"And a kitchen table. For eating at. Like humans."
"Done."
"And Duke gets a real dog bed. Not that flat rug you've been pretending is adequate."
"He's gonna sleep on your side of the bed anyway."
My side. Of the bed.
Kissing him again, softer now, I taste salt. His. Mine. Both. His arms tighten. Duke barks.
Setting me down, Beck keeps his forehead pressed to mine. His breathing is ragged. One hand cups the back of my neck. The other stays locked around my waist.
"I love you." The words come out of me before I decide to say them. No rehearsal. No plan. Just truth, standing on a sidewalk in a mountain town I've known for two days, looking up at a man I've known for eight. "I know that's insane. I know it's been a week. I don't care. I love you, Beck."
His eyes close. His grip on my neck tightens. When he opens them, everything he's been carrying, the guilt, the grief, the year of silence, is right there on the surface. Unguarded. Raw.
"I love you, Jada." His voice breaks on my name. "I've been dead for fourteen months. You walked up my porch steps and brought me back."
Duke howls.
We both laugh. Wet, messy, ugly beautiful laughter that shakes our bodies while we hold onto each other on the main street of Crimson Hollow.
This wasn't the plan. The plan was no plan. The plan was drive until I figured out what I wanted.
Turns out what I wanted was at the end of a road without a name. A grumpy man who reads poetry. A dog who chose me before I chose myself. And a mountain that feels, for the first time in my life, like home.
EPILOGUE
BECK
SIX MONTHS LATER
Snow covers the mountain. Two feet of it on the ground, more coming down in fat, lazy flakes that Duke chases across the porch like he's personally offended by each one.
The cabin looks different now.
Kitchen table, hand built, black walnut, seats four. Bed frame, also hand built, reclaimed fir from a barn that collapsed on the far edge of my property. Bookshelves, plural, lining the wall where the single warped one used to be. Stocked with her paperbacks, my poetry, a growing collection of cookbooks she keeps buying from Chapter & Curse even though she doesn't follow recipes.
A real dog bed sits by the fireplace. Duke has never once slept on it. He sleeps on Jada's side of the bed, curled against her legs, snoring loud enough to rattle the windows.
My side. Her side. Our bed.
Six months. She stayed. Not because I asked her to, because I did ask, badly, on a sidewalk in town. She stayed because she chose to. Drove back up the mountain in her dusty blue Subaru, parked it next to my truck, walked inside, set her bag down, and said "I'm going to need a dresser."
Built her one that weekend. Cherry wood. Dovetail joints. Three drawers. She cried when she saw it, then told me the knobs were ugly. Went to town the next day and came back with ceramic pulls from a shop on Main Street.
That's how it works with us. She pushes. I build. She fills every space I make with color, noise, warmth, and the kind of laughter that sounds like it belongs in this cabin even though nothing laughed here before she arrived.
Crimson Hollow adopted her immediately. Sage at Bean & Bloom saves her a blueberry lemon muffin every Saturday. Venus at Tangled Roots does her braids now, fresh every three weeks, and they spend the entire appointment talking about me. Jada reports back. Apparently I'm "the grumpiest man on the mountain" according to everyone in town. She agrees with them enthusiastically.
The event planning thing came back naturally. Wasn't my idea. Wasn't hers, exactly. A woman named Jordyn Kane McCrae stopped by Bean & Bloom one Saturday, heard Jada talking about the charity gala she'd organized in Atlanta, and asked if she'd consider helping with a local fundraiser. Jada said no. Then she said maybe. Then she organized the entire Crimson Hollow autumn harvest fair in three weeks flat, raised twelve thousand dollars for the volunteer fire department, and had Sage's Jamaican patties featured in a regional food magazine.
She's freelancing now. Small events. Mountain weddings. Corporate retreats at a lodge outside town run by a man named Cash who apparently knows everyone. She works from the kitchen table on a laptop she bought in Nelson, Duke at her feet,coffee going cold because she forgets to drink it when she's deep in a spreadsheet.
Happy. She's happy. And the thing about watching someone you love be happy is that it rewires the parts of you that forgot happiness was possible.
I turned my phone on permanently in August. Called my mother. Two hour conversation. She cried. I cried. Duke stared at me. Jada sat on the porch and pretended she couldn't hear everything through the open window. When I hung up, she came inside, kissed my cheek, and said "Your mama sounds like good people."
