“Probably.” I wrap my hands around my mug so steam fogs my face. “I can drive you down. We’ll radio Jim from the ranger station, let him know we’ll need a tow to get your car in a few days.”
“Sure.” She nods like it’s decided. Then she swallows and adds, too bright, “And then I’ll come back up to finish reorganizing your depressing pantry because I refuse to live in a world where cinnamon expired in 2004.”
My mouth twitches. Hope is a dangerous thing to feel. “Is that right? So tell me, you planning to make a habit of coming back up, Sunshine?”
She tilts her head at me. “Would you hate that?”
“No,” I say, too fast. I stare into the coffee like it holds answers. “I’d—”
I don’t finish.
We eat oatmeal by the fire in the kind of silence that feels like a hand on your shoulder. After, I pull out the toolbox and measure the blown frame, jot down numbers on the back of a grocery list.
Penny trails me, offering tape, holding the end of the measuring line, making faces at my muttered curses when the pencil breaks.
“You know,” she says finally, “I used to think the mountain was something you survived. Like a test. But it’s kind of… a collaborator, isn’t it?” She toes a curl of wood shaving. “It forced us to get creative.”
“It’s an asshole,” I say, deadpan.
She laughs, then sobers. “Edward. When the road opens, and we head down… what happens after that?”
She says it like she’s testing every word for weaknesses. To see if her being here has changed anything.
I set the tape down. “You tell me.”
She chews her lower lip. It’s not fair what that does to me.
“Well, for one… I open the gallery. I find a space, paint the walls white, hang lights that make everything look more important than it feels in my head.” She shrugs. “I pour cheap wine and pretend the people sipping it aren’t there just for the cheese cubes.”
I grunt. “You’ll sell out in a weekend.”
“Only if the glowering grump shows up to add ambience.” She points at me with her pencil again. “Seriously. I want you there.You. Not just your shadow in a corner.”
I hold her stare and feel something inside me try to step backward. “You think I’m leaving this ridge to go stand around in town and play gallery furniture?”
Her eyes spark. “Furniture? No. Enforcer? Maybe. Tender secret weapon who builds frames and hangs shows and pretends not to be brilliant? Definitely.”
“Brilliant,” I echo, like the word is a foreign coin I’m not sure I should spend.
She crosses the room, and bumps my shoulder with hers. “Edward. Look at me.”
I do, but I struggle to hold her gaze because of the way she's looking at me with hope in her eyes.
“I’m serious about this,” she says. “Aboutus. I came up here because I was bored and lost and pretending that counted as ‘finding myself.’ Then I met you, and I wasn’t bored anymore. I was awake. And if I go back down the mountain alone, all the noise down there will try to drown that out.”
Jealousy hits me sideways and stupid.
“You going to get bored again in town and find some other idiot to kiss you in a parking lot?”
She blinks, then her mouth curves in a slow, wicked grin. “Oh.Therehe is. Mr. Possessive. Good morning, mister." She wavesa hand in front of my face. "Took you long enough to crawl your grumpy ass out of bed.”
“Answer the question,” I growl, even though I already hate that I asked it.
“No,” she says softly. “Because I’m not bored anymore. Because you’re not random. You’re the opposite of random.” She taps my sternum with a pointed nail. “You’re the point. Of everything.”
The brittle, rusted bit I’ve carried inside my chest for years snaps. In the space it leaves, there’s only the simple truth.
“Stay,” I say. It comes out like an order, like a plea, like a man trying not to drown. “Don’t just come back up on weekends to stock my pantry. Don’t treat this like a vacation with better scenery for inspiration. Stay here. Live here. With me.”
