“So you were as self-destructive as you could think to be without compromising your relationship with your daughter.”
“Just my relationship with myself.”
“That’s fair.”
“I didn’t keep that up. There were a few years there where I didn’t really… I lost interest. It wasn’t doing it for me anymore.”
“When was that?”
“After the bonfire. Until Oahu.”
“Logan…”
“I’m sorry. For the way you’re tangled up in this. In my stuff.”
“Don’t apologize to me. You’ve been tangled up in all of this. It isn’t particularly fair to you. You have enough…baggage and pain in your life without being in whatever this is with me.”
“You’re a good part of my life,” he said.
“Okay. Well, then you need to accept that you’re a good part of mine. Don’t apologize to me. Not for anything. Definitely not for camping. Most especially not for sharing you.”
He leaned over and kissed her, while driving, and the thrill of it buoyed her all the way to Glacier.
The campsite that he chose for them was near the water, nestled into the trees, and it provided a fair amount of seclusion in spite of the fact that the park was a fairly popular destination. The bright red car, all shiny and bright against the rugged landscape, made her smile, as did the way Logan gamely set up the entire camp himself.
“As the resident camping expert,” he said.
He got out a lawn chair for her and handed her a soda can, encouraging her to recline while he put up the tent and unloaded all of the food.
“We will keep it up in a bear bag,” he said.
“All right,” she said, looking around. “There are grizzly bears here, aren’t there?”
“Yes,” he said. “There are.”
“That’s unnerving.”
“Don’t be unnerved. You’re safe.”
She trusted him. It was that easy.
He got a fire going and put the Dutch oven over the flame, announcing that he was making camp chili for them.
He looked up at her, the firelight spilling over his face.
It was the strangest thing. Because it didn’t happen when he was telling her about his wife, or his wounds. It didn’t happen when they were kissing.
It didn’t happen when they were having sex.
It didn’t happen when he was saying something particularly insightful or encouraging to her, which he often had.
It was just right then. Realizing that right now she would rather be here, camping with him, out here in the wilderness prepared to sleep in a place with grizzly bears, than anywhere else in the world.
She had fallen in love with him.
She didn’t know if it had happened in the last three months, three years. She just knew that she had.
And she didn’t know what it meant. Or what the right thing to do with that was.
