I'd expected it to feel like an embarrassing confession. It didn't.
Hayes looked at the river while I talked, and when I finished, he didn't make it strange. He didn't rush to fill the silence with reassurances, didn't turn it into a question, didn't offer me the kind of careful pity that was really just discomfort wearing a sympathetic face.
He just said, "He didn't deserve to be the first."
Simple as that.
Something moved through me at those words—warm and unsteady, landing somewhere below my sternum and staying there. There was no pity in his voice. It wasn't even kindness, exactly. It was just certainty, the same quiet certainty he seemed to bring to everything, and my body responded to it before I'd finished processing what he'd said. I looked at the tree line and breathed and waited for it to settle, and it did, mostly, except for a low hum of awareness that hadn't been there before.
"I'm not going anywhere," Hayes said. "I want you to know that. I've got this cabin for the rest of the week and nowhere I have to be, and you can have as much time here as you need."
"You don't know me."
"No," he agreed.
"That doesn't bother you?"
He looked at me then, a long, level look, the kind that didn't ask permission and didn't apologize for itself.
"Not even a little," he said.
The river ran below us and the birds were in the trees and the morning was warm on my face. I understood all at once that I had arrived somewhere. Not the place Dane had sent me. Not the place I'd thought I was heading when I got in that car last night. Somewhere else entirely—somewhere I hadn't known to aim for.
I looked at Hayes. He was already looking at me.
I'd spent two years waiting to feel certain about something.
The thought landed and held, and I knew—cleanly, without the usual static—exactly what I wanted to do. Not because I had to. Not because he was there and I was broken and it was convenient. Because I was standing on a porch in the mountains in the early morning light and I was choosing.
I set my coffee mug on the porch railing. Then I closed the distance between us and kissed him.
4
HAYES
The kiss lingered, slow and unhurried, like the mountain morning itself.
When Pandora finally pulled back, her eyes were wide and a little dazed, lips parted. My blood was already running hotter than it had any right to this early.
I didn't speak at first. I just looked at her—bare feet on the weathered boards, my flannel shirt hanging loose on her frame, the hem brushing the tops of her thighs. She was breathing a little faster now, and I could see the faint flush creeping up her neck.
"Hayes," she whispered, like she was testing the sound of my name in this new context.
I took her hand, thumb brushing over her knuckles. "You sure about this?"
She nodded, quick and certain. "I'm sure."
We stayed right there on the front porch, the world narrowed down to the two of us and the quiet morning air. The river murmured somewhere below. It felt far away.
I stepped closer, backing her gently toward the railing without crowding her. My voice came out low.
"I need you to tell me if anything feels wrong. At any point. Promise me."
"I promise."
This was her first time. I wasn't going to rush it. Not with her. Not with this.
I brushed a strand of hair from her cheek. "You on anything?"