My heart constricts as I look from her to the view I’ve had for years. I used to think this was all I should have. Nothing but quiet and isolation. I didn’t think I should live with the rest of the world because I failed at the one thing I was meant to do: save my best friend, my brother, the man I worked alongside and grew up with. This was meant to be my penance and my peace, my way to be something other than a fucking disappointment.
But now that I have Sophia, I know I can have somethingmorethan just the mountain and the isolation. I can’t help but wonder what else might be out there.
I know I don’t want her to give anything up for me. Not her career, not her friends, not her life.
The mountain can be isolating. Tiring even. When Mother Nature demands it, you’ll be cut off from everything and everyone.
That’s not the life I want for her. Not the life I want for our future, either.
“Move in with me,” I say, catching her by surprise. “And then we find a placein town.”
Sophia shifts on my lap until she’s facing me, her gloved hands on my shoulders. “What?”
“I don’t want you giving anything up for me, and this place…” I look around again, taking in the cabin that allowed me to heal, the forest that nurtured me, then to the woman who actually saved me. Who believed in me. “I love the cabin, but I love you more. And this…this isn’t what I want for our future.”
A rosiness fills out her round cheeks, surprise flickering in her dark eyes. “Our future?”
“Yeah,” I murmur, cupping her cheek. “What, you don’t think I want to spend the rest of my life with you?”
“That’s not at all what I was thinking,” she whispers, a smile pulling at her lips. “I just…I thought you loved this place. And I like it, too.”
“I love you more than a building.” A tightness fills my chest, and a warmth seems to flood me at the softness filling her expression. “I mean it, Sophia. I loveyou. More than I have anyone—or anything. You’re my saviour. The reason I’m here. If you didn’t know, I wouldn’t have survived the fire or anything that came after it without you. I didn’t want to. If you hadn’t been there when I woke up, I probably would have given up.”
Tears fill her eyes. I don’t want to see her cry, but I also need her to know just how much of a powerful presence she’s been in my life—even if she never intended to be.
I’ve loved her for years and been too cowardly to tell her.
Now, I won’t ever let her go without knowing just how much she means to me.
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” I continue, voice growing thick with tears I haven’t shed in years. “I want to marry you. Have wanted that for a long time. Cooper may have been joking, but I wasn’t.”
Her eyes widen when I pull a small box out of my coat pocket. “I’ve had this since I could walk again, you know,” I whisper, keeping my eyes locked on hers.
A tear slides down her cheek, which I wipe away gently with my thumb. “You have?” she whispers, voice trembling.
I nod once and open the ring box. It’s antique, nothing too flashy because I know Sophia, and she doesn’t do gaudy jewellery. She only has studs in her ears, nothing else. And working as a nurse means getting dirty, so she doesn’t need something that’ll get caught on scrubs or whatever else comes into her ER.
More tears fall, too many for me to catch as shecovers her mouth with her hand. “You’ve had this…for years?”
The lump in my throat thickens into something I can’t swallow as I try to fight back my own tears. “Yeah, I’ve had it that long.”
“Noah…” She looks down at the ring, then at my face, before locking in on the Victorian design. “It’s beautiful. But why? How? I don’t?—”
“If you haven’t caught on by now, Angel, I’ve been in love with you for a while,” I chuckle, pulling the ring from its box and holding it up between us. One of the diamonds catches the light, shining like ice. “Before the fire, I just didn’t have the guts to ask you out. I was worried about you thinking I was some kind of creep. Especially because I was friends with Cooper. But I regret not doing it sooner, because maybe we would already be at this stage. Because more than anything, I want to be your husband. I want to never go another day without you. I lost a lot of time because I was a coward and weak, but not anymore. Will you marry me, Sophia Ridgeway?”
“Yes,” she gasps, collapsing into me, lips on mine. “Yes, yes, yes.”
I meet her kiss and hold her as tightly as I can, melding our bodies together. The rest of the worldfalls away until there’s only us and the kiss. Us and the promise of forever hanging between us.
The sound of an engine rips us apart. The small amount of distraction it offers allows me to take her hand and slide the ring perfectly onto her finger.
“Now,” I say, entwining our fingers as her watery stare meets mine. “You can move in with me.”
Sophia grins widely. “I was going to anyway,” she whispers, leaning into me with another kiss. “Coop would have just had to suck it up.”
I chuckle, catching sight of the brother in question. My old friend walks up, looking like he’s going to be sick, with several familiar faces around him.
I recognise Sawyer, another guy living on the mountain also volunteering with me this year. Dean, one of the cadets when the fire hit, now a fully-fledged firefighter. And my old captain, Hunter, who also lives out here with his daughter.
