I switched to video mode. “Yeti, run through the flowers! Be free! Be wild!”
Yeti wagged her tail and stayed exactly where she was.
“Fine.” I flopped onto my back beside her. “We’ll go for the lazy mountain dog aesthetic. Very relatable.” I took a selfie with the two of us side-by-side.
Noah’s face appeared above me, blocking my view of the gathering clouds. “You done playing Wild Kingdom? We need to get moving if we’re going to get there and back before dark.” I followed Noah’s eyes as he looked up at the sky, fixed on some of the darker clouds off in the distance.
“You mentioned there was a chance of rain …”
“Not until later tonight.” Noah tilted his head as if he were a professional windsock, assessing the speed and direction of the breeze. “We should be okay.”
“Should be?”
“Worst case, we get a little drizzle on our way back. You won’t melt if you get wet, will you?”
“Is that some kind of wicked witch reference?”
“You’re the one who said it, not me. We can turn around now if you want.”
“No, I want to keep going.”
“You sure?”
“Positive.” I would not let the chance of a little rain stop me from seeing Noah’s secret place. It would take a monsoon to stop me. Or muffins. I would have been easily distracted by muffins too.
“Then let’s go.
I stuck my phone in my back pocket, then waddled over to Biscuit to continue onward.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The trees parted, and Biscuit stepped into a clearing, Duke and Noah right behind us. I opened my mouth to say something, but the words died in my throat. The valley appeared so suddenly it stole my breath away. One moment we were climbing through dense forest, and the next … paradise.
It was the kind of view that made you believe in magic, or at least in whatever supernatural power was responsible for landscape design. Jagged peaks pierced a canvas of swirling clouds, their snow-capped summits gleaming silver in the afternoon light. A crystalline lake stretched below, its surface like glass.
I just sat there, drinking in the raw beauty of it all.
As Noah hopped off Duke, I slid off Biscuit, legs wobbling like I was walking the plank on a pirate ship. At the edge of the clearing, I spotted what had to be the lightning tree, a massive old oak split right down the middle, its halves curving away from each other like two mythical serpents reaching for the sky.The bark was scorched black in places, but somehow the tree had survived and thrived.
“You were right,” I admitted. “So you came out here a lot as a kid?”
Noah took a deep breath of the crisp mountain air. “Every summer. Dad would pack up the Jeep with camping gear, and we’d spend weeks exploring these mountains. No phones, no TV. Just us.”
“You really love it up here, don’t you?”
His eyes fixed on the distant peaks. “It’s not about loving it. It’s about respecting it. Understanding it.” He glanced at me. “Some things aren’t meant to be packaged and sold, Sam. They’re just meant to be experienced.”
Noah grabbed the canteen and gave Yeti another bowl of water, then offered it to me.
“You know, my dad built the original adventure program with nothing but local knowledge and respect for these mountains. Both of which he got from my grandfather, who got them from his father before that. Now corporate suits who’ve never spent a night under the stars want to package and sell what took generations to learn.” I followed his eyes to the LuxeLife-branded cooler. “Just because Victoria calls it authentic doesn’t make it real.”
“What does authentic even mean anymore?” I asked, more to myself than Noah. “Is it only authentic if it stays exactly the same forever? Or can something evolve and still keep its soul?”
Noah was quiet for a moment. “Maybe authentic just means being honest about what you are. Not pretending to be something you’re not.”
I thought about my perfectly posed photos, the careful captions, the strategic hashtags. “I’m not sure I even know who I am anymore.”
“Seems to me like you’re someone who actually cares aboutgetting it right.” Noah’s eyes met mine. “That counts for something.”
