Page 69 of Curvy Cabin Fever
“You were the first to make me feel safe,” I confide quietly, the truth surprising even me. “That night, when I didn’t know what I was walking into...you made it okay to stay.”
He studies me for a long moment. The morning light catches the gold flecks in his eyes—such beautiful eyes. “You made it hard to let you go.”
My breath catches. “Then why did you?”
“I didn't,” he responds. “I just...stepped back. You needed the space. The choice, and I wasn’t gonna push you into something you weren’t ready for.”
A memory flashes—Damien’s hand lingering at the small of my back that first morning as I made coffee, the way he’d drawn away when Rhett entered the kitchen. Not retreating, exactly—just giving me room to choose.
He pushes off the tree and steps toward me, close enough that I have to tilt my head back to hold his gaze. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel things for you, Aria. Every second of every day.”
The rawness in his voice strips something bare inside me. “What do you feel?”
“Everything,” he whispers so quietly I almost miss it. “More than I should. More than makes sense after just days of knowing you.”
I look up at him, searching his face. “Then why haven’t you touched me like they have?”
His expression shifts, something like resolve settling in the set of his jaw. “Because you don’t need more people confusing things for you,” he explains, voice firm but gentle. “You need someone who’ll be there for you while you figure all this out.”
The words hit me with unexpected force, bringing a sting to my eyes. Because he’s right—about the chaos inside me, about the way I’ve been swept along in this current of desire and connection without stopping to understand what it all means. “I didn’t know I needed that,” I admit.
A small smile touches his lips, there and gone in an instant. “You don’t always know what you need.”
He shrugs off his coat—a heavy canvas thing lined with fleece—and lays it in the snow, then sinks down and pats the space beside him. “Sit with me for a while.”
So I do.
We sit shoulder to shoulder, backs against the rough bark of the pine, the snow stretching quietly and endlessly around us. His body is warm beside mine, a solid presence that asks for nothing.
I breathe in the scent of winter—clean and sharp—and let my head rest against his shoulder. The weight of everything I’ve been carrying seems to lift, if only for a moment.
“What happens when the roads clear?” I ask, voicing the question that’s been nagging at the edges of my mind.
He considers this, his thumb brushing absently against the back of my hand where it rests between us. “I don't know,” he admits. “But we’ll figure it out together. All of us.”
He makes it sound so simple, and it eases the knot of tension in my stomach.
“They’re good men,” he adds. “Rhett and Morgan. They have different ways of showing it, but they care about you. Same as I do.”
I turn to look at him, studying his face—the straight nose, the firm jaw, the eyes that see too much. “And you’re okay with that? Sharing?”
He meets my gaze steadily. “I’m okay with whatever makesyouhappy. That’s not sharing, Aria. That’s just loving someone the way they need to be loved.”
The word hangs between us, unacknowledged but unmistakable.Did he just say…
“I don’t know what I did to deserve any of you,” I whisper.
He smiles then, transforming his serious expression. “You showed up. That’s all. Just showed up exactly as you are.”
He doesn’t touch me more than that shoulder pressed against mine, and somehow, that means more than anything.
25
DAMIEN
Aria just sits with me.
We don’t say anything—we don’t need to. The silence is comfortable, and I love the feeling of her leaning against my side, her head resting on my shoulder as if there’s nowhere else she’d rather be. I don’t know how long we stay like that—long enough for the morning chill to seep through my shirt, long enough for my pulse to slow and my chest to loosen for the first time in days.
