Before I can fall, Rip’s strong arms go around me, one beneath my knees, the other behind my back, and I’m swept up before I can even lose my center of gravity. I look up at him with wide eyes. “I slipped.” A soft laugh ripples out of him, as cool and refreshing as running water over timeworn rocks. “I noticed,” he replies, echoing the same conversation we’ve had before. When it was just the two of us standing beneath a blue mourning moon at the edge of an arctic sea.
