"I know a place."
He didn't ask questions. Didn't push. Just nodded toward his truck.
"Follow me."
The drive was short. We entered a forest service road that switchbacked up the ridge, ending at a small gravel pullout. When I got out of my car, the view stole my breath.
The valley spread below us, a dark bowl dotted with the tiny lights of Pine Ridge. Above, the sky was impossible, with more stars than I'd ever seen, the Milky Way a thick, luminous river across the darkness. The air was cold enough to bite, scented with frost and distant woodsmoke.
Cole checked on Sarah. She was sleeping peacefully. He joined me at the edge of the lookout.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. We just stood there, side by side, shoulders almost touching, staring at the vast, sleeping world.
"I've been so afraid of this place," I finally said. My voice sounded strange in the silence, so small and weak, but mine. "The mountain. The wilderness. I blamed it for taking Lily. I made it into a monster. I gave it teeth and hunger and intent."
Cole didn't respond. Just listened.
"Today, when Sarah was missing..." I had to stop, swallow past the tightness in my throat. "Every instinct I had screamed at me to run the other way. But she was up there. Because of me. Because I pushed her away. So I ran toward it instead."
"Emma—"
"Let me finish." I needed to get this out before I lost my nerve. "On that trail, I was terrified. Every step felt like walking toward my own death. But then we found her, and she was okay, and I looked at the view, really looked, and I finally understood."
I turned to face him, though his features were shadows in the starlight. "I finally saw what Lily saw. What you see. It's not just dangerous. It's beautiful. It's vast. It's full of life and peace and something bigger than my fear. I've been hating it because I couldn't control it. Because I couldn't make it safe."
"You can't make anything safe," Cole said quietly. "Not really. That's not how life works."
"I know that now." My voice broke on the words. "I've been so angry, Cole. At Lily. At the mountain. At myself. I told her not to go alone that day. I begged her. And she went anyway, and she died, and I?—"
The words stopped. I was breaking in two, like a dam giving way. The grief I'd been holding back for fourteen months, the grief I'd tried to outrun by moving to Pine Ridge, by building walls, by refusing to feel anything too deeply, it all came flooding out at once.
I didn't cry prettily. I sobbed. Ugly, gasping, snot-running-down-my-face sobbing. My knees buckled, and I would have hit the gravel if Cole hadn't caught me.
"Hey. Hey, I've got you."
He lowered us both to the ground, pulling me against his chest. I buried my face in his flannel and fell apart completely.
"She's gone," I choked out. "She's really gone. And I never… I didn't get to say?—"
"I know."
"She was so alive. So fearless. And I was always the scared one, always holding her back, and then the one time—the one time I said no?—"
"It wasn't your fault."
"I should have gone with her."
"Emma." His voice was firm, cutting through my spiral. "Look at me."
I couldn't. My face was a disaster; swollen, wet, probably terrifying.
"Look at me," he repeated, gentler.
I lifted my head. His face was close, his blue eyes steady even in the darkness.
"Lily made her own choice," he said. "She was an adult. She loved those mountains the way I love them. She knew the risks and decided the beauty was worth it. That's not on you. Her death is not your fault."
"But if I'd just?—"
