Page 41 of Holly's Grizzly

Who even am I?

I would have never, in my entire life, expected to find something so earthy, so carnal, to be so incredibly hot. I relax into his touch and he growls again, the sound of it echoing all the way through me.

“Good,” Irving says, voice warm with praise. “There’s nothing you ever have to be embarrassed about with me, Holly.”

He crawls over me, big body pressing me back into the nest of blankets on the couch, mouth taking mine in another long, slow kiss.

We spend all day just like that, lounging and fucking and scavenging from the kitchen when we get hungry, then collapsing into each other again.

Like we’re both well-aware of the ticking clock and trying to make the most of this time we have, neither of us holds a single thing back.

And even when we have to take a breather and let our bodies rebound, that closeness doesn’t ebb. It’s there, in the way we stay cuddled up together on the couch and in the softly spoken conversation in the fire’s light.

Irving tells me about the garden he grows in the summer and the plans he has for expanding his woodworking business. I tell him about my frustrations with my current job and my dreams about where my career might take me outside the bounds of corporate life. We talk about our families, our pasts, anything and everything and nothing at all.

We lose ourselves together in his bed as the sun sets over the mountains, and for a moment I can almost convince myself that it might last forever, this little slice of heaven we’ve found.

But I know it’s a dream, a fantasy, and reality comes crashing back in all too soon.

When we wake the next morning, the change in the air is almost palpable.

Even inside the cabin, the slight humidity from the melting snow and the rising temperatures are apparent, a fact that’s only confirmed when I slide out of bed and glance to the window.

All around the cabin, the snow is melting. Sun shines bright through the surrounding trees, and glistens off rivulets of water sliding down the snowbanks the storm left behind.

My stomach clenches.

Soon enough, the roads will be clear and there won’t be any excuse for me to stay.

The logistics of it all are still a mystery given what Irving mentioned about his truck being out of commission, and it still looks like it’ll be a little while before things have melted enough to be passable.

So we don’t talk about it.

We start the day just like we did yesterday, with a round of frenzied fucking in bed followed by a breakfast that includes a whole lot of excuses for touching and kissing. And even though it’s all still so painfully wonderful, I think I can see it in Irving’s eyes, too, the looming specter of what’s coming next, the inevitability of it.

All morning, I think I’m going to get the courage to say something.

But I can’t find the words.

What can I say?

Irving, I don’t know how you’re feeling, but I think I’ve fallen half in love with you, maybe more. I’ve never met anyone like you. I think all I want is to…

What?

Stay here with him? I barely know him, certainly not well enough to move myself in like some kind of love-struck idiot.

Ask him to come to Seattle? I can’t imagine he’d ever want to leave this place, especially when I remember what he told me about not being a fan of living in the city.

Try to make things work long distance? I feel vaguely nauseous just thinking about it, about only having little bits and pieces of him. Stolen weekends and long phone calls, the eventual taper as I get busy or he realizes I’m not worth the headache or we both decide it’s just not working out.

I don’t say anything, because nothing seems like enough to fully explain how I’m feeling, to make this magick between us make sense.

Or maybe it’s because some part of me fears giving voice to that magick is going to ruin everything. Once we start talking about what a future between us would look like, maybe it will all fall apart. Maybe this is all we were supposed to be—a few enchanted days in a forest over Christmas.

Maybe, maybe, maybe…

In the end, all those maybes prove to be too much, so I take the coward’s way out.

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