"All day."
"I figured." She sips her cider.
I look at her. She looks back, not at all embarrassed about having asked. Of course she asked. She pays attention to things. I've known that since the first morning on the trail.
"Lara," I say.
"Yeah."
"I'd like you to stay."
She's quiet for a moment. The fire pops and sends a spray of sparks up into the dark. Somewhere behind us, a kid shrieks with excitement and a parent laughs.
"For how long?" she asks.
"As long as you want."
She turns to look at the valley, the dark outline of the ridge above the town, and I watch her face in the firelight. The full curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. The way she goes still when she's thinking something through properly.
"I don't have anything to go back to," she says. "Not urgently. The job is gone. The apartment's month-to-month." She pauses. "I came here to figure out what I actually wanted."
"And?"
She looks at me. "I think I've figured it out."
The fireworks start.
The first full burst going up over the ridge and breaking open above the valley, red and gold, the boom rolling down a second after the light. The crowd around us makes a sound, that collective intake and release. I don't look up. I'm looking at her, at the colours moving across her face — gold, then red, then the brief silver of the next one going up.
She tips her head back and watches the sky, and she's smiling, not at me, just at the fireworks, just at the fact of being here, and I think about the hardware store two weeks ago. Five minutes. An errand. I'd been to that store a hundred times, and I'll go a hundred more, and I almost walked past her standing on that sidewalk.
I reach over and take her hand.
She looks down at our hands and then up at me. The expression on her face is warm and certain and unguarded, the same quality I saw on the riverbank, the same quality she has on the trail at dawn when she doesn't know I'm watching yet.
She smiles and leans into my side, her shoulder against my arm, her hand in mine, and we stand like that while the fireworks go up one after another over the valley. The whole town watches the sky. I watch it too, and for the first time in nine years, I'm glad I came down from the ridge.
seven
Lara
Shawdrives.Iwatchthe treeline, thinking about him walking through that crowd. All those people, Canada Day in full noise and colour, and he came through all of it and found me.I don't come to things like this. I want you to know I came to this.
The cabin appears around the last bend, and he cuts the engine. The valley is visible below, the bonfire still glowing far down in the park. The night is warm and full of cricket sounds and the smell of warm pine and dry grass.
"It's beautiful up here at night," I say.
"Yeah." He looks at the valley, then at me. The lamp from the dash is on his face, and his expression is settled in a way I haven't seen before. No more working things out. He's arrived. "It is."
We go inside, and he opens all the cabin windows.
The night air moves through the cabin and brings the ridge in with it — pine and warm rock and the faint smoke from the valley. He lights the lamp on the worktable instead of theoverhead and the cabin goes amber and close, the memory cards in their jar catching the light, everything quiet and purposeful.
He comes up behind me and puts his hands on my waist. I lean back into him. We look at the valley together — the bonfire small below, the river catching the last light, the sky going deep blue at the edges. Ten seconds, maybe. Then he turns me around and kisses me.
Unlike yesterday, he doesn't stop.
He gets my shirt over my head and steps back to look at me. I let him. His eyes move over my breasts, my stomach, the curve of my hips, and there's nothing complicated in his face. No hesitation. He wants me. All of me. The lamp throws warm light across the room, and I stand in it and don't apologize for a single inch.
