Page 95 of Curvy Cabin Fever
I shake my head.
Morgan lifts a hand and presses it over my heart. “It means you love me.”
My breath catches.
“It doesn’t have to be labeled,” he says. “You don’t have to come out to anyone. You don’t have to be anything. But if you love me, Rhett, stop acting like you don’t.”
I stare at the face I’ve known since we were kids. The scar on his collarbone from when we were twelve, when he fell out of the tree in his backyard. The warmth in his eyes that’s never wavered, not once in twenty years.
“I do,” I whisper. “I do love you.”
He exhales like he’s been holding his breath for years. “Then come here.”
He pulls me into his arms, and I let him.
Our foreheads press together, and his thumb brushes the back of my neck like I might break.
I’ve never felt this kind of peace in my life. “When did you know?” I ask after a while, my voice barely audible above the distant dripping of melting snow.
Morgan doesn’t pretend to misunderstand. “Sophomore year of high school. That road trip to the lake. You were driving, windows down, singing along to that Pearl Jam album. You looked over at me and smiled, and it hit me all at once.”
“That was a long time ago.”
He nods against my forehead. “Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?”
His hands tighten slightly on my waist. “You were dating Katie. Then you were with Melissa. Then there was college,and your dad’s expectations, and your whole five-year plan that didn’t have room for...complications.”
“You werenevera complication,” I say.
He pulls back just enough to look me in the eye. “Wasn’t I?”
I don’t answer because I can’t.
Because he’s right.
He would have been. The son my father never wanted, with his health degree and his easy laugh and his complete disregard for convention—he would have derailed everything I thought I was supposed to be.
And now here we are. Both pushing forty, changed by time and experience. Both standing in the snow outside a cabin in the middle of nowhere, finally facing what’s been between us all along.
“What about Aria?” I ask.
Morgan smiles, warm and genuine. “What about her?”
“This changes things.”
“Does it?” He shakes his head. “I love her, Rhett. That hasn’t changed. And so do you.”
“I do,” I admit. It’s easier to say now, after the first confession broke the dam.
“So we make room,” he explains, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “We find a way to make space for everything we feel. For her, for each other. For all of it.”
“Is that even possible?”
His smile turns wry. “You’re the one who’s always told me anything’s possible with enough planning and the right approach.”
Despite everything, I laugh. “I doubt I was talking about this.”
