Having her back in my arms after one afternoon of believing I'd lost the right is its own kind of miracle. I could stand here all night doing nothing but holding her and breathing her in, and it would beat every summit I've ever stood on.
"Did I say enough?" I ask. She's still got the letter pressed between us, both hands, guarding it. "You really think you can love me?"
"Forever." She leans back just enough to look at me. Then she glances down at the wrinkled paper in her hands. "You wrote me a love letter."
I nod. "It's got corrections all over it. I should've rewritten it so it was perfect."
"It is perfect. It's the best letter that's ever been written."
I've been paid a lot of compliments by a lot of people who wanted things from me. Not one of them ever landed the way Darcy's praise does. It goes through my ribs and stays there, where it's going to live for the rest of my life.
She takes a quiet breath, then I watch her square up for something. Her shoulders set, her chin comes up. There's a question in her gold-flecked, hazel eyes.
"Your meeting is tomorrow," she says. "Colorado."
"Darcy, the meeting can wait."
"No. Let me say this while I've got the nerve." She pulls in another breath. "I'm coming with you. Not just for the trip, Finn. For good, if that's what it takes. I'll pack up my classroom. There are schools in Colorado. There are kids everywhere who need somebody to fight for them." Her chin stays up but her voice shakes underneath it. She keeps going anyway. "I saw what that dream means to you. I stood in that barn and watched your whole face change when you talked about it. I am not going to be the reason you lose it. So I'm coming with you."
For one long moment, I let myself see it.
Darcy in the crisp mountain light in Breckenridge. A classroom with huge, white-capped peaks out the window. Her cold feet under a new timber roof, her laugh in a house we picked together, the two of us building the biggest thing I've ever taken on. It would be a good life. A beautiful life.
I could reach out and take it, and she would let me. For one breath I want it so much I can taste snow.
Nobody in my whole life has ever offered to give up one single thing for me. This woman just offered me everything she has, unhedged, with her voice shaking.
It levels me. I have stood on ledges that didn't move me like this.
"No," I say, shaking my head. "No way. Not happening, Darce."
Her face starts to shut down. I take her hand before it can finish, the letter caught between our palms.
"Not because that offer isn't the best thing anyone has ever laid in my hands. It is. I'm going to be thinking about you saying it when I'm ninety." I hold her eyes. "It's a no from me because of what I truly want. And I finally know what that is. I've known since I stood outside that window tonight and watched you grade papers alone in the dark."
She goes still and listens.
"I'm done leaving. I'm done being gone."
The words come out quiet. I've been carrying them my whole life without knowing it.
Her lips part. She heard the letter. She knows exactly what those words are made of.
"The dream was never the mountain, Darcy. I thought it was. I've had it backwards for years. The dream was building something, and having someone to share it with. Somewhere between a bachelor auction and the stairs leading up to yourapartment I realized I've already found the thing I've been trying to build my way into. Your classroom is here. Your mom is here. Your students, your reading program that you're going to launch, your town. I don't want to move that life to Colorado. I want to be in it. Here. With you." I shake my head slowly. "Everything I ever went looking for turned out to be right here in my hometown."
She doesn't move while I say it. She takes it the way she takes everything that matters, with her eyes steady and her whole attention aimed at me, and I understand that being listened to like this is one more thing I'm never giving up.
"Finn." Her eyes are filling again, but her spine is teacher-straight. "The resort. The deal of your life. I can't be the reason you lose it. I couldn't live with that. What if you wake up one day and regret this?"
There it is. Her oldest fear still holding her hostage. The worry of not being enough. Of eventually being left behind because someone she loved wanted something different. I'm not letting it stand for even one full breath.
"I'll never regret choosing you. Choosing us." I say it plainly, because it's the simplest truth I know. "And I'm not afraid of losing the deal. I'll keep the meeting. But I'm not going there to say yes on their terms. I'm going to tell them how it's going to work. I run it from here. I fly out and back if needed. The mountain isn't going to care where my mail goes."
"And if they walk away?"
"Then a room full of investors walked away over geography, and I build it anyway, without them." I shrug, grinning now. "Worst case, I know five good men seated around a poker table in the city who aren't above some well-calculated risk. There'll be another deal if I need one."
She laughs. It's small and wet and it stutters in the middle. Her laughter is the best sound I have ever heard in my life, because it's the sound of us coming back stronger than before.
