"Stephen.You can't bring a dog on a commercial flight without advance arrangements."
"Clara's husband knows a guy who knows a guy who has a private charter company out of Billings.Logan made a call."He starts the truck.Checks his mirrors.Pulls onto Main Street."Apparently saving the town from boring romantic drama earns you favors."
I stare at him."Logan Creed chartered us a plane."
"Logan Creed told me, and I'm quoting, 'If you let that woman fly commercial to the worst week of her life, I will personally come to your cabin and have a conversation you won't enjoy.'Then he gave me a phone number and told me to call it."
I laugh so hard my ribs ache.
Grizzly Ridge disappears in the rearview mirror as we climb the mountain road toward Billings.The valley spreads out below us, golden and green, cradled by mountains that have held this community together for generations.I can see the roofline of Maggie's Diner.The steeple of the community church.The distant shape of Stephen's property, sixty acres of training fields and kennels and the cabin where I fell in love.
Stephen reaches across the console and takes my hand.
I thread my fingers through his and hold on.
"When we get back," he says, keeping his eyes on the road, "I want to talk about making the collaboration permanent.Not just the training protocol.All of it.You.Me.The dogs.The mountain."
"Are you asking me to move in?"
"I'm asking you to stay."He glances at me.Sea-green eyes, still carrying their shadows, but lighter now.Clearer.The eyes of a man who walked into the water and came out the other side."I'm asking you to build something with me.The K9 program, the book research, whatever you need.I've got sixty acres and a cabin with room for two and a bed that's better with you in it."
"And Scout."
"And Scout.And Duke.And Koda, who I'm keeping, by the way.That dog's not going to Wyoming.He's ours now."
Ours.
I lift his hand to my mouth and press my lips to his knuckles.Scarred, calloused, strong hands that pull people from the places that try to keep them.Hands that held me in a waterfall this morning and shook with the effort of being brave.
"Yes," I say.
His fingers tighten around mine.
"Yes to moving in.Yes to the program.Yes to the mountain and the dogs and you."I look at him across the truck cab, this beautiful, damaged, extraordinary man who came to the mountains to outrun the ocean and found me instead."Yes to everything, Stephen.For as long as you're asking."
"I'm going to keep asking," he says."Every day.Get used to it."
Scout pokes her head between the seats and rests her chin on my shoulder.Duke huffs from his crate.The road climbs higher, and the mountains open up around us, and I hold the hand of the man I love and drive toward the hardest thing I've ever done, knowing I'm not doing it alone.
That's the thing about trust.You can't train it through pressure.You can't build it through force.
You build it by showing up.By being still when everything in you wants to run.By walking into the water and letting someone hold your hand.
He taught me that.
Or maybe I taught him.
Maybe we taught each other.
EPILOGUE
STEPHEN
FOURTEEN MONTHS LATER
My son is six weeks old, and he's already running the house.
Kai Stephen Nelson.Seven pounds four ounces at birth.Currently nine pounds of dark hair and ocean-blue eyes and a set of lungs that could clear a football stadium.He sleeps in three-hour stretches, eats like he's training for a competitive sport, and has Scout wrapped around his tiny finger so completely that the Malinois won't leave a two-foot radius of his bassinet.
