Epilogue One
LENNON
“Where are we going?” I ask Carson as he leads me to the barn, my fingers intertwined with his.
“I told you when this was all over, I was going to take you to the north ridge.”
“This early in the morning?” The sun isn’t up yet, and while there isn’t as much snow on the ground as there had been a week ago, it’s still there, causing a dampness and chill in the air. “We’re gonna freeze to death.”
When we get to the barn, he shuts the door and turns to me.
Tenderly, he takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting it so that he can look into my eyes.
His dark meets my light. “You’re not gonna freeze to death.
I’ll keep you warm. And yes, we’re going before the sun is up. It’s the best time to see everything.”
“Okay.” I roll my eyes in a good-natured way. “Then we’ll go.”
“You’re riding with me, if that’s okay with you.”
“Carson Nelson, if you think I’m going to ride my own horse, you’re crazy. That’s not anything I have any experience with.”
He chuckles, the sound flowing over me. “Kinda figured that.”
I watch as he gets the horse ready. Truthfully, I have zero idea what anything he’s doing is, but I enjoy watching him work.
The way his muscles bunch and release, even under the shirt he’s wearing, is nice to look at.
He isn’t the type of guy who has more muscles than he knows what to do with.
They’re perfect for him, which means they’re perfect for me.
“Are you done ogling me?” He grins, standing up straight.
“You best believe I’m going to watch you. You’re mine, and I love you.”
The word still feels slightly foreign on my tongue. Sometimes it’s hard to shape the word, but other times I can’t get it out fast enough. The more I tell him how I feel, the easier it is, and the more I want to do it.
“I love you too. Let me grab my jacket and the blanket I’m bringing in case we get colder.” He walks over to where he laid his jacket down and shoulders it on. Then he picks up a blanket, and we both get on the back of his horse. “Ready?”
“As I’ll ever be.”
The horse moves beneath us at an easy pace, and I’m tucked against Carson’s chest with his arms on either side of me holding the reins, the blanket draped over my lap and legs.
It’s cold. I wasn’t lying about that. It smells like pine and frozen earth and something else that I’ve started to think of as just here.
It’s this place, this land that isn’t mine by deed but has started to feel like mine in every way that matters.
“How much further?” I ask.
“Not far. Stop asking.”
“I’ve asked once.”
“You were thinking it before that.”
I laugh, and the sound disappears into the dark around us.
Above us, the sky is enormous and crammed full of stars, and they’re sparkling against the black of the early morning sky.
Where I grew up, the sky was something that happened between buildings.
Out here, it’s the whole thing. It’s everything.
The horse crests a gentle rise. Carson slows him, and I feel the shift in his body behind me. The way his breath changes just slightly.
“Look up,” he says quietly.
I do.
And I forget to breathe.
The northern lights move across the sky like the way water moves, the way something alive moves, green and pale and shot through with threads of violet that bleed into white at the edges.
It’s like we’re watching Ghostbusters in real time with the green.
They ripple and shift and fold back on themselves.
I’ve seen pictures—everyone has seen pictures—but pictures have nothing on this.
Nothing on the vastness of it, the way it fills the whole sky from one edge of the ridge to the other, the way it makes you feel like the top of your head might come off from the sheer size of what you’re looking at.
“Carson.” It’s barely a word.
“Yeah.” His voice is low and close to my ear, and I can hear in it that he loves this. That he’s brought me here because he wanted to give me this specifically.
We sit there on the horse on the north ridge of where Grizzly River and Dark Skies meet while the sky does something miraculous above us. I don’t say anything for a long time, and neither does he. There’s nothing to say. Some things are bigger than words, and this is one of them.
The lights shift, a slow rolling movement like something breathing, and I feel Carson move behind me. I feel him reach past me and hand the reins off to one hand, and then his arm comes around my waist, pulling me closer against him, and he drops his chin onto my shoulder.
“I’ve been coming up here since I was a kid,” he says. “First time my dad brought me, I cried. I was probably eight years old, and I stood up here, and I just cried. He never made fun of me for it.”
I cover his arm with both of my hands.
“I’ve brought people up here before. Not many.” He pauses. “But when I brought them, I was always watching their faces to see if they got it. If they understood what they were looking at.” Another pause, longer this time. “You get it.”
“How can you tell? I haven’t said anything.”
“That’s how I can tell.”
The lights shift again, rippling green into a vivid blue and pink at the edges, and I watch them, and I think about how a few months ago I was sitting in a too-small apartment eating takeout alone and telling myself that was enough.
That independence looked like needing nobody.
That a woman who’d grown up the way I’d grown up didn’t get the big thing, she just got the okay thing, and she was grateful for it.
I think about the way Carson Nelson looked at me across a room before I even knew his name.
Behind me, I feel him move. I feel him shift, and there’s something different in the vibe of his stillness. I’ve learned his stillness over these weeks. I know when it means he’s thinking, and when it means he’s watching, and when it means he’s about to say something profound.
This is the last one.
“Lennon.”
“Yeah.”
“I have something in my pocket.”
I go very still.
“I’m not going to ask you to do anything you’re not ready for,” he continues, and his voice is low and so certain it makes my eyes sting.
“I mean that. We’ve known each other for weeks, not years, and I know that, and I’m not asking you to rush into anything before it’s right.
” His arm tightens around my waist. “But I bought it because I know. I’ve known for a while now, and I didn’t want to wait on having it. ”
He shifts around again, and I feel him pull something from his jacket pocket, and when I look down, there’s a ring sitting in his palm in front of me. It’s simple. A round stone that catches the light from the sky above us, throwing it back in a way that makes my breath come short. It’s not flashy.
It’s exactly right.
“Marry me,” he says. “Whenever you’re ready. Next year, two years from now, whenever it feels right to you. But say yes so I know you’re mine, and I’m yours, and this is where we’re going.”
I look at the ring in his palm. I look at the sky above us, putting on the most amazing of shows. I think about a woman standing on a porch watching taillights until they disappear. I think about a man who asks every night what he can do to help, even when everything is already handled.
I think about a girl who spent a long time believing she didn’t get the big thing.
“Yes,” I say, and my voice doesn’t shake at all.
His exhale is warm against my cheek. I feel the relief in it, and it almost makes me laugh, because this man, who is certain about everything, was not entirely certain about this, and I love him for that too.
He takes my left hand and slides the ring onto my finger, and it fits, which feels like its own kind of sign.
“Nothing about this feels like a rush,” I tell him. “Not any of it. Not from the beginning.”
“No,” he agrees. “It doesn’t.”
I lean back into him and look up at the northern lights moving across the sky, then down at the land that caught me when I wasn’t looking for anywhere to land, and I feel Carson’s heartbeat against my back, steady and sure, the same rhythm it’s always had.
He told me once that if I jumped, he’d catch me every time.
It turns out he was already waiting when I fell.