“Good,” Sophie said. “Now on to business. Whatever you’re thinking about tomorrow, stop overthinking it.”
“How do you know I’m overthinking?”
“Because you didn’t come to book club last night, you’ve been avoiding Main Street, and Aidan looks like someone stole his favorite socket wrench.”
Despite everything, Dylan felt her mouth twitch. “It’s complicated.”
“Love always is. But Dylan? That man has been half in love with you for years. The treasure hunt just gave him an excuse to do something about it.”
“How can you know that?”
“Because I’ve watched him watch you. The way he lights up when you walk into a room. The way he finds excuses to be wherever you are. The way he’s never seriously dated anyone since you arrived, despite half the valley throwing themselves at him.”
After Sophie hung up, Dylan stood in her restoration shop, surrounded by the future she’d carved from nothing but stubbornness and skill. Tools hung in neat rows like promises she’d made to herself. Project cars waited under white covers like sleeping possibilities.
And for the first time since she’d fled Aidan’s house, Dylan allowed herself to remember what it felt like when he looked at her—not like she was convenient or available or the solution to someone else’s puzzle, but like she was exactly what he’d been hoping to find.
Saturday morning, she’d climb that mountain.
Not for the ring.
Not for the hunt.
But to find out if love was worth the risk of believing in it.
Chapter Eleven
Saturday morning crept across the O’Hara ranch wearing storm clouds like a warning, the mountains invisible behind gray that pressed down with the weight of winter’s first serious threat. Dylan sat in her Charger at the base of the trail that wound up Eagle’s Point, watching dawn struggle through the overcast, her hands wrapped around a thermos of coffee she couldn’t taste past the knot in her throat.
She’d dressed for weather—thermal base layers under fleece-lined pants, her father’s old military surplus jacket over a wool sweater Sophie had insisted she buy last winter, waterproof hiking boots that had seen actual miles. Her knit cap was pulled low over her ears, gloves tucked in her pockets. She looked like someone who understood mountains could kill you with cold as easily as with falling.
She’d almost not come. Had spent the night constructing elaborate excuses—the weather, the restoration shop’s pending inspection, the McLaren that needed one final adjustment. But Sophie’s words had echoed through her sleepless hours—That man has been half in love with you for years.
Headlights cut through the gloom, and Aidan’s truck pulled up beside her. Through the rain-spotted glass, she watched him check his reflection in the mirror. Five years she’d been watching him do that. Five years of cataloging his habits like she was writing a manual on Aidan O’Hara, never realizing she was actually writing a love letter.
He climbed out, dressed in similar layers—the expensive technical gear that spoke of someone who’d grown up with mountains as his backyard. The backpack he shouldered looked serious enough for real weather, and she noticed the ice axe strapped to its side.
“I’m glad you came,” he said when she joined him at the trailhead, and the relief in his voice made something loosen in her chest.
They stood in the gray morning, both aware this was more than just the final clue. This was the choosing—not just the ring or the riddle, but each other, the future, the possibility of permanence Dylan had spent thirteen years avoiding.
“Weather’s turning,” Aidan said, studying the sky with the inherited knowledge of someone whose family had been reading Montana weather for five generations. “We could postpone?—”
“No.” The word came out sharper than intended. “If we don’t do this today, I don’t know if I’ll have the courage again.”
Something shifted in his expression—understanding mixing with determination. “Then we climb.”
The trail began gently enough, winding through forest that held its breath in the storm-heavy air. Their boots found rhythm on the packed earth, the silence between them full but not uncomfortable. Dylan had expected awkwardness after their confrontation, but instead found something else—a sense of inevitability, like they were walking toward something that had been waiting for them all along.
“Tell me about the ring,” she said after they’d been climbing for twenty minutes. “The real one. What makes it worth all this?”
Aidan ducked under a low branch heavy with moisture, holding it aside for her. “Legend says it was blessed by a priest in Galway before the famine. The blessing was specific—that whoever wore it would find love that could survive any storm, any distance, any loss.”
“You believe that?”
“I believe my ancestors believed it. And sometimes that’s enough—believing in the power of belief.”
The trail steepened, forcing conversation to give way to breath. Dylan’s legs burned with the familiar ache of effort, her body remembering other mountains, other climbs, always alone. But now Aidan moved just ahead, his presence constant as gravity, occasionally looking back to check her progress with eyes that held worry and something warmer.
