She came back to the same river. She didn’t know he was already there waiting.
KYRON
I handle equipment and logistics for Wildwood River Co. Fifteen years of knowing every current, every hazard, every bend this river makes before it makes it. I don’t talk much. I don’t need to.
I’ve watched every one of my partners fall in love this summer. I wasn’t expecting to be next.
Then I saw her on the back deck of the cabin. Dark hair, green eyes, a way of being somewhere without making a production of it. She’s been coming to Wildwood Valley every summer since she was a kid—same cabin, same week, same river.
Third afternoon, she was on the bank with her hand in the honeysuckle, and I stopped paddling.
She has a plan. A year abroad. A fresh start. A life that takes her far from this river and this valley and this man she met four days ago.
I’ve never asked anyone to stay. People leave. I learned that slowly and I learned it well.
But when I take her to the most private bend of a river I’ve spent fifteen years learning and she kisses me like a woman who’s done pretending—that’s not something I let go of.
She’s afraid that staying means she’ll never know what she missed.
She’s wrong. She already found it. She just had to stop leaving long enough to see.
I won’t ask her to stay. But I’ll be on this river when she figures it out.
Because she’s mine. And I don’t lose what I know.
