Page 84 of Hunter

“I haven’t called her back yet, but I will. There’s just one thing…”

It’s too good to be true.I look down at my lap where I’ve balled up the Kleenex. “What?”

“I have nowhere to live in Seattle.”

My head snaps up to find him laughing, his beautiful blue eyes alight and sparkling, his face so young and hopeful and happy, it almost hurts to look at him, but I can’t look away either.

“I love you,” I say, the words tumbling from my lips for the first time as I reach up to cradle his cheeks. “Live with me.”

“Sounds good,” he says, leaning forward to press his lips to mine. “And I love you, too.”

I wind my hands around the back of his neck as his tongue slides into my mouth, gliding against mine. It was over a year ago that we met each other and started falling. How close we came to losing one another. How terrifying that had one piece of our puzzle been cut differently, it wouldn’t have fit together into the picture I see now.

When I draw away from him, I’m breathless and panting and longing for our cozy bed in the yurt behind his almost-finished house.

“So you’ll take the job?” I ask him.

“Yep.” He nods. “We can live at your place in Seattle from October to April, and at my place in Skagway from May toSeptember. I’ll have to come back before you in May, but I’ll be waiting for you when you get here, baby.”

“I’ll do the same,” I promise him, holding his eyes with mine. “On October first,mi vida, I’ll be waiting.”

Chapter 14

Hunter

We move into my new house on August twentieth, but ten days pass in the blink of an eye. Just as it’s really starting to feel like a home, Isabella’s packing her bags to return to Seattle. Even though we have a plan in place—I start my job with Kit on October third—I hate to think of the next four and a half weeks apart.

The night before she flies home, we’re lying in bed, facing each other, our bodies naked and entwined.

“I’ll miss you,” I tell her.

“I’ll miss you, too,” she says, pushing a lock of hair from my forehead. “You need a haircut.”

“I’ll get one over the next few weeks. I’ll be so handsome when I get to Seattle, you won’t recognize me.”

She smiles, her grin warm and lazy.

“I’ll recognize you. You’re mine.”

You’re mine.

Jesus, her words burn through me like a bolt of lightning. My cock, which should be exhausted after two rounds inside of her, twitches.

“Are you going to ship anything down?” she asks. “Or just check everything?”

Over the last few weeks, I’ve become really enamored with talking about the future. I love imagining what our life will look like far beyond the now. I love thinking about us living at her place in Seattle and coming back to mine in the spring. I love imagining us as a married couple. Or as parents with a couple of kids who spend the school year at the academy where their mom is a teacher, and their summers in Skagway, where theirdad is a tour guide. Once you find what you want forever, it’s like you finally have permission to talk about it, to lean into it, to do more than just fantasize about it. Lately, I find reality totally intoxicating.

“Probably just luggage. Clothes, shoes, toiletries. Most of my winter clothes.” I think about the bulkiness of my two winter parkas and the several pairs of giant winter boots I own. I’ll need them in Seattle more than I’ll need them here. “You know? Maybe Iwillship some of it. I’m trying to figure out what stays and what goes. It’s weird that we’ll have two homes. Do we keep duplicates of everything in each place? Or shuttle stuff back and forth?”

“I’m trying to figure out the same,” she says. “Like, shouldn’t I leave most of my summer clothes here?”

“I wish you would,” I say. “But fair warning, I’ll do creepy things to your T-shirts like sleep with them after you go.”

“That’s sweet, not creepy.”

I kiss the tip of her nose, then nuzzle it with mine.

“How are your folks doing with everything?” I ask her. “Getting used to our plan?”

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