The roads blur past. Snow. Trees. The same mountain I've navigated a thousand times, but today it feels like every mile is too long. Every curve takes too much time.
What am I going to say when I find her? How do I explain that note without sounding like every other asshole who says "it's not what it looks like"? Except it really isn't what it looks like. It's Cal's story, not mine. Mina's gratitude, but not toward me.
But will Claire believe me?
I think about her face when she talked about her parents and the divorce. How they made her feel like an afterthought. Howshe learned to make herself small so she wouldn't be in the way. How she's spent her whole life waiting for someone to choose her.
And the first time she's scared, the first time she doubts, I let her slip away.
Fuck that.
I'm choosing her. I chose her the second I saw her in that storm. I'll keep choosing her every day for the rest of my life if she'll let me.
The town comes into view. Christmas lights. Festival crowds. I scan faces, looking for dark hair and her impractical city coat. Looking for the woman who made my cabin feel like home.
Looking for mine.
She’s not just some woman I helped out of a snowbank. She’s the one who made me remember what it feels like to want a future with color and noise and soft laughter in the corners of the room. She’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted like this. If I lose her now, I won’t come back from it.
I turn toward Granitehart Ridge’s main road, praying she hasn’t already left town. I hope I find her before she disappears into a version of her life that doesn’t have room for me.
Because she was never just passing through. I’m not going to let her think she was.
The town looks different now.
Lights drip from the eaves of every shop like icicles spun from liquid silver. Music floats above the crowd, familiar carols softened by snowfall and laughter. There are sleigh bells somewhere, maybe real, or maybe piped in through speakers. The scent of roasted chestnuts weaves through the cold like smoke.
I park half on the curb outside the Ridge Taproom and cut the engine. The warmth I’ve been carrying inside me all morning fades the second I step into the wind. I scan the square, eyes tracing the pockets of color where people move in thick coats and woolen scarves, where children tug on mittens and vendors pass out paper cups of steaming cider.
Then I see her.
She’s alone, standing near a wooden stall strung with glass ornaments, her phone in her hand but pointed at the ground. She’s not taking pictures. She’s not smiling. She’s just standing there in the middle of everything festive, looking like she’s trying to disappear.
Her breath fogs the air in front of her. Her eyes are red. The sight of her undoes me. My chest pulls so tight it hurts to breathe. Every instinct in me says go to her. Hold her. Don’t let her slip away again.
I'm halfway across the square when someone calls my name over the Christmas music.
"Jax!"
I turn to see the guides I work with at Granitehart Ridge Retreat. Cade’s approaching with Micah and Jake flanking him. Dex brings up the rear, looking amused by whatever brought them all to town together without their wives. They move with the easy confidence of men who know these mountains as well as I do.
"Thought that was you," Cade says, clapping me on the shoulder. "What brings you down from your mountain fortress? Usually takes a natural disaster to get you into town during off-season."
The irony isn't lost on me. The snowstorm was a kind of natural disaster, a thing that brought Claire to me, before the misunderstanding that drove her away.
"Looking for someone."
Micah raises an eyebrow, exchanging glances with Jake. "Someone? As in a woman someone?"
"The mountain hermit has been domesticated," Jake grins. There's genuine curiosity beneath the ribbing. "Didn't think anyone could crack that fortress you've built."
"Shut up." But there's no heat in it. They're not wrong. Three days ago, I would have sworn I preferred solitude. Now the thought of going back to that empty cabin without her makes my chest feel hollow.
"Is she here somewhere?" Dex asks, more serious than the others. He gets the need to find your person when they've slipped away.
I glance over to see that she’s still alone by the ornament booth. My heart kicks hard against my ribs. She's trying to look busy now, examining glass decorations with the kind of focus that tells me she's fighting tears. Even from here, I can see the dejection in her posture.
"There," I say, nodding toward her. "Woman in the red scarf."
