Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99399 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 497(@200wpm)___ 398(@250wpm)___ 331(@300wpm)
It was obvious he’d decided to call my bluff, to give me the kiss I’d wanted maybe as some kind of proof it wasn’t worth the drama.
But it was. Holy fuck, it was. The kiss was everything, like casually knocking over a domino without realizing there were thousands stacked behind it.
He stumbled even closer, his thigh pushing between mine until I felt his hardening cock move against my hip.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. Trace Bishop was hard for me. Within moments, I was hard enough to want to grind against him, squeeze his ass to pull him closer so I could feel every part of him.
I didn’t dare pull my hands away from his head and face for fear he’d wake up, realize what we were doing, and change his mind.
Everything inside me had tuned to him at once—all my discordant notes snapping suddenly into a perfect melody.
The kiss shifted, lost its jagged edges, settled into something deeper and truer. Like a song finding its key at last. I felt it all the way down to my bones, that quiet certainty you get when the harmony finally clicks, and you know—this is it. This is the sound you’ve been chasing.
I’d written a thousand versions of this moment, dressed it up in metaphors and half-truths and bridges that never did it justice. But Trace’s mouth on mine stripped all of that away. No lyrics. No clever turns. Just the final, ringing note—held, sustained…
And suddenly over.
Trace pulled back with a gasp, eyes wide and flicking frantically between mine. “No. No! Fuck, Wolfe. Fuck! This can’t happen.”
I blinked at him. Cock still hard and aching. Lips still wet from his kiss, tingling from his stubble. The taste of him fresh on my tongue.
“But… you kissed me.” I sounded confused because wasn’t this… this cataclysmic reaction… proof we were meant to be together?
“Because I thought I’d help you get it out of your system!” His fingers went into his hair and tugged. “This isn’t happening. This. Is. Not. Happening. It was a mistake, Wolfe. And it can’t happen again. Do you understand?”
“No. Why can’t it?” My brain spun with words I wanted to pepper at him. What words would convince him of the rightness of this? “Tell me you kissed that man earlier with any fraction of what this kiss just was!”
I took a step toward him, and he stepped back, bumping noisily against the console table and rattling the little dish with his keys and sunglasses in it.
He held up his hands, his eyes pleading. And then, like a heavy theater curtain dropping all at once, his entire face shuttered. “I need you to leave.”
Panic squeezed my chest. “You can’t mean that. Not after—”
He held up a hand to stop me from mentioning the kiss again. “There is nothing for you here, Wolfe. Please go. I’m… I’m sorry. For leading you on like that. It wasn’t my intention.”
His voice was steady, sure, the bass jangling uncomfortably now like someone had dropped the damned instrument on the floor and then kicked it in front of an oncoming train.
Trace’s rejection was a familiar through line, though. And I was used to letting it lead me away. It didn’t matter what I wanted. He would have to want it, too. And he didn’t.
Once again, I was alone.
“Yeah,” I said hollowly. “Yeah.”
I didn’t have any other words. Me, the songwriter who’d just won a fucking Grammy, couldn’t have put this feeling into words if I’d tried.
Heartbreak songs were a joke. None of them came close to what this felt like in real life.
“Yeah,” I said again, trying to lift the word up and make it shallow and fine. Always fine. “Yeah.”
Trace’s forehead crinkled. “Wolfe. You don’t want this,” he said, like it might become fact if he repeated it.
But I could have told him, it doesn’t matter how many times you sing the same song; that doesn’t make it real.
I nodded and tried to smile, to shrug, to pull on that old “I’m fine” coat again.
Because I was okay. This was my normal, after all. Being rejected by Trace Bishop was comfortable and reliable. Part of my identity.
As I opened the door and stepped out into the frigid Montana night, the coat settled around me almost comfortably.
Though the damned thing never did keep me warm.
4
TRACE, EIGHT WEEKS LATER
Coming off a winter training session in the backcountry was both brutal and a relief. Brutal because it was hard returning to a million missed emails and messages, piled-up SERA admin work, and my usual routine. A relief because I’d been off-grid in Yellowstone National Park for six out of the past eight weeks, and I could finally get warm and catch up on sleep.
The most recent search and rescue cohort had been amazing. We’d even worked a real SaR job on a missing snowmobiler, which had taken the place of our checkout drills and allowed every student to leave the program with real-life, hands-on experience.