I look over my shoulder at Cory, still sleeping, one arm reaching toward the space I vacated like his body registered the loss before his mind did.
Better than I've been in a long time.
I type.
Good. He's one of the best men I know. Don't tell him I said that. His ego's already at altitude.
I smile and pocket the phone.
Coffee. The universal language of morning. I start the percolator and while it brews, I sit at the pine table with my laptop and do something I haven't done in years.
I write without a deadline.
Not the article. Not the structured, edited, publication-ready prose that pays my bills and builds my byline. I write about the mountain. About the storm. About a man who sharpens knives by firelight and cooks elk stew like his mother taught him and carries a dead boy's name in the space behind his ribs where other people keep their hope.
I write about what it feels like to stop moving. To be snowed in with someone who sees through your performance and doesn't ask you to put it back on. To discover that the most dangerous territory isn't the avalanche zone or the whiteout or the cliff edge, but the moment someone says "you're mine" and means it with their whole body and you realize you want to be owned like that. Claimed like that. Kept.
The words pour out of me in a way they haven't in years. Raw and unpolished and true.
"You're up early."
I look up. Cory is leaning against the doorframe of the back room, wearing only his pants, his chest bare, his hair mussed from sleep. His eyes go to the flannel shirt I'm wearing and something warm and possessive moves through his expression.
"That's my shirt," he says.
"It is."
"Looks better on you."
"Everything looks better on me."
His mouth does the thing. The almost-smile that has become my favorite expression on any human face. He pushes off the doorframe and walks to the percolator and pours two mugs and brings one to me at the table and the domesticity of it, the easy, wordless knowing of how I take my coffee (black, no sugar, he figured it out on day one), makes something expand in my chest.
He sits across from me and looks at my laptop screen. I angle it away instinctively.
"Article notes?"
"Personal writing."
His eyebrows lift. In three days, I have never once referenced personal writing. He's spent enough time with me to know that my professional work is what I lead with, what I hide behind, what I use to keep the world at a manageable distance.
"Can I read it?" he asks.
"No."
"Okay." No pushback. No curiosity performed as entitlement. Just acceptance, and a sip of coffee, and those ice-blue eyes watching me over the rim with an expression that says he knows exactly what I'm writing about and he's content to wait until I'm ready to share it.
This man. This impossible, patient, infuriating man.
"The storm broke," I say, changing the subject. "Roads should be passable by tomorrow if the plows get up here."
He nods. "Tuck texted at oh four hundred. County's clearing the lower switchbacks today. Access road should be open by late afternoon tomorrow."
Tomorrow. The word lands with a weight it shouldn't have. Tomorrow the road opens. Tomorrow I can leave. Tomorrow I go back to my rental car and my transient life and the next assignment and the next mountain and the next city and the endless forward motion that has been my only survival strategy for seventeen years.
Or I don't.
"I called Cal this morning while you were sleeping," Cory says. "Briefed him on Garrett. Rhea's team has already started the pattern analysis on the emails. Cal's recommendation is a full counter-stalking package, digital footprint audit, email tracing, and a physical security assessment once we know whether this guy is just online or if he's mobile."
