mother, a raven-haired spitfire, had been crossing through the wildflower forest with her nomadic family when we met. Wandering from their camp on that fateful dawn, she had found me practicing handstands on a fallen tree trunk. I’d been bare-chested and cut a decent seventeen-year-old figure. Which was why the spitfire—eighteen, she boasted—stayed to watch. Then she stayed for more after we fumbled past the introductions. We had challenged one another to a balancing competition on that trunk. By the end of it, I’d lost. She had cheated by hitching up her skirt and feasting her gaze on me so
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