“I know you wanted an adventure.” His voice is steady, but I can hear the effort underneath it. “But that’s not what this is to me.”
My throat goes dry.
“I want you with me next month. Next year. Ten years from now.” His eyes never leave mine. “I want forever.”
The mountain suddenly feels very quiet. I stare at him, my thoughts exploding in every direction at once.
Forever. Did he really just sayforever?
“Barrett…you’ve known me for less than a week.”
“I know.”
“And you still feel this sure?”
“Yes.”
Emotion presses against my ribs so hard it almost hurts. Part of me wants to tell him he’s moving too fast. Another part of me knows I’ve never doubted the sincerity of a single thing he’s said.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.” He lifts my hand and brushes his lips across my knuckles. “I just needed you to know.”
Three more days pass and we don’t talk about it, but it’s there in everything.
It’s there when I wake up and he’s already made coffee. It’s there when he spends an entire afternoon restringing a fenceline on the edge of the property and I bring him water and hand him tools. It’s there on the day we take the creek trail down to the rope swing, and I go out over the water three times before I let go, and Barrett stands on the bank with his arms crossed and something quiet and satisfied in his face.
Every day pulls me a little further from the argument I’ve been having with myself.
My friends are back home, my job, my routine, my plans that haven’t finished forming yet. I have a life I built and it’s a good life, and feeling something enormous for a man I barely know doesn’t make any sense.
The problem is that every day I spend here makes a little less sense of the life I left behind.
On my fifth morning on the mountain, I wake before sunrise and reach across the bed without opening my eyes. My hand finds nothing but cool sheets. The empty space beside me shouldn’t matter. Barrett is probably outside splitting wood or checking the fence line or making coffee. He’s an early riser. I’ve known that since the first morning I spent here.
But the quiet beside me strips away the last of the noise in my head.
I open my eyes and stare at the place where he should be. Somewhere over the past few days, waking up beside him has stopped feeling new. It just feels…normal. The realization steals my breath.
I don’t just want this trip.
I want this life.
I want to wake up beside him tomorrow morning, and the morning after that, and ten years from now. I want evenings onthe porch, hikes to the creek, and the comfort of knowing exactly where home is every time I open my eyes.
I want to share the rest of my life with him.
The realization arrives without fanfare. It simply settles into place, as solid and immovable as the mountain itself. Every apartment, every job, every road trip, every plan that changed halfway through, all of it suddenly feels less like wandering and more like a path that led me here.
I throw on one of his sweatshirts and step into the hallway, calling his name. The bathroom is empty. The kitchen is empty. I check the porch, then circle the cabin, my pulse climbing faster with every second I don’t find him.
I hurry around the side of the house and glance toward the woodshed. Empty. The workshop door stands open, but there’s no sign of him there either. I step out further into the yard, the cool morning air brushing against my bare legs as I scan the tree line.
“Barrett?” I call.
Only birds answer.
A knot tightens low in my stomach. It’s ridiculous. He’s lived on this mountain his whole life. He’s probably down by the creek or checking one of the trails, completely unaware that I’m working myself into a panic because I woke up without him beside me.
