"Wildwood Valley's twenty minutes down the mountain." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering before they fell away. "I've got a cabin. It's small. Working shower, kitchen with actual food in it."
"Are you inviting me to stay with you?"
"I'm telling you there's a place. What you do with that is yours."
I looked up at him. He meant it—every word. He wasn't pushing. He wasn't pulling. He was standing right there, letting me come to it on my own, the way he'd let me move the cooler into the shade and pack my own tent and eat my terrible sandwich without comment.
"Take me home," I said.
He kissed me. Slow, deliberate, one hand on the side of my face. The kind of kiss that wasn't trying to start something—the kind that was confirming something had already started and wasn't going to stop.
When he pulled back, I was smiling. My first real smile in longer than I wanted to admit.
He tossed his pack in the back seat and climbed into the passenger side without asking, like it had already been decided. "I'll talk you through the switchbacks," he said. "Stay close to the inside."
I started the engine. It caught on the first try—thanks to Flint—and Duff rested his hand on my knee as I pulled onto the logging road.
"Take it slow where the gravel's loose," he said.
I smiled. "You going to talk me through everything from now on?"
He looked at me—steady, unhurried, that full quiet smile I was already learning to need. "If you'll let me."
I drove us down the mountain. His hand never left my knee, and the switchbacks didn't scare me once.
EPILOGUE
DUFF: 5 YEARS LATER
The tent went up in about forty-five seconds.
That was her time, not mine. She'd gotten good at it—better than good. She could pitch, stake, and fly the same tent that had beaten her senseless five years ago faster than most people I'd hiked with.
"Still got it," Stacia said, popping the last stake into the ground. She stepped back, hands on her hips, and looked at me like she expected applause.
"Pole sleeve went left to right," I said.
"Pole sleeve always goes left to right." She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "Wyatt wanted to come, by the way. He threw a fit when I dropped him at your mom's."
"He's two. He throws a fit when his cracker breaks in half."
"He sat in his high chair for ten minutes this morning, staring at his oatmeal like he was reading it."
"He was assessing the situation."
"He was waiting for me to put brown sugar on it."
Same clearing. Same flat patch off the logging road, same rhododendron wall, same hardwoods. Late July again, the air thick and sweet with honeysuckle and warm pine. We came backevery year—just the two of us. The anniversary trip, she called it, though it never fell on the exact date. Close enough. The woods didn't keep a calendar.
Stacia's graphic design business had taken off. She'd been one year from finishing her degree when she walked away from it, moved to Wildwood Valley, and started picking up freelance work within weeks.
Her mother brought up the diploma every Thanksgiving. Stacia still didn't regret it. She was good at her job. Better than good. She was the kind of good that came from finally doing something that was hers.
The bucket list was framed on the wall in our cabin, right by the front door. She'd never crossed anything else off. She didn't need to. The list was complete—not because she'd done everything on it, but because she'd stopped needing it. She knew how to want things now. She did it every day.
I strung the bear hang while she laid the sleeping bag out flat—same spot, middle of the clearing, under the open sky. When she was done, she walked over and leaned her shoulder into mine.
"I want another one," she said.
