His hands find my shoulders, guiding me forward. I hear the creak of the great room doors opening. Smell sawdust and lemon oil and something floral—fresh flowers, maybe.
“Steps,” he murmurs. “Three of them.”
I navigate blind, his palms steady on my waist. The floor changes beneath my feet—from the hallway runner to the worn hardwood of the great room. My great room. The room where Grammie Bea taught me about light and shadow. The room where I fell in love. The room where I finally stopped running.
“Okay.” His voice is rough. Nervous, almost. I've never heard Everett nervous. “Ready?”
“I've been ready for six weeks.”
He laughs softly. Then his fingers find the knot at the back of my head, and the blindfold falls away.
I blink.
And I forget how to breathe.
The window seat is still there. The same curved alcove, the same view of the mountain through glass that's seen a hundred years of snowfall.
But everything else?—
“Everett.”
“Just... look.”
The log.
The log is what I see first. Dark with age, weathered by time, instantly recognizable. It frames the entire alcove now, arching up and over the window seat like it was always meant to be there. Like the room was built around it.
And in the center—right at the apex of the arch, where the two ends of the beam meet?—
The initials.
J.M. andE.S.
Together.
Finally, impossibly, together.
“How did you—” My voice breaks. “The log was split. It was on opposite sides of the room. How did you?—”
“Roman.” Everett's hands find my waist from behind, his chin resting on my shoulder. “He's been working on it for months. Had to source matching wood for the sections that were too damaged to salvage. Handcarved the joints. He wanted it to be seamless.”
Roman did this. My brother, who builds log cabins with his bare hands. Who felt like he'd failed me. Who's spent the last six months literally building the frame that holds this story together.
“But that's not—” I step closer, and something else catches my eye. Something in the window seat itself.
Not just a bench anymore.
A lift car.
The lift car.
Number 47.
The open cart where Everett kissed me for the first time, sixteen years old and terrified and so in love I couldn't see straight. The wooden bench seat where I learned what wanting someone actually felt like.
It's been retrofitted into the alcove. The old metal frame, the worn wooden slats, the number painted on the side in faded red—all of it preserved, integrated, home.
“You kept it.” I'm crying. I don't even try to stop. “You kept the lift car.”
