Page 20 of Ensnared By the Mountain Man

She moves. Two steps, three—and then her hands are on my face and she’s pulling me down to her and I can feel her breath on my lips. She’s shaking—or I’m shaking—or we both are.

“I see you,” she says. Quiet. Steady. The same words from before, but different now because I’m actually hearing them instead of trying to survive them. “Not the firefighter. Not the guy who made a bad call four years ago. You. The man who eats a blueberry muffin at the station every morning and thinks I don’t notice. The man who put a flannel around a stranger’s shoulders on a dark trail and walked her down a mountain with his arm around her waist like she was the only thing that mattered. The man who said please to me at a bakery counter because he didn’t know how else to say he cared.”

My hands find her waist. My fingers grip the fabric of her jacket and hold on because letting go isn’t something I know how to do anymore. Not with her. Not after this.

“I’m going to fail you,” I say. “Not the way I failed Chaz. Not a fire, not a call. Small ways. Stupid ways. I’ll say the wrong thing or I won’t say enough or I’ll go quiet when you need me to talk because that’s what I do. I go quiet.”

“I know,” she says. “I fell in love with you when you were quiet. I can handle the quiet.”

Something in me gives way. I pull her into me. Her arms go around my neck, her face pressed against my chest, and I bury mine in her hair and breathe her in. The cabin is small and warm. Three-day-old banana bread, cocoa powder, vanilla. Her.

“Stay,” I say. The same word from the other night, but it means more now. It means tomorrow and next week and the morning after that. It means I’m done running.

“I already told you I would,” she says into my chest.

“I mean stay. For real. Not tonight, not this week. Stay.”

She pulls back and looks up at me. Her eyes are full, her cheeks flushed, her mouth curved in a way I’ve never seen her give anyone else. It’s mine. Only mine.

“Was that a question?” she asks.

“Yeah. Was that a yes?”

“It’s been a yes since you said my name on a mountain trail and I turned around and you were there.”

I kiss her. Not hard, not desperate. Slow and deep and certain—the kind of kiss that says I’m not going anywhere. Her hands slide into my hair and my arms tighten around her waist while the afternoon light pours through the window. I think about Copper Peak and Bend and California and all the places I ran to because I thought disappearing was the same thing as being safe.

It’s not. It never was. Safe is this. A woman in my kitchen who sees me and stays. A half-second of fingers on a paper bag that turned into the rest of my life.

I’m done disappearing.

EPILOGUE

MORGAN: 5 YEARS LATER

The firefighter helmet is too big for his head.

It has been since Elias brought it home six months ago—a miniature version of his own that he carried through the door with an expression I’d never seen on his face before. Pride and tenderness and something a little sheepish, like he wasn’t sure if buying your three-year-old a firefighter helmet was the kind of thing that made you a good dad or a ridiculous one.

It makes him a good dad. The best I’ve ever seen.

Oliver wears the helmet everywhere. He’s wearing it right now, standing on a kitchen chair in his pajamas and his little yellow rain boots that he calls his fire boots, eating banana bread I made last night from the same recipe I’ve been making in this kitchen for five years. The cabinets that used to hold two mugs and a box of peppermint tea are full now. Mixing bowls, baking sheets, three kinds of sugar, a shelf Elias built me above the stove for my cookbooks. Every time I look at it, I think about the first night I opened his cabinets and told him his kitchen was a cry for help.

“Mama, I’m putting out a fire,” Oliver announces, pointing his banana bread at an imaginary blaze somewhere near the refrigerator.

“Is it a big one?”

“The biggest.” He chews seriously. “Daddy would need the ladder truck.”

The front door opens. Elias comes in smelling like pine and fresh mountain air, a paper bag from Sugar Moon in his hand. He still goes every morning. Alicia runs the counter now, and he actually talks to her. Full sentences, sometimes even a joke. Every time I hear about it, I think about the man who used to nod and leave, and I love him so much it hurts.

“Daddy.” Oliver holds up his banana bread. “I saved the fridge.”

“Good man.” Elias lifts him off the chair, helmet and all, and settles him on his hip. Five years ago, this man couldn’t let anyone depend on him. Now he carries a three-year-old around the kitchen like it’s the easiest thing he’s ever done.

He looks at me over Oliver’s head. I know this look. It’s the version that makes my skin warm and my pulse quicken and usually ends with Oliver taking a very conveniently timed nap.

“I could drop Ollie at preschool,” he says, voice casual, eyes not casual at all. “Then we could take a drive up the ridge.”