She looks at Bella, then at me.
Bella looks at the paper. “What’s that?”
“Jesse left this with me before he went downstate for Christmas. He gave me strict instructions.” Eleanor steps into the room, holding the envelope out to Bella.
Bella reaches out, her fingers tremble as she takes the envelope, the worn paper thin and rough against her fingertips.
“Instructions?”
Eleanor’s voice is gentle. “He told me to give this to you when the road was clear, and you had to choose. When you were standing at the edge of the mountain, deciding whether to run back to the city or stay and fight.”
Bella freezes, her gaze dropping to the handwriting on the envelope. It’s Jesse’s handwriting, blocky and uneven.
My name is on the back of the envelope, written in the same dark ink.
Eleanor turns and walks out of the office, closing the door behind her.
The silence returns, but the distance between us is gone. There’s only the ticking clock, the clear winter light, and the letter in Bella’s hands.
ELEVEN
What He Wanted
BELLA
The weightof the paper in my hand is heavier than it has any right to be.
I stand in the center of the cramped clinic office, the yellowed, worn envelope resting against my palm. The paper is creased at the corners, smelling faintly of old tobacco, woodsmoke, and the damp pine that seems to cling to every surface on this mountain. On the front, my name is written in Jesse’s blocky, uneven hand. JustBella.
I turn it over. On the back, in the same dark, faded ink, is a single word:Wyatt.
The silence of the room is thick, pressing in against my ears now that the roar of Eleanor’s Bronco has faded down the cleared switchbacks.
Wyatt stands near the metal filing cabinet, his broad shoulders squared, his gaze locked on the paper in my fingers. He hasn’t moved since Eleanor walked out, closing the door behind her.He doesn’t look like the gruff, angry vet who threatened to throw me off his mountain when I first drove up.
He looks like a man standing before a firing squad, his jaw set, his chest rising and falling in slow, tight cycles.
“He left it with Eleanor.” My voice is barely louder than the hum of the backup generator in the walls.
Wyatt’s eyes flicker to mine, grey and turbulent as the storm that just left us. “He gave it to her before he went downstate. For Christmas.”
Before he drove down to his death.The implication hangs between us, cold and sharp. Jesse knew. He planned this goodbye, structured it, and left the pieces of his life behind like breadcrumbs in the snow.
I slide my thumb under the worn flap of the envelope. The paper is thin, ready to tear, but the seal gives way with a soft, dry whisper. Inside is a single sheet of lined notebook paper, folded twice.
My knees feel suddenly weak. I sit on the edge of the old oak desk, my thigh brushing the corner of the printed Cascade contract I rejected only minutes ago. The stark corporate logo stares up at me, a reminder of the clean slate I just threw away.
Thirty thousand dollars in debt, a safe city job, a life where I never had to feel this crushing, suffocating tightness in my throat, all of it to protect a clinic that wasn’t mine, until it was.
“Bella.” Wyatt steps closer, his boots silent on the old floorboards, stopping just inches from my knees. The rumble of his voice is low, vibrating in my chest. The scent of him—woodsmoke, cold air, and the clean musk of his skin—anchors me. “Read it.”
I unfold the paper. The creases are white, the graphite pencil lines slightly smudged where Jesse’s left hand must have dragged across the page as he wrote.
I look at the first line. My cousin’s voice fills my head, blocky, direct, so real it makes my chest ache.
Bells,
If you’re reading this, the road is clear, and you’re standing in my clinic. I knew you’d come up here with your folders and your city clothes, ready to sign whatever papers the developers threw at you and run back to Denver before the cold could touch you. I knew you’d be carrying every caller you couldn’t save on your shoulders, and that you’d add me to the list.
