"Unpack it. For real this time. And leave it in the closet."
Smiling against his skin, I press a kiss to his sternum. "First thing in the morning."
"Good." A pause. "And Naomi?"
"Hmm?"
"Gerald is a terrible name for a bull."
"Gerald is a distinguished name for a bull."
His chest shakes with laughter. The cabin settles around us, warm, and alive in contrast to the still mountains outside under a sky full of stars.
Down the hall, my suitcase sits packed. Ready to go.
Tomorrow, for the first time in two years, I'm going to unpack it. All the way. Every drawer. Every shelf. And then I'm going to shove it so deep in the back of that closet it never sees daylight again.
Because I'm done running.
EPILOGUE
SULLIVAN
SIX MONTHS LATER
The ring is in my sock drawer, which is a terrible hiding place, but Naomi doesn't go in there because she says my sock organization is "beyond help" and she "refuses to be traumatized by it."
Fair enough. Gives me a safe spot for a velvet box.
December in Crimson Hollow means the mountains go white, the town strings lights across Main Street, and Sage Harris at Bean & Bloom switches to her holiday menu. Peppermint lattes. Gingerbread scones. Some kind of Jamaican rum cake that Naomi has been trying to reverse-engineer for three weeks using Gran's kitchen. The cabin smells like nutmeg and burned sugar, which means the latest attempt didn't go well but she'll try again tomorrow because Naomi Jacobs doesn't quit on a recipe.
She doesn't quit on anything. That's been the lesson of the last six months.
August, she started working at Bean & Bloom. Part-time at first, helping Sage with the morning rush because Sage was short-staffed and Naomi had restaurant experience. Within a month, she'd reorganized the supply closet, streamlined the ordering system, and introduced a rotating dinner special on Fridays that doubled the evening foot traffic. Sage offered her assistant manager by September. Naomi cried in the truck on the way home, then made sweet potato pie to celebrate, then cried again because she said she hadn't had a job with her real name on the paycheck in over a year.
Her real name. Naomi Jacobs. Not the name she used in Saskatoon, or the one she used in Thunder Bay. Her actual name, on a paycheque, in a town that knows her face and says hello when she walks down Main Street.
October, Matt found her.
Not in person. By phone. He called the landline at the cabin, which I didn't even know still worked because nobody's used it since Gran stopped calling the butcher in town to argue about the price of ground beef. The phone rang at seven in the morning. Naomi answered because she was closest. I was in the barn with Gerald, who'd gotten his horns stuck in the fence again because Gerald is a menace.
By the time I came inside, she was sitting at the kitchen table with the phone in her lap. Face blank. Hands steady. That controlled calm I recognized from the night she told me about him.
"He called."
Two words. My blood went cold.
"What did he say?"
"Nothing useful. Same things he always says. That I belong to him. That I'll come back eventually." Her jaw tightened. "Then he said he knows I'm in British Columbia."
Sitting down across from her, I took her hands. Cold. Steady. Mine.
"What do you want to do?"
"I want to change this phone number. Then I want to call Silas McCrae and ask if he knows a good lawyer. Then I want to eat breakfast, go to work, come home, and live my life on this mountain with you."
So that's what we did.
