"I like the flannel," I murmur against her skin.
"You like that you don't have to do laundry," she teases, leaning back against me.
I look over her shoulder at the map on her screen. It's a projection of the herd's migration path, overlaid with proposed locations for the new field station.
"We break ground in May," she says, softer now. "The university approved the budget this morning. Rhys already sent me a vendor list for the lumber. We'll have to helicopter it in."
"I know a pilot," I say. "He owes me a favor."
"Good." She turns in the chair to face me fully, her eyes searching mine. "Because it means I'm staying, Nash. For the summer. For the fall. The grant is a three-year commitment."
"Three years," I repeat.
A month ago, the idea of committing to anything beyond the next winter storm would have made my chest tight. But now, looking at the woman who fought beside me, who stitched me back together and stood her ground against a nightmare, three years doesn't feel like enough.
I should let it lie. I don't. "Say you hadn't gotten the grant," I say. "Say Reynolds pulled it and there was no data, no funding, no three-year anything holding you here. No reason on paper to be standing in my kitchen." The old fear has my voice by the throat, the one that has run my whole life, the one that swears nobody stays unless the map tells them to. "Would you still be here?"
She doesn't rush it. That is how I know the answer is true before she says a word.
"The grant is the reason I'm allowed to be here," she says. "It was never the reason I want to be. If Reynolds had burned the whole thing to the ground, I'd have found another herd, another lab, another excuse, and I'd have aimed every one of them at this exact patch of frozen nowhere. The excuse only ever mattered because it led me to you. It's you, Nash. It's been you since long before I could afford to say so."
"You're stuck with me," she says, a note of vulnerability in her voice. "I'm going to be yours. I might even pave the path."
"Don't push it," I say. "I like the potholes. They keep the tourists out."
Reynolds even sent a formal letter of support for the Nature submission last week, and Aris printed it out and hung it on the shed wall like a diploma. I pretend I haven't read it twice.
I take her hand, pulling her up from the chair. She slides into my arms naturally, fitting against me like she was made for it. I hold her tight, burying my face in her hair, letting the reality of it settle into my bones.
"People in town are still talking," I say quietly. "They say the winter should have broken us. They say this land ruins everyone eventually."
"Let them talk," Aris says, her hand resting over my heart. "We know the truth. The winter didn't break us, Nash. It forged us."
She is right. The cold stripped us down to two people fighting to stay alive, and what stood there when the stripping stopped has soot under her nails and my whole future in her hands.
She pulls back far enough to find my face. "I love you," she says. "I've said it to May over a scone and to Mags over her cinnamon rolls and to half the people on this island who ever put a plate in front of me. I never said it to you. You were the only one it could wreck me to mean it." Her voice holds steady. "So there it is. I love you, Nash Hollister."
The words go in under my ribs and stay. I have carried mine since she braced that hole in the ice and ran her own rescue while I was still crawling toward her, and I have never set them down where she could see. I set them down now.
"I've loved you since the river," I tell her. "I meant to keep it to myself until you were old and gray and too slow to bolt. The wolves moved up my schedule."
She laughs, wet and bright, and I kiss her before the sound is finished.
"Ready to go?" I ask, pulling back to look at her. "The boys are waiting at Yeti's Tavern. If we're late, Reid is going to start telling lies about me."
Aris laughs. "Reid doesn't need us to be late to do that."
The ride into town takes forty minutes. We walk out to the shed, the snow crunching loudly under our boots, and fire up the touring sled.
I straddle the seat, and Aris climbs on behind me. Since there are no cars on the island, this is how life moves on skis and tracks. She wraps her arms around my waist, burying her face in the back of my parka to shield herself from the wind.
We wind our way down from the isolation of Misty Meadows, following the groomed trail along the frozen snake of the river until the trees open up to reveal the lights of Port Promise.
This is the heart of the community. The main commercial dock juts out into the dark water, lined with trawlers and the float planes that bring our mail and supplies. Even at night, I can see the orderliness of it. Rhys's influence.
We park the sled in the designated row outside Yeti's Tavern. It's a parking lot of snow machines, Arctic Cats, Polaris, Ski-Doos, lined up like horses at a saloon.
Inside, the bar is packed. It's the only place in Port Promise that stays open past nine on a Tuesday, and tonight, it seems like the whole town is out. The air is thick with the smell of hops, fried halibut, and damp wool drying by the fire.
