Jax’s hand slides up to my cheek, fingers gentle, reverent—like he’s afraid I’ll vanish if he touches me too hard.
His forehead drops to mine. “I’m so scared of hurting you.”
“You’ll only hurt me if you leave,” I breathe.
Something unravels in him then. Wild and surrendering all at once.
He kisses me. Deep. Slow. Certain.
It feels like thawing ice, like breath after drowning.
His hand curls in my hair. Mine grip his jacket like I could anchor him here with sheer want. Snow falls around us in soft, swirling confetti, and for the first time in days, the mountain isn’t a threat.
It feels like a witness.
When we finally break for air, his thumb sweeps beneath my eye to catch snowflakes. He lets out a choked laugh, forehead pressed to mine.
“You can’t keep rescuing me,” he says.
“You rescued me first.”
His lips brush mine again, softer, like a vow.
I look at the half-packed truck behind him and then at the man whose entire body is pleading to stay.
“So,” I murmur, “are you done packing?”
He exhales—shaky and relieved—and nods once.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “I’m done.”
We turn toward his cabin together.
And this time…
He walks toward something. Not away.
Epilogue
Jax
Spring tastes different in the mountains.
It’s quieter. Earned. A slow exhale after months of white silence and teeth-bared storms.
I step onto the porch with two mugs of coffee and breathe in wet cedar and thawing earth. The yard that was once buried in snowdrifts is now a patchwork of stubborn green and mud.
Ava sits wrapped in a blanket on the porch swing, legs tucked beneath her, hair falling loose over her shoulders. She looks up at me as I hand her a mug—and there it is, that slow smile that still wrecks me in ways I can’t fully explain. The kind of smile that says:You’re here. You stayed. We made it.
Beside her, Violet is cross-legged with a stack of sketch paper, pencils scattered around her like fallen arrows. She doesn’t glance up—she’s deep in whatever spell art still casts over her. But the corners of her mouth tilt when she senses me close.
This… this isn’t the life Jackson Hale ever imagined.
Which is probably exactly why it works.
I ease down onto the porch rail, sip my coffee, and watch morning sunlight drip through the trees. The snowline has crawled up to the peaks, leaving the lower slopes bare and soft.
“So,” Violet says without preamble, pencil scratching, “when do we get to set off the sensors again?”
