthink things. But I’m thinking about you. A lot. And I want to do this right.”
I looked at this man—sawdust in his hair, sun on his shoulders, sitting on a boulder above a creek in the middle of a mountain he’d made his whole life—and I stopped planning.