“Yeah.” Standing, I offered him a hand up. He took it, but didn’t let go, glancing down at our hands, a solemn expression on his face as though maybe he expected me to drop his hand or for things to get weird again. So, I squeezed his fingers, lacing our hands together, trying to tell him without words that this thing between us wasn’t over yet. I couldn’t guarantee it wouldn’t get weird, but I wasn’t going to ghost him either. I kept holding on as we made our way back to the main path.
His hand felt solid in mine. Real. Electric like his touch, but also grounding. I’d never really stopped to appreciate how awesome holding hands was. It was a different sort of closeness, a level of sweetness I wasn’t sure I’d ever reached before.
“We’ll stop again.” He sounded as regretful to leave this place as I was.
“Plenty of other overlooks. And besides, I’ve got a plan if we can make Utah before stopping for the night.”
“Why does you with a plan worry me?” He gave a nervous laugh as we approached the car, still not dropping my hand.
“Because you know it’s going to be awesome.” I beamed at him, promise sizzling between us. “I’m going to show you stars. I promised, remember?”
There was so, so much I wanted to show him. Keeping that promise seemed like the most important thing in my life, as if I was thawing from a long winter where my only focus had been survival to arrive at a summer where he was the sun, and basking in his warmth the best thing ever. I wasn’t going to take this gift of time together for granted.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Alden
Colorado was forever going to be synonymous with kisses in my head. We stopped in Vail, with all the ritzy ski-themed businesses, for pricey gas and a few sneaky kisses parked behind some towering trees. Glenwood Springs apparently had a canyon and a pretty view of where the Colorado and Roaring Fork Rivers met, but I’d been more focused on fast kisses on a bench overlooking the meeting of two bridges. And that’s exactly what it felt like inside me—new bridges being discovered that led to the most unlikely of destinations. Two strong bodies, each an independent force, meeting in the middle, some sort of emotional physics at work.
An overlook near Rifle led to some great pictures for Professor Tuttle of the river and the mountains and some stolen kisses in the car as “just one more” ended up being long moments of bliss. I had no idea what all of this meant, only that I loved it. I’d waited my whole life for kisses like these, and I wasn’t about to ruin it by overthinking it the way I always did. Conrad liked me, improbable as that was, and he wanted to kiss me. Repeatedly. That had to be enough for my analytical mind, which kept wanting to figure out the trajectory of where we went from here. But I’d spent a lot of years with that brain standing between me and fun, so I tried hard to enjoy this instead, saving up memories that I’d be able to take out later to remember back to these perfect moments.
The light was starting to shift as we reached Grand Junction, where Conrad had the brilliant idea of grabbing sandwiches and drinks from a little shop on the business loop and then taking the food and the money we saved to nearby Colorado National Monument. We watched the sun start to set over the brilliant red rocks with our impromptu dinner picnic, gorgeous shades of pinks and purples I’d never seen before, the sky hanging like silk curtains over the giant rock formations and scrubby vegetation in the valley below.
“Do we need to start thinking about where we’re stopping for the night?” I asked as he leaned against me. We were using a rock as a table and a blanket from the car as seating. And apparently my new job was as a backrest for Conrad. Not that I was complaining. We’d managed to find a quasi-private spot, mainly Conrad’s doing as he seemed to have a sixth sense for good spots to be alone. But alone was something of a mirage since the amount of traffic we’d been battling said that the rest of humanity wasn’t that far off. “With all the summer tourists around here, it might be harder to get a room than back in the Midwest.”
“Already on it. I made good use of my time with your phone while you were driving.” Conrad grinned like my dog, Emma, when she actually managed to perform one of her tricks for a treat. “Arches is one of the best places in the country to see the stars, apparently. And I used one of those last-minute-deal sites to nab a teeny cabin at one of those motel places that have a lot of separate cabins, all in a row.”