Epilogue
The new postcard goes up dead center, right where everyone can see it.
Patagonia. My handwriting on the back, my name at the bottom. The fourth one this year with my own words on it instead of somebody else’s.
The wall’s a different wall now. It used to be every place I’d never go. Now there’s a growing knot of cards in my own hand—places we’ve actually been—and around them, the old collection has turned into something else. Not a list of everywhere I’ll never go. A list of where we’re headed next.
I don’t get that ache looking at it anymore. I get impatient. There’s a difference, and it took me a while to learn it.
Outside, Copper Peak is buried and roaring. First real week of ski season, the lifts spinning since dawn, the shuttle running full loops with Marco on days and two new drivers on nights. The board got too big for one person to hold about the time I stopped wanting to hold it alone.
The office is packed with skiers stamping snow off their boots. My office. I own the contract now. I still work the desk when I want to—and I want to, because it turns out I never hated the desk. I hated being stuck to it.
Cash comes in the back with snow on his shoulders and the flame ink showing where his sleeves are shoved up. Five years in, the sight of him still speeds up like it did the first night he walked through that door asking if the last run had left.
“Booked solid through March,” he says, dropping into the chair beside mine. He guides out of Copper Peak now. Same mountain every season. “Three couples on the intro tour Saturday. You want to run the top of it with me?”
“On my own mountain? Try and stop me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He hooks a finger in my belt loop and pulls my stool closer. “Everybody who’s coming’s already up the mountain. Nothing moves through here until the lifts close and the 4:15 runs. One of the night guys has the board until then.”
“Cash. Somebody could come down early.”
“Not for an hour, they can’t.” He’s already up and crossing to the door, and I hear the bolt turn, final and quiet.
Then he’s back, both hands on the arms of my stool, turning me to face him, his mouth at my ear and warm against all the cold coming off the glass.
“And I have a whole hour where the only place I want to be is right here.”
After five years, he still says it like the first night. Like staying is the adventure. Like I’m the horizon he finally stopped running at and started coming home to.
I reach up and kill the light over the desk.
We undress in the half-dark, snow light painting the glass. Cash peels my sweater off slowly, knuckles brushing the curve of my breasts, then the soft plane of my stomach. Even after five years, he still looks at me like he’s memorizing the map.
I shove his thermal up and off, dragging my palms over the flame ink on his forearms, the solid heat of his chest. Boots, jeans—everything hits the floor in a quiet scatter.
The office is warm from the baseboard heaters and our own breath. Outside, the mountain keeps roaring, lifts grinding, wind throwing powder against the windows. But in here, it’s sealed tight, just like the stranded cab the night this all started.
He lifts me onto the desk, papers skidding. My bare thighs part around his hips as he steps in.
Cash doesn’t rush. He never has. Not once he’s decided he’s staying. He cups the back of my neck, thumb stroking the hinge of my jaw, and kisses me deep and sure until I’m already wet against the cool wood.
“Lie back, my girl.”
I do. Confident now. No more wide-eyed uncertainty from that first night. I plant my heels on the edge of the desk and open for him, watching the way his eyes darken when he sees how ready I am. He drops to his knees between my legs like it’s the only place he belongs.
His mouth finds me without preamble. Hot, open, deliberate.
He licks a long, slow stripe up my center, then seals over my clit and sucks.
The sound is wet and filthy in the quiet office.
I gasp, hips jerking. He pins them with one forearm across my belly and keeps going, tongue working in tight, relentless circles.
Two fingers slide into me, curling exactly where he knows I need them. I feel every ridge of his knuckles, the stretch, the steady pressure that builds behind my pubic bone.
“Cash—“
“I’ve got you. Let me feel it.” His voice is low, rough against my skin. “Good girl. Take it.”
I come hard, thighs clamping around his head, fingers fisted in his hair.
The orgasm rolls through me in deep, pulsing waves.
I hear myself moan his name, broken and loud enough that anyone walking past the locked door would know exactly what’s happening inside.
He works me through it, tongue gentling but never stopping until the last tremor fades and I’m trembling, slick, open.
As he stands, eyes locked on mine, I reach for him, wrapping my fingers around the thick length of his cock. I stroke once, twice. He’s hard and heavy, the head already wet. I guide him to my entrance and look up.
“Come here.”
He pushes in slowly. The stretch is familiar yet still overwhelming—thick and relentless as he sinks deeper, opening me inch by inch until his hips are flush against mine and I can feel the heavy pulse of him all the way against my cervix.
I suck in a sharp breath at the fullness, at the way my body has to yield around him even after five years of taking him exactly like this.
For a second, neither of us moves. Just the press of him inside me, the heat of his chest against my breasts, the pale light silvering the scars and ink on his skin.
I look up at him—dark eyes half-lidded, jaw tight with restraint, snow still melting in his hair—and the sight alone makes me clench hard around his cock.
“Fuck,” he breathes. “Still so tight for me. You feel that? How deep I am?”
“Yes.” My voice comes out rough. “Don’t hold back. I want all of it.”
He starts to move—deep, measured thrusts that rock the desk beneath me.
Every drag of his cock pulls at sensitive places inside me, every forward roll grinds against my clit and sends bright sparks up my spine.
I wrap my legs around him, heels digging into the small of his back, meeting every stroke with a wet, solid sound that fills the quiet office.
Skin on skin. The slick noise of how wet I am for him.
His low groan when I squeeze around him on purpose.
“That’s my girl,” he murmurs, bracing one hand beside my head, the other sliding under my thigh to open me wider so he can drive deeper. “Taking me so well. Look how pretty you are stretched around my cock.”
I do look—down between us, watching the thick length of him disappear into me over and over, shiny with my arousal, the dark hair at the base of him brushing my clit on every thrust. The sight makes me moan, makes my walls flutter.
“God, Cash—feels so good. You’re so deep. Don’t stop.”
“Not stopping.” He picks up the pace, harder now, the desk creaking in protest. Each thrust is deliberate and powerful, the head of him dragging over that swollen place inside me that makes my thighs shake. “You were made for this. For me. Say it.”
“I was.” I dig my nails into his shoulders, arching up to meet him. “I’m yours. This cock is mine, and I want every fucking inch of it.”
A rough laugh punches out of him, half groan. “Greedy girl.” He lowers his head to kiss me, breath hot and ragged against my mouth. “Then take it. Come on my cock, Elyse. Let me feel you break.”
The first flutter of the orgasm builds low and inevitable, coiling tighter with every hard snap of his hips.
I can see everything—the flex of muscle in his arms as he holds himself over me, the dark flush high on his cheekbones, the way his eyes never leave mine even when the pleasure starts to pull his mouth open.
Outside, the mountain is roaring. In here, there’s only the wet slap of us, the desk rocking, my own sharp gasps every time he fills me completely.
“Cash—I’m—“
“I know. Give it to me. Right now.”
The climax hits sharper this time, tighter, milking him in strong rhythmic pulls that force a broken sound from my throat. My vision whites out for a second as I cry out his name, nails scoring his shoulders as the pleasure rips through me in long, pulsing waves.
He follows immediately, burying himself to the root with a raw, guttural groan, cock throbbing hard as he comes. I feel every thick pulse, every flood of heat spilling deep inside me. The way his whole body locks and shudders against mine while he empties himself.
We stay like that, tangled and breathing hard, the aftershocks still flickering through both of us.
“I put a rope on three clients tomorrow,” he says after a long silence. “Five years ago, the thought would’ve had me packing a truck.”
“And now?”
“Now I rope them up, and I bring them down, and I come back here.” His mouth finds the top of my head. “Every time. Same place. You.”
“Same place,” I agree. Then, because I’ve been holding it since the test line went pink two mornings ago and I can’t hold it one second longer. “Mostly the same place. We might have to slow the pace a little this spring.”
He goes still. Not the running kind of still. The listening kind.
“Elyse?”
“Six weeks, give or take.” I lean back so I can see his face as the news sinks in. “So the Patagonia card might have to wait a year. Maybe two. Turns out you can’t do a fourteen-day trek at altitude with a newborn strapped on.”
For a second, he doesn’t say anything at all. Then his whole face changes, the weathered lines of it going soft in a way I’ve only ever seen in this office with the door locked. He puts one big hand over my stomach, like he’s already learned how to hold something that isn’t there yet.
“A year,” he says, rough. “Two. However long it takes.”
“I don’t mind.” And I don’t, which is the thing I couldn’t have imagined five years ago, back when the wall was every place I’d never go.
“The horizon’s not going anywhere. It’ll keep.
” I put my hand over his. “And then we go get it. All three of us. I already know which card I’m mailing from the first trip. ”
“Yeah?”
“Somewhere with a mountain and a road out of it.” I feel him laugh more than hear it, the old line handed back to him. “That’s the whole list.”
He pulls me in and holds on with both hands, the way he holds everything he’s decided not to lose.
The radio crackles—Marco, the 4:15 loading, the board lighting up with the evening rush. In a minute, I’ll get up and turn the light back on, unlock the door, and be the fixed point this whole mountain moves through. In a minute.
Not yet.
Outside, the storm that used to mean stranded means home now. And the man who never stayed is warm beneath me with his arms locked around me, going nowhere. The horizon’s still out there on the wall in my own handwriting, waiting for both of us to go get it together.
We’ve got all the time in the world.
I lean back into him and let the 4:15 wait.