Chapter 15

Chapter Fifteen

River

I SLEEP MORE DEEPLY than I have throughout the retreat. The moment my eyes close, the world vanishes, and it doesn’t return until Clark gasps and sits up out of my arms.

I rub blearily at my eyes, scrubbing the sleep from them to try to make sense of why he’s sitting on the edge of the bed instead of lying here with me. Light creeps into the cabin from the window on the far wall, but it’s a sedate and subdued glow, the very earliest rays of the sunrise. It can’t be six a.m., yet Clark is flying around the room gathering up his clothing.

I force myself from the bed. He’s already gotten his pants back on by the time I grab him by the shoulders.

“Hey,” I say, “calm down. What’s wrong?”

I might be hazy with sleep, but Clark is clear-eyed. Panic shines in his gaze.

“It’s morning,” he says.

“Yes. Barely.”

“I’m still here. Don’t you understand?”

I really don’t. He agreed that he wanted to stay here last night. What’s the issue? It’s not like someone is going to kick down the door and barge in, and even if they did, it’s the last day of the retreat. What are they going to do about this?

“Clark, it’s alright,” I say, hoping my voice is soothing. It’s a struggle. I can see how badly he wants to flee, can feel it in the tension of his bunched up shoulders. All that work we did vanishes as he tenses his body, locking himself up as tight as vault.

“It’s not alright. God, what was I thinking?”

He runs a hand over his short hair. I take that hand, then his other one, squeezing them in mine and trying to interrupt his frantic flight. No one should wake up this frenzied after a night like the one we had.

“Clark,” I say, “I understand that you’re nervous, but there’s no need. We’re okay. No one is going to come in here.”

“But the retreat,” he says. “People will start waking up soon. My roommate… Oh God, Evan never saw me come back last night. He knows I must have been somewhere else. He’ll tell Megan and…”

“And what, Clark? What? They’ll know you’re an adult with adult desires?”

“What if they guess that it’s you?”

That stings enough that I flinch. “Would that be so bad?”

“No, I mean, not for the reason you’re thinking.” He huffs, exasperated with himself. “It’s just because you’re one of the instructors. It’s inappropriate. If they find out, it could create a huge mess for both of us.”

Mostly for me, but I don’t bother pointing that out. I’m not the one panicking. “It’s alright. I promise. No one is getting fired or found out.” A dire thought strikes me. “Are you … not out at work?”

He shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t hide it, but I also don’t talk about my personal life. I just … it’s none of their business if I’m gay or not.”

No one knows, I realize. How could they? Clark absolutely passes for straight, and if he’s hiding his whole life from his co-workers, they’d have no reason to think otherwise.

“Would it embarrass you if they knew about your sexuality?” I dare to ask.

His brows furrow as though he never considered this. “No. I mean, maybe a little. I don’t know. I just don’t think it’s appropriate for my co-workers to know that kind of stuff about me. It’s none of their concern.”

I’m watching his aura darken before my very eyes. There was a brightness to him last night, like a clear patch of blue sky, but the clouds roll in as he stumbles through my questions, and this time, I have no idea how to help him.

“I need to go, River,” he says. “I’m so sorry, but the sooner I get back, the less damage this will cause. Maybe they’ll think I left the retreat entirely or got a hotel for the night or something. I don’t know. I’ll think of something, but they can’t know it’s you. It’s too dangerous. You could get fired, and the retreat could, I don’t know, contact my boss or something. I’m breaking the rules just as much as you are, and if my whole group caught shit for it, it would go right up the chain to Hannah. Do you understand? I don’t need my boss interrogating my sexuality.”

I do understand, even if I don’t entirely share his level of concern. Reluctantly, I release his hands and let him flit around the room to gather the rest of his clothes. I throw on my pants while he flies about, but settle on the edge of the bed shirtless, simply watching and listening as he rummages around. He hurries into the bathroom once he’s dressed, and I listen to the water running. He looks perfect, he always looks perfect, but I’m sure that’s not enough to convince him that whatever he sees in the mirror isn’t irreparably flawed.

He emerges looking no different than he did the moment he arrived at my cabin last night, aside from that cloud hanging over him. It’s a storm now, huge and roiling, shadowing him, hiding his beautiful face from me as it casts a pall over his features.

He goes to the door and pulls on his shoes, and that’s when I finally yank myself out of my moping stupor. I catch him before he can fly out the door, snatching his wrist like I did on the trail a few days ago. A lifetime ago. This time, he doesn’t go as still and pliant as he did before, but he pauses in his frenzy nevertheless.

“Can I see you again?” I say.

He scowls. His throat bobs. “The retreat is basically over,” he says.

My heart crumbles, but I push regardless. “Outside of the retreat.”

“But…”

I can all but hear him churning through the implications. Seeing me outside of the retreat means seeing me in real life. It means treating this like it’s real. I’m sure he’s been telling himself it’s a fling, a momentary madness, but it’s never been that way for me. Since the second he walked into my yoga class, I’ve been drawn to him, and learning more about him has only sharpened my hunger to unravel him, to explore him, to know him as deeply and intimately as I can. I’m not done with him. He’s already real to me, but I don’t know if I’ll ever be real to him.

“River,” he says, an apology already in his voice, “you … you’re amazing, but you’re so young. I have a job, a life. I’m in my thirties. There’s no reason you should hang out with someone like me outside of this.”

“There’s plenty of reasons,” I say. “Does it really seem like the age gap bothers me?”

“Well, no, but…”

“Then what’s the problem? Aren’t we adults? Why am I not allowed to want you?”

He looks up at me, throat working again. I know it’s more than our ages. It’s so much more. He likes when I take charge. He likes letting go and putting himself in my hands, no matter how much younger than him I am. That stuff disappears when we’re together. Our ages are an excuse, a wall he can throw up in order to hide from what he wants.

“I just don’t know if this is going to work outside of here,” Clark says.

I take a chance, tugging on his wrist to draw him closer. He comes, stepping near so I can use my free hand to stroke my thumb along his stubbled cheek.

“Why don’t you at least give it a chance?” I say. “If we find out it doesn’t work, so be it, but to walk away without giving this a shot would be a horrible waste, and I think you know it. I’m sure you know it.”

He clenches his teeth, but his dark eyes warm as he gazes into mine. After several long beats, he exhales a sigh and his shoulders slouch.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay, fine. A chance. But you can’t blame me when you wake up one day and wonder why you’re hanging out with an old man instead of someone young and hot.”

I can’t stop the grin that breaks across my face. “You’re not old, and you are hot, so I don’t think that’s likely, but noted. You will not be blamed.”

A hint of a smile tugs at his mouth, but he looks down and suppresses it. “Do you have your phone?”

I scramble to retrieve it, and we exchange numbers there in the doorway. Then I toss the device onto the bed so I can cup his face and kiss him hard. I can’t help it. He hasn’t walked away yet and an ache of loss already throbs inside me with every heartbeat. I savor his lips, savor the way he relents against me, tension melting out of him.

He steps back, forcing us apart. I have his phone number, I remind myself, but that knowledge doesn’t entirely tamp down the fear that boils inside me when he reaches for the door.

“I’ll see you again,” I say.

“Sure,” he says. “If you want to. We can talk about it when this is over.”

I never want it to be over. I never want it to end. I want to stay in this cabin with him for the rest of my life, doing yoga, wandering the hiking trails, watching the stars appear at night and reflect off the still surface of the lake. But I don’t say any of that, afraid it will only drive him away from me. If I want to have any hope of seeing him again, I have to give him space. It’s the only way he’ll gather the courage to do what he really wants.

That also means believing I’m worthy of him, that my family’s cruel words about me aren’t true.

I open the door for him. Clark steps outside, then glances over his shoulder, mouth opening as though he wants to say something. The words never come. He shakes his head at himself, smiles ruefully and heads down the steps leading off my porch.

I stand in my doorway and watch him go, not caring if he can tell. He walks stiffly and swiftly past the cluster of cabins like my own, glancing at the shuttered windows as though he’s afraid someone will burst out any moment and accuse him of all the things he fears. Meanwhile, I stand shirtless and barefoot in my open doorway, not caring who might see. Losing a job is nothing compared to losing him.

As the trees swallow him up, closing around him like guards around some distant, untouchable prince from a fairy tale, I fear I may already have lost him. He doesn’t look back, doesn’t glance one last time over his shoulder. He simply goes, his shoulders tense and back more rigid with every step.

I think I reached him in this past week. I saw the change in him, even if that change appeared in only brief, brilliant glimpses. But when he’s gone and I’m back in my cabin alone, I can’t help wondering if it was too little too late, if Clark is so set in the life he’s built for himself that he doesn’t know how to make space for me. That I’m not worthy of that space because I’m just a dumb kid paying the bills with yoga instead of a real job like his.

I look down at the phone number I programmed into my address book. It’s just digits, but it’s the last firm tether I have to him. Somehow, I resist texting him right away and drag myself through a shower instead, but the final full day of the retreat proves the most difficult one yet. Only the knowledge of that phone number stored in my address book gives me the strength to smile and lead my classes and think of anything other than whether he’s already beyond my grasp.