The familiar cadence of hoofbeats on snow, the sway and rhythm, the way the world blurred past when you gave yourself to the animal’s stride, the way Belle’s ears flicked forward with interest—it all felt familiar.
But that felt like another life, another girl entirely.
“Do you remember this path?” James’s voice carried through the crisp air, and she turned to look at him. Snow dusted his shoulders, and his breath formed white clouds in the cold.
She studied the trail winding ahead of them through the pine trees. She’d forgotten how beautiful the mountains could be in winter, how the silence felt almost sacred beneath the weight of the snow-heavy branches.
She did her best to reconcile the snow-covered landscape with her childhood memories. Everything felt like an echo of a childhood dream—the way the path curved around a massive boulder, the particular angle of the slope.
“I’m not sure.” The admission felt like a small failure. “Everything looks so different with all the snow.”
James nodded. “It always does. But you’ll see—some things never change.”
They climbed higher, following a trail that seemed to exist more in James’s mind than in any visible path. Belle picked her way carefully through the drifts, her frozen breath lingering in the air.
“There.” James pointed ahead, where the trail curved around a stand of snow-laden pines. “Just around that bend.”
The memory hit her as they rounded the trees. That dark hole in the mountainside.
The cave. Their cave.
Seeing it again, even buried under snow and ice, sent memories flooding through her with such intensity she nearly gasped aloud.
Countless winter afternoons spent huddled in that rocky shelter, sharing stories and dreams while the wind howled outside. James teaching her to whittle with his pocketknife, the wood shavings curling at their feet. The day she’d cried over her mother’s scolding about proper behavior for young ladies, and James had sat beside her, his arm around her, until the tears stopped.
She pressed her mittened hand to her mouth. This place had been theirs—completely, utterly theirs—in a way nothing else had ever been.
They dismounted in silence, the air between them thick with memory. James tied the horses to a pine, then faced the cave. Snow had drifted high at the mouth, but the hollow inside waited, dark and unchanged.
He went first, boots crunching through the crust, clearing the way. The smell hit her as she entered—stone, earth, and that wild, secret scent that had always made this place theirs.
The cave was smaller than she remembered, but wasn’t everything from childhood?
Still, the curved walls welcomed her, close and sure, wrapping her in a feeling of home.
“Look.” James moved to the back, then brushed snow from a rock shelf. “Still here.”
Her heart jumped. Their treasure box—a battered tin that had once held Mrs. Wang’s special tea—sat exactly where they’d left it all those years ago. The metal was rust-covered now, but one corner still bore that dent from where James had dropped it years ago while trying to hide it from Will.
Her throat tightened as James lifted the lid with careful fingers. Inside, wrapped in what had once been a piece of his mother’s good linen, lay the treasures they’d collected—smooth river stones, a hawk feather, pressed wildflowers that had long since crumbled to dust. And there, at the bottom, James’s first attempt at carving—a lopsided wooden horse that had been her most prized possession.
“You kept it all.” She shucked her gloves to lift the little horse from its nest of memories. The wood felt smooth and familiar in her palm—and cold—worn by countless hours of play.
“Of course I did.” Something in his voice made her look up, and the warmth in his green eyes sent heat spiraling through her chest despite the bitter cold. “I kept everything that mattered.”
The weight of his words settled between them, heavy with meaning she wasn’t ready to examine. She set the horse back in the tin, her chest too tight to speak.
James pulled something from his coat—a wrapped bundle that smelled like Mrs. Wang’s kitchen. “I thought you might be hungry.”
The familiar ritual of it made her throat ache. How many times had they shared meals in this exact spot, their voices echoing off the stone walls as they planned adventures or shared secrets?
He spread his coat on the driest section of stone, just as he always had. Why had she never offered her own coat? James wouldn’t have let them use it, even if she had.
She settled beside him on the makeshift seat, careful to maintain proper distance despite the cave’s cramped confines. The stone beneath them radiated cold through the wool, but James’s presence warmed the air between them in ways that made her pulse quicken.
He unwrapped the bundle, revealing thick slices of Mrs. Wang’s bread, cheese, and dried apples. The sight of it transported her back so completely she could almost hear their younger voices echoing off the stone walls, could almost see James at eight years old, his face still round with boyhood as he divided everything exactly in half.
“Do you remember when we found the coyote pups?” His voice rumbled soft in the close space.
