Page 12 of Find Me Again

"That does sound interesting. I could impress my cousin's kids with that kind of ammunition."

"Oh yeah, I'm required to offer a new fact every time I call my nieces."

As they smiled at each other now, sharing small, silly stuff, it almost felt like old times—like somehow, miraculously, they found their rhythm again.

Then Ryan turned away, and so did Neil, and the spell was broken.

Staring ahead at the forest in front of them and breathing in the cold, crisp air, Neil wondered what more was there to say.

For over a decade, facing Ryan again was one of the scariest things that could happen to him. Neil had never called it that, even in his own head, but the fear was there, lodged deep inside him, whenever the possibility of reaching out passed through his mind. He would've most likely never talked himself into doing it, and if they bumped into each other somewhere in town, they wouldn't have this—the space with no interruption and no curious eyes or ears.

Now that they were here, though, he couldn't drag himself out, couldn't get into the car and drive away. It felt like if he didn't move, the world wouldn't move, either. It would pause, solely for the two of them.

But it never actually worked like that, did it? There was no stopping the world from turning and them from drifting apart.

Still, Ryan would need to be the one to move first to break them out of… whatever this was.

And in the end, he did. Hefting himself up onto his feet, Ryan rolled his shoulders before curling them in as if the cold was only hitting him now.

It was suddenly hitting Neil, that was for sure.

"I should get going," Ryan said as he met Neil's gaze, and his clear, warm eyes were like a shot of hot drink, heating up Neil's insides with that jolt of burning pain that happened when one was too cold to react well to the first sip.

I've missed you, Neil thought, and the force of it took his breath away for a moment. He'd known, deep down he'd always known, but it was nothing like this—this visceral longing that seemed to stretch indefinitely like the forest below them.

He nodded, cleared his throat, and straightened from where he was leaning against the rental.

"Okay," he muttered, and then, louder, "sure."

Ryan nodded as well, a sharp move that seemed too final for Neil's liking.

"I…" he started again, with no idea what to actually say. "Stay for a while longer"was out of the question. "I've missed you"even more so, since he didn't have the right. Finally, he settled for, "It was good to see you."

Painful but good. Necessary, even, although Neil couldn't say why.

Ryan stilled at his words, half-turned already.

Fuck, maybe Neil had gone too far, after all. He should've stopped while he was ahead.

But then Ryan looked at him again and nodded.

"It was… good to see you, too," he offered slowly. There was a slight pause there, but he still said it, so Neil would take it.

And maybe it wasn't all that they needed to say to each other, or even wanted to say, but it was something. This whole thing was… something.

Neil would have to go over it in his head, take it apart for a play by play and consider all the angles. He did it with the most important games of his career, and he would do it with this. Because he wanted to study it. To re-experience it. And, with anyluck, he would understand it better after some thought.

For now, however, all that was left was watching Ryan drive away.

CHAPTER SIX

Then

The fall was firmly upon them and it was getting too cold to stay up on the hill for long, but they were both unwilling to admit that just yet.

Ryan tucked the blanket tighter under his thigh while trying not to tug it off of Neil, who was sitting next to him at the back of Ryan's truck. They were pressed closely against each other to share the heat, which was doing scientifically impossible things to Ryan's heart, but he tried to ignore it.

He'd learned to ignore a lot of things by now, ever since he'd understood what those weird feelings he'd started to have around Neil meant. Suppressing them wasn't always easy—like right now, when a different kind of heat was making its presence known low in his belly—but Ryan had resigned himself to live with it.

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