He laughs loud and full, and it does what it always does to me, which is make every other sound in the room irrelevant.
Thursday is the last quiet day before the opening.
Holly declares it a rest day for the preview group and spends it visibly not resting. Justin disappears into the kitchen at dawn and does not emerge until dinner. The other travel writers start heading home. Their jobs are done. They came up for the preview, not the main event. But, Holly invited me for the whole shebang. Perks of being a bestie.
Anthony takes me to the ridge trail he told me about. Not the overnight one, not the January elk migration, just the path, forty minutes up, to show me the shelf.
We hike up in the cold clear morning and he walks slightly behind me on the narrower sections, close enough that I can feel him, and points out the tracks in the snow, a raptor hunting the eastern updraft, and the place where the trail opens and the valley below suddenly appears.
"Oh," I say, when it opens.
"Yeah," he says.
We sit on the rock shelf for an hour with a thermos of coffee and the whole valley spread below us, and at some point, I'm leaning against him with his arm around me and we've stopped talking and the silence is the best kind. It’s not empty, just full of something that doesn't need words.
I keep thinking about Sunday. I haven't said it out loud, but it lives in everything I do. It’s in the way I look at the mountain a beat too long, the way I notice the golden evening light, the way I've been trying to memorize the smell of cold pine andwood smoke and cedar. Trying to memorize everything about this place.
I don't want to leave.
I know what I'm going to do about that. I'm just not ready to say it yet, not up here where everything feels permanent and possible.
"I'm going to miss this view," I say.
"I know." His arm tightens briefly. "It'll keep."
It'll keep.
Like of course you'll be back. Like the view and the ranch and the reindeer and all of it will be here because they belong to this mountain and this mountain isn't going anywhere, and neither is he, and so neither, it turns out, am I.
"I have some things to figure out," I say. "Logistics. The lease on my apartment. What remote work looks like when it's actually remote."
"I know."
"I'm not saying anything is decided."
"I know that too."
"I'm just thinking out loud."
He's quiet for a moment. "There's a cabin on the east side of the ranch property that belongs to me. I’ve occasionally allowed new staff to stay in it while looking for places to live. It's been empty for almost a year. It’s nothing fancy. One bedroom, a full kitchen, beautiful front porch. It has good light and fiber internet was installed last spring because Colt complained about the signal."
I sit very still.
"You're telling me this," I say.
"I'm telling you," he confirms. "About its existence in case you need options."
He didn't ask me to move up here, because he knows it’ll be hard for me to say no. He wants this to be my decision andnot one he makes for me. I don’t have to make it right now, in the cold on a rock shelf. He's just placing the piece on the gameboard, the way he does, and giving me the whole board to look at.
The cabin on the east side with good light and fiber internet. Near the elk calves and the foxes and the fawn who stood up on her own and the reindeer who are earning their names.
Near him.
"Thank you for telling me," I say.
I lean into him and look at the valley and let the thing that's already been decided settle into the place where decisions live. I’m his. I’m his little and he’s my Daddy. That I know. The rest? The logistics? We will figure out.
I've known since the mountain road. Some things just fit.
