16. Colt
Colt
Dusk comes down purple and quiet over the mountain, and I'm out in it, walking my trap line one more time before dark.
The storm's dying. The wind that howled for days has dropped to a whisper through the pines, and the silence should feel like relief.
It doesn't, not entirely. We know now the window wasn't an animal, wasn't a branch, wasn't ice working loose in the frame the way I tried telling myself before Nora crouched down in the snow and found that print herself.
What we don't know is who, or why they haven't made another move since, and that uncertainty sits worse in my gut than the original mystery ever did.
I check each trap slower than I need to, giving myself time to think while my hands do work they don't need supervising for.
Somewhere around the fourth one I catch myself running through what it would take to get Nora off this mountain entirely if it came to that, a cabin I know two ridges over that nobody but me and Mason has ever set foot in, a route down the back side that doesn't touch the main road at all.
I don't like that my mind's already building an exit plan.
I like even less that some part of me has already decided I'd use it, rules or no rules, the second things got bad enough to justify it.
Every trap sits undisturbed tonight. No prints but mine and the neat stitching of a fox that crossed the lower trail sometime this afternoon.
The mountain's telling me we're alone up here, at least for tonight, and I trust the mountain more than I trust most people, so I let my shoulders come down an inch and head back, snow squeaking under my boots, the cabin windows glowing gold through the trees like something out of a story instead of a life I actually get to have.
Inside, the heat wraps around me, and so does the sight of her.
Nora's cross legged on the bed in my flannel, hair still damp from this morning's bath, the notebook balanced on her knee, her tongue caught at the corner of her mouth the particular way it always is when a drawing's putting up a fight.
She doesn't jump when the door opens anymore.
She just looks up, and her whole face goes soft, and something in my chest that's been wound tight since I found that broken glass eases off its trigger, quiet and immediate, the way it only does around her.
“Anything out there?” she asks.
“Fox. Big one. Probably the same troublemaker that's been robbing my snares all winter.” I hang my coat and cross to the bed. “What are you working on?”
She tilts the notebook against her chest, sudden and shy about it, which is new. She'll show me a grumpy moose without blinking twice. “It's not done.”
“Show me anyway.”
She hesitates, then turns it around. It's us.
Two little cartoon figures on a mountain trail, a huge bearded one loaded down with traps and rope and a rolled up tent, and a small round cheeked one behind him carrying nothing but a pencil the size of a canoe paddle.
Mountain adventurers. She's given the big one my exact scowl, down to the crease between the eyebrows I didn't know I had until she drew it there.
“That supposed to be me?”
“The scowl says yes.” She's watching my face, and under the joke there's a question she's too smart to ask out loud. Is it okay that I'm drawing us. That I'm drawing a future.
I take the notebook out of her hands, set it on the shelf where it won't get bent, and answer her the only way I know how.
I cup her jaw and kiss her slow, letting her feel that there's no place on this earth I'd rather be than inside a drawing like that one.
She makes a small sound against my mouth and her fingers curl into my shirt, and last night I'd have taken over right here.
Laid her back. Set the pace. Given her careful because careful was what she needed.
Tonight I feel it in her hands. She's not holding on. She's pulling.
I break the kiss and sit back against the headboard, and her brows knit at the loss of me until I take her by the hips and draw her over my lap, her knees settling on either side of my thighs.
Her breath goes shallow. From up there she's looking down at me for once, damp hair falling around her face, and I watch her realize what I'm giving her.
“Your turn to drive, darlin'.” I keep my hands loose on her hips. Present, not steering. “You've had a day and a half of me showing you. Show me what you learned.”
Color climbs her throat, but her chin comes up with it.
That spark I saw through the cracked windshield the first day, the stubborn one, the one that means she'll fight if she has to.
She reaches for the buttons of the flannel and undoes them herself, one at a time, slower than she has to, and the sight of her taking her own sweet time nearly undoes my patience before we've even started.
“Like this?” she asks, and the innocence in it isn't fake, but the mischief underneath it isn't either.
“Just like that.”
What follows belongs entirely to her, her hands finding their own confidence, her body setting a pace I don't hurry no matter how much every muscle in me wants to.
She takes what's hers. I give her my hands where she wants them and follow where she leads, and somewhere in the middle of it she breathes the word mine, testing it out loud for the first time from her side of things instead of mine, and it lands in me like a brand.
“Look at you,” I tell her, because she should hear it. “Riding this like you were born to it. That's my girl. Take your time. Daddy's not going anywhere.”
The word does what it always does to her.
Her rhythm stutters and deepens, and I hold onto my own edge with my teeth because I want to watch this, watch her chase it and find it, her head thrown back, my name and Daddy tangled together in her mouth when she finally comes apart above me.
I follow her over a moment later, holding her close through it like the world might try to take her mid heartbeat, and when it's done she collapses against my chest, both of us slick and breathing like we ran the ridge trail together instead of just lying here.
I drag a blanket over her back and hold her there, her heart hammering against mine and slowly, slowly settling.
“So,” she says eventually, muffled against my collarbone. “How'd I do, teach?”
“Top of the class.” I press my lips to her damp hair. “Might need to see it again, though. For grading purposes.”
Her laugh moves through both of us, warm and real, and I feel more of the day's tension drain out of me than I have all evening.
She goes boneless and quiet after that, tracing lazy shapes on my shoulder, drawing on me now, little invisible cartoons I'll never get to see, and I stare at the fire over the top of her head while the old worry comes back with the dark the way it always does once the good part of the night settles into something quieter.
The storm's finished. Tomorrow, the day after, the roads open all the way.
Mason's people come up this mountain with a folder full of new names for her, and the rules say I hand her over and let her disappear into whatever life those names build for her, somewhere I'm not allowed to follow.
A week ago I'd have followed the rules without a second thought.
That was before a woman crashed into my mountain and started drawing the two of us onto the same page, before she learned to read snow tracks and hold her own weight and take exactly what she wants from me without waiting for permission first.
Her breathing evens out into sleep against my chest. I tighten my arm around her and watch the flames burn down slow, turning the whole problem over again, and somewhere in that slow turning the shapeless worry starts, for the first time, to take an actual shape.
Not a plan yet. Not something I'd trust with her life without thinking it through twice more at least. But a direction, finally, instead of just a fear, and that's more than I had an hour ago.
The rules can go to hell. I'm keeping her. I just haven't figured out how yet.