Chapter 8 #2
I go into the water fully clothed. The cold shocks through my jeans and my boots and up my spine, and I don't care because Stephen's arms are around me and his mouth is on mine and he's kissing me standing in water up to our thighs, and the man who couldn't look at a creek without hearing ghosts is holding me in a pool beneath a waterfall and telling me he loves me.
I kiss him back with everything. Both hands in his wet hair, my body pressed against his, tasting cold water and salt tears and the man I've been falling for since the moment he held my handshake too long and looked at me like I'd broken something in him he didn't know was still intact.
"Say it again," I whisper against his mouth.
"I love you."
"Again."
"I love you, Lydia. I love you. I'm in love with you." He presses his forehead to mine. "And I'm standing in a goddamn waterfall to prove it, so if you could tell me you love me back, that would be really helpful for my nervous system right now."
I laugh. Crying and laughing at the same time, standing in freezing water in September in Montana with two dogs watching from the shore and a waterfall roaring behind us.
"I love you, Stephen. I've loved you since you sat in the dirt and read my book out loud to a dog."
His arms tighten around me. He lifts me off the bottom, my legs wrapping around his waist, and carries me out of the pool.
Water streams from our clothes, our hair, our skin.
He sets me on the dry granite and frames my face with both hands and looks at me like I'm every sunrise he thought he'd never see.
"Your flight's at two," he says.
"Our flight is at two."
"Our flight." He tests the word. His mouth curves into a full smile. The first real, complete, unguarded smile I've ever seen on Stephen Nelson's face, and it's so beautiful it hurts. "I need to call Ryan about the dogs."
"Clara already offered to watch them. She texted me last night."
His eyebrows lift. "The town knew before I did?"
"The town always knows before you do. Maggie apparently started a pool on whether you'd come to your senses before I left. Hilda bet against you."
"Of course she did."
He kisses me again. Soft this time. The kind of kiss that doesn't burn. The kind that warms. Slow and thorough and full of promise.
We walk back to the trailhead soaking wet, holding hands, with two dogs running ahead through the morning light. My boots squelch with every step and my jeans are going to take three days to dry and I don't care about any of it.
At the trucks, Stephen opens my car door. That old-fashioned gesture that comes from somewhere deeper than manners.
"Go pack," he says. "I'll pick you up at the inn at eleven."
"You're really coming."
"I told you. I'm done standing on the shore." He tucks a wet strand of hair behind my ear. His thumb traces my jaw. "This is me getting in the water."
I drive back to town with the heater blasting and my clothes dripping on the seat and my heart so full I can barely breathe.
At the inn, I pack in fifteen minutes. Everything I own fits in one duffel because I've been living out of Stephen's cabin for two weeks and most of what I need is already there. His flannel. My field notebooks on his counter. My toothbrush next to his.
My phone lights up.
Clara Whitmore:
Hilda owes me twenty dollars. I KNEW he'd come through. Safe travels. The dogs are in good hands. Come home soon. Both of you.
Home.
I look at the word for a long time.
I've been looking for home since I was eighteen years old and walked out of a house in New Hampshire where dogs lived in cages and love came with conditions.
I looked for it in Vermont, in my career, in the book that made my name, in every kennel and training facility and rescue operation where I poured myself into broken animals because broken animals were easier to fix than the broken thing inside me.
Home was never a building. It was never a zip code.
Home is a man standing in a pool of water with tears on his face, saying I love you like it's the bravest thing he's ever done.
And it is. Because for Stephen Nelson, walking into water is harder than walking into a burning building, harder than diving from a helicopter into forty-foot swells, harder than any rescue he ever performed.
He walked into the water for me.
Me:
We'll be back by Monday. Take care of my dogs.
Clara Whitmore:
YOUR dogs? Honey, they're Grizzly Ridge dogs now. All of them. Including Stephen.
I'm standing in the lobby with my duffel at my feet when his truck pulls up at ten-fifty-five. Five minutes early. He carries my bag to the truck and opens my door and Scout jumps in the back seat next to Duke's travel crate because of course he brought Duke.
"You brought Duke."
"Duke's never been on a plane. He needs new experiences."
"Stephen. You can't bring a dog on a commercial flight without advance arrangements."
"Clara's husband knows a guy who knows a guy who has a private charter company out of Billings. Logan made a call." He starts the truck. Checks his mirrors. Pulls onto Main Street. "Apparently saving the town from boring romantic drama earns you favors."
I stare at him. "Logan Creed chartered us a plane."
"Logan Creed told me, and I'm quoting, 'If you let that woman fly commercial to the worst week of her life, I will personally come to your cabin and have a conversation you won't enjoy.' Then he gave me a phone number and told me to call it."
I laugh so hard my ribs ache.
Grizzly Ridge disappears in the rearview mirror as we climb the mountain road toward Billings.
The valley spreads out below us, golden and green, cradled by mountains that have held this community together for generations.
I can see the roofline of Maggie's Diner.
The steeple of the community church. The distant shape of Stephen's property, sixty acres of training fields and kennels and the cabin where I fell in love.
Stephen reaches across the console and takes my hand.
I thread my fingers through his and hold on.
"When we get back," he says, keeping his eyes on the road, "I want to talk about making the collaboration permanent. Not just the training protocol. All of it. You. Me. The dogs. The mountain."
"Are you asking me to move in?"
"I'm asking you to stay." He glances at me.
Sea-green eyes, still carrying their shadows, but lighter now.
Clearer. The eyes of a man who walked into the water and came out the other side.
"I'm asking you to build something with me.
The K9 program, the book research, whatever you need.
I've got sixty acres and a cabin with room for two and a bed that's better with you in it. "
"And Scout."
"And Scout. And Duke. And Koda, who I'm keeping, by the way. That dog's not going to Wyoming. He's ours now."
Ours.
I lift his hand to my mouth and press my lips to his knuckles. Scarred, calloused, strong hands that pull people from the places that try to keep them. Hands that held me in a waterfall this morning and shook with the effort of being brave.
"Yes," I say.
His fingers tighten around mine.
"Yes to moving in. Yes to the program. Yes to the mountain and the dogs and you." I look at him across the truck cab, this beautiful, damaged, extraordinary man who came to the mountains to outrun the ocean and found me instead. "Yes to everything, Stephen. For as long as you're asking."
"I'm going to keep asking," he says. "Every day. Get used to it."
Scout pokes her head between the seats and rests her chin on my shoulder. Duke huffs from his crate. The road climbs higher, and the mountains open up around us, and I hold the hand of the man I love and drive toward the hardest thing I've ever done, knowing I'm not doing it alone.
That's the thing about trust. You can't train it through pressure. You can't build it through force.
You build it by showing up. By being still when everything in you wants to run. By walking into the water and letting someone hold your hand.
He taught me that.
Or maybe I taught him.
Maybe we taught each other.