Many things felt surreal from the past week but not a single second felt wrong. Not holding Danica in his arms when she was the smallest he’d ever seen her, not waking up with her the next morning and abruptly going along with her jokes turned into real plans for a real getaway together. The time they spent in New York City was the least wrong thing Scamp had done in his entire life. It wasn’t wrong to shut out the world for the next three days, or to experience things side by side that put them entirely at ease in a peaceful place of their own.
What made Scamp quieter, paying more attention to a distant nagging in his mind was packing his bags that fourth night. Still, Danica’s smart mouth was quick to bring him out of it each time she so much as turned to him and he was grateful. His smile reflected hers each time she aimed it at him throughout their final evening away from everything that served as a hang up to whatever they were to begin with.
And when Scamp found himself in bed at the end of it all, her back pressed to his chest as though she were meant to fit perfectly in the space, he thought he would be able to close his eyes and be done with that far away hum behind his brain. But as his arms braced around her, fingers resting beside hers on the cool sheet, he couldn’t keep away memories of what had chased them to a different continent seeking escape to begin with.
Scamp’s breath danced against the back of Danica’s neck as his palm shifted over the back of hers. “I was worried about you the night before we came here,” his voice was raw and coarse as his fingers slipped between hers, squeezing slightly. And then after a beat he nudged his nose to the shell of her ear, “If it were a choice, we would never go.”
