River’s End

didn’t think. I didn’t think of it.” Her eyes were damp and bleak. “I’m sorry. Don’t go. Please, don’t go. I need air.”
    She made it through the terrace doors, reached out for the banister and held on to it. When she heard him step out behind her, she closed her eyes. Relief, shame, love ran through her in a twisting river.
    “I’m a mess, Noah. I’ve always set goals and marched right toward them. It was the only way I could get through everything. I could put what happened out of my head for long periods of time and just focus on what I was going to do. what I would accomplish. I didn’t make friends. I didn’t put any effort into it. People were just a distraction. No, don’t.” She said it quietly and shifted aside when he brushed a hand over her hair. “I don’t think I can tell you if you’re touching me.”
    “You’re shivering. Come inside and we’ll talk.”
    “I’m better outside. I’m always better outside.” She drew a deep breath. “I took my first lover two weeks after you came to see me at college. I let myself think I was a little in love with him, but I wasn’t. I was in love with you. I fell in love with you when you sat down beside me on the riverbank, near the beaver dam, and you listened to me. It wasn’t a crush.”
    She gathered the courage to turn then, to face him. “I was only twelve, but I fell in love with you. When I saw you again, it was as if everything inside me had just been waiting. Just waiting, Noah. After you left, I closed all that off again. You were right, what you said about my turning my feelings on and off. I could. I did. I went to bed with someone else just to prove it. It was cold, calculated.”
    “I’d hurt you.”
    “Yes. And I made sure I remembered that. I made sure I could pull that out so you couldn’t do it again. Even after all this time, I didn’t want to believe you could understand what I felt. About what happened to my mother, to me, to my family. But I think a part of me always knew you were the only one who really could. The book isn’t just for you.”
    “No. it isn’t.”
    “I don’t know if—I’m not sure—” She broke off again.
    shook her head in frustration. “I wanted to make you go. I wanted to make you mad enough to go because no one’s ever mattered to me the way you do. It terrifies me.”
    “I won’t hurt you again. Liv.”
    “Noah, its not that.” Her eyes glowed against the dark. “It’s the other way around this time. What’s inside of me, what could be in there and could leap out one day and—”
    “Stop it.” The order cut her off like a slap. “You’re not your father any more than I’m mine.”
    “But you know yours. Noah.” Still, for the first time she reached out to touch him. laid a hand on his cheek. “Everything I feel for you ... it fills me up inside. All the places I didn’t know were empty, they’re just full of you.”
    “Christ, Liv.” His voice went rough and thick. “Can’t you see it’s the same for me?”
    “Yes. Yes, I can. I’ve been happier with you than I thought I could be. More with you than I thought I wanted to be. But even with that, I’m afraid of the things that you want. The things you have a right to expect. I don’t know if I can give them to you or how long it’ll take me. But I do know I love you.”
    She remembered the words he’d used to tell her and gave them back to him. “I’m so completely in love with you. Can that be enough for now?”
    He reached up to take the hand that rested on his cheek, to press his lips to the center of her palm like a promise. “That’s exactly enough for now.”
    Later, he dreamed of running through the forest, with the chill damp soaking through the fear sweat on his skin and his heart galloping in wild hoofheats in his chest. Because he couldn’t find her. and the sound of her scream was like a sword slicing through his gut.
    He woke with a jerk to the pale silver of oncoming dawn with the last fierce call of an owl dying in the air. And Olivia curled warm against him.
    The rain was holding off. But it would come before nightfall. Olivia could just smell the testing edge of it in the air as she guided her group into the trees. She’d done a head count of fifteen and had been foolishly grateful to see Celia among them. The fact that she was there had been enough to help Olivia convince Noah to take some time in his quiet room to work.
    She explained the cycle of survival, succession,