Not the way scars are over. Not the way memory is over. Those things live where they live.
But the hunting is over.
No dogs. No men. No eyes in the dark waiting for me to stumble.
The mountain is quiet tonight in a way I have never heard before.
Not listening.
Resting.
And somewhere deep inside me, in the place that used to brace for the next terrible thing, something finally unclenches.
The clearing loosens after that.
Not all at once. Nothing on this mountain ever changes all at once. But the hard edge goes out of the air.
Mercy tries to stand and both Knox and Finn move at once to stop her. She gives them a look sharp enough to skin bark off a tree, but Finn has already scooped the bowl out of her hands and Knox is dragging a chair closer with his boot.
“I can still walk,” she says.
“Didn’t say you couldn’t,” Finn says.
“We’re just saying you don’t need to.”
Mercy opens her mouth to argue. Knox, with all the solemn dignity of a man about to lose his life, holds out a biscuit.
Bethany makes a strangled noise and then she is laughing for real. Mom claps a hand over her mouth, shaking her head, and even she’s smiling now.
It catches me off guard.
Not their laughter. Mine.
It rises out of nowhere, out of the middle of my chest, warm and sharp and impossible to stop. One second I’m watching Knox bribe his own wife into sitting down. The next the sound spills out of me, bright and breathless and bigger than the little startled laughs I’ve let slip before.
Everyone looks at me.
I try to stop. I can’t.
The laugh comes again, fuller this time, and then again, and the whole clearing seems to light up around me. Bethany grabs my arm, laughing too. Mom’s face crumples and she turns away for a second, wiping at her cheeks with the heel of her hand.
Rafe is there before I can even look for him.
His hand finds my waist. His other hand cups the back of my head as he stares down at me.
I laugh one more time, softer now, undone from the force of it, and nestle my face into his chest because suddenly I don’t know what to do with all this feeling if I don’t put it somewhere safe.
His arms close around me.
“Sweetheart,” he says, voice rough and full. “There she is.”
I hold on tighter.
Around us, the mountain keeps moving.
My old life. My new one.
No tearing. No choosing one over the other.
