"That scared you."
"It terrified me." I wrapped my hands around the coffee cup, letting the warmth seep into my cold fingers. The Wyoming wind was sharp, cutting through my jacket like it had something to prove. "Because if someone wants you without needing you, they can leave whenever they want. There's nothing tying them to you. Nothing keeping them there."
Liam was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was gentle—gentler than I'd heard it in years. "Is that what you think love is? Being tied to someone?"
I flinched. The question hit somewhere soft, somewhere I didn't want to examine too closely. "I don't know what I think love is. That's the problem."
"Love isn't being needed, Mags." Liam turned to look at me, his eyes steady and sure. "Love is being chosen. Every day. Even when it's hard. Even when there's nothing keeping the other person there except the fact that they want to be."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"Jack chose you. He chose you when he could have walked away after that first night at Wild Creek. He chose you when hetalked to your dad and told him the truth about his intentions. He chose you when he stepped in front of a charging boar without even thinking about it." Liam's voice was firm now, certain. "And he's still choosing you now—by leaving a trail you can follow, by waiting to see if you're brave enough to choose him back."
My eyes burned. "What if I can't? What if I don't know how?"
"You already know how." Liam's hand found my shoulder, warm and grounding. "You've been choosing this family your whole life. Showing up for us, fighting for us, loving us even when we made it hard. The only difference is that with Jack, you have to do it out loud. In front of people. Without the safety net of being needed."
The words settled into me like seeds into soil. I'd never thought about it that way—that I did know how to choose. That I'd been doing it all along, just not where it counted most.
Stephanie emerged from the truck stop with an armful of snacks and a grin on her face. "I got Twizzlers, beef jerky, and something called a 'tornado' that I'm pretty sure is just a gas station burrito in disguise. Who's hungry?"
I laughed—a real laugh, brought out of me by Stephanie's relentless optimism.
I wiped my eyes and took the Twizzlers.
"Thank you," I said quietly. To both of them. For everything.
The third day, we crossed into Montana.
The landscape shifted—wider skies, sharper mountains, air that smelled like pine and possibility. Liam's contacts narrowed the search. A ranch outside Billings where Jack had helped load hay for a widow. A gas station where the attendant remembered the dog. A small town where someone saw a Texas plate heading toward the mountains.
"He's close," Liam said. "A day ahead of us, maybe less."
"Stop rehearsing," Stephanie said from the back seat, reading my mind the way she always seemed to.
I turned. "What?"
"I can see you thinking. You're building a script in your head, trying to control the moment before it happens. That's not going to work."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Just tell him the truth." Stephanie's smile was gentle, but her eyes were fierce. "Not the polished version, not the managed version—the messy, terrifying, real version. Tell him you were scared. Tell him you're still scared. Tell him you love him anyway, and you're choosing him anyway, and you'll keep choosing him every day if he'll let you."
She reached out and took my hand.
"That's all he needs to hear, Maggie. That you're choosing him. Out loud. All the way."
"Okay," I said. "No rehearsing. Just truth."
By evening, we had a solid lead.
A small-town bar where a man matching Jack's description had been seen earlier today. He'd had dinner, talked to the bartender, left heading toward the mountains.
Liam checked the map. "There's nothing out that way except old ranch land and a small cemetery."
My breath caught. "His family's graves. He's visiting his family's graves."
We looked at each other—Liam, Stephanie, and me—and something passed between us. Jack wasn't running anymore. He was making peace with his past so he could move forward.
