Chapter 18
Chapter
Eighteen
JOSEPHINE
Dawn breaks, thin and silver, a new ice threading the air. No rose, no gold. Warmth itself has gone missing.
Even the light sounds brittle, like frost cracking beneath its own weight.
Silence follows, too deep to trust.
The feeling is gone. Not faded. Muted. Like something has been pushed behind glass.
At first it’s a relief. Then, it feels like an ache. A held breath, air itself bracing, as if the world is waiting for something to break.
The stillness presses against my ribs.
The radio crackles once and dies. I switch it off, though I’m sure I did that last night.
My fingers find my lips. No heat. No ache. The burn of the cowboy’s kiss is gone.
Fever and lightning.
Yesterday, he never looked back when he walked away. Perhaps I shouldn’t either.
I pull on high-waisted jeans, a sage tie-front blouse, a soft dusty-rose sweater. The air smells of lilacs and rain—washed clean, like it could forget. Maybe that’s what I need to do: forget.
But the word doesn’t feel right in my mouth. Or even possible.
Downstairs, Grandma hums an old lullaby. When she sees me, a smile softens her shadowed face.
“The mountains are beautiful today,” she says. “Calm and settled.”
I answer, glancing toward the window, “They feel… gone. Like they’ve pulled their breath back.”
She huffs a laugh, goes to the glass, and studies the ridge. “Still there,” she murmurs.
Ash. Grandpa. The conversation at the table last night. I don’t know where to begin.
One look at her, and I don’t try.
The house feels too small for both of us and whatever’s moving outside.
Instead, I ask, “Is Grandpa already out doing chores?”
Really, I’m asking about Ash, imagining him atop his mare. Keeping to the pastures, though always with one eye on me.
I was up too early, wrapped in a blanket.
Still. Waiting for him.
From a distance, I saw him riding along the fence line. Away.
He never looked back. I never called his name.
I startle at Grandma’s voice. “Out mending fences.” She nods toward the hills, morning light spilling across the kitchen.
My eyes catch on a brown Carhartt draped over the porch rail—Ash’s jacket. The sight knocks the air from my lungs.
“Mind if I take a horse? Go find Grandpa?” The lie tastes thin.
Grandma follows my gaze to the jacket. Her knowing smile doesn’t reach her eyes.
“No need,” she says, as if she’s reading my mind. “Our neighbor has left for the winter.”
My pulse skips. Gone. Relief rushes in, followed too by something else—want, loss. I can’t decide.
“Still,” I say lightly, “I should return his coat. Wouldn’t want him to freeze before he makes it out of the valley.”
She studies me for a long heartbeat, then nods. “Take Sunshine. She knows the trail well.”
“Thanks, Grandma.”
I pull the coat off the rail. Heat still clings to it, or perhaps that’s my imagination. Smoke and pine rise from it—the scent of rain and memory. It tangles with my heartbeat, slow and unsteady, as if the coat remembers more than I do.
I shrug into it, tell myself it’s just for safekeeping. But when the weight settles across my shoulders, it feels like gravity itself.
Grandma’s eyes watch. Appraising. Guarded now, but she keeps her thoughts too close for speech.
The path winds upward into the high pasture, air thinning with each section of the climb. I ride Sunshine, her saffron coat bright against the pale grass, her breath ghosting in the chill.
Above us, starlings twist in murmurations—black ribbons in a silver sky, scattering, reforming, alive with impossible order.
The higher we travel, the louder the silence feels. Even Sunshine’s hoofbeats seem to hush themselves, afraid to echo.
Every sound folds into itself. The wind seems to hesitate before touching the trees. Then a feeling—low, constant—threads through the stillness.
It shivers through the reins, the saddle, my bones. The mountain tuning itself to his frequency. A vibration I can’t place.
If a man could be distilled to a single tone, this would be Ash.
The landscape shifts from open sage to squat, green-shadowed pinyon pines. Gnarled and twisted against the wind.
The Starborn Range looms above me, half-shrouded in mist, peaks veined with faint red light like arteries under skin.
“Just his coat,” I whisper, as if the lie will protect me. “Just the coat.”
Sunshine tosses her head, ears flicking.
My eyes dart to the treeline, searching for movement. An explanation for why she startled. A bobcat or a coyote, perhaps.
Nothing.
We push on, vegetation narrowing overhead like a shadowy hug, tight-clinging clouds cloaking us. Just on the edge of the range where it crackles. But never over the invisible line.
We should turn back. Instead, I pat Sunshine’s neck, unwilling to acknowledge the pull, unable to deny it.
The trail grows damp and close. Mist curls around us, cool fingers tracing my throat. When the drizzle starts, I pull his jacket tighter. Smoke and pine. The warmth of someone who shouldn’t matter, but does.
Through the wet hush, I glimpse it—the cabin tucked into the valley below. Small and plain, half-swallowed by forest and fog. Its roof gleams slick with rain. A thin curl of smoke escapes the chimney, then falters.
My pulse stutters.
“Ash!” My voice disappears into the gray. Only the rain answers.
“Ash,” I try again, the name threaded with relief and something darker.
I could leave his coat inside, escape without notice. Say, I see you without meeting his eyes. A goodbye letter I don’t have to write.
I dismount, tie Sunshine outside at the trough, and cross the clearing. The door hangs ajar, sighing on its hinges. The air inside tastes of iron and ozone.
A storm’s breath held captive.
The walls seem to breathe, cradling memories of their own. I’ve been here before, though so long ago it feels like a dream.
My breath puffs white in the air. I don’t know why. It isn’t nearly that cold.
To one side, bunks line the wall. In the center, a long table.
The hearth glows low, more embers than flame.
He’s here. Close.
Maps and sketches sprawl across the table. I brush my fingers across them, then freeze at the sight of a small box wrapped in strange fabric. Silver and supple like mercury.
My hand trembles as I pull the cloth aside, remove the lid. Metal and stone fuse together inside, humming faintly—a heart made of earth and sky.
I should turn away, but curiosity has gravity, and I’m already falling. I stretch a shaking hand, touch it. A whisper sears my mind—Josephine—on the cowboy’s lips.
Cold floods my hand. Not pain. Recognition. Fingers bloom with blue fire, bioluminescent like Ash’s tattoos.
I gasp, stumbling back as visions pour through me: spirals stippled in rock, restraint carved in flesh, and glyphs that glow like skin. The air smells of metal and burnt honey.
My pulse staggers. The world reassembles one breath at a time.
“Ash.” His name breaks from my throat before I know I’ve said it.
He fills the doorway, rain steaming off his bare chest, tattoos alive, glowing like molten silver.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he rasps, the hum of the range in his voice. His eyes drop to the coat, dwarfing my frame, his expression unreadable.
I open my mouth, excuses clamoring in my mind. Instead, I whisper, “I couldn’t stay away.”
“No?” His brows furrow, voice thick with conviction. “You have to go. Now. Before we draw more attention.”
“Attention?” I look around, puzzled. He and I are the only two people in this solitary valley.
“What happened at the petroglyphs—” he braces his hands on his hips, legs set apart like he’s holding the world still “—can never happen again. It was wrong.”
Outside, thunder murmurs low. Even the storm disagrees.
His words cut, but his eyes—feral, turquoise, burning—cut deeper. Each searing glance makes his tattoos pulse brighter, the faint vibration rising until it fills the cabin.
He steps forward, his hand closing around my wrist. I feel him like a trail of fire. “You have to go,” he orders gruffly.
He turns his hand slightly, and I register the raw, blackened flesh on his palm. I gasp, eyes bobbing from his wound to his face. “What did you do?”
He stills, tries to wrap his mouth around words. Bows his head instead.
I rise, heat thrumming through my core, light-headed, locating a first aid kit down the hallway. I make him sit, examining his hand.
The smell of antiseptic burns my nostrils, but he never grimaces as I clean and bandage the injury.
The tattoos on his arms pulse and shimmer like quicksilver at my touch. I try not to notice, but I can’t deny the heat behind his eyes.
He reaches for me with one hand, rubbing circles into my wrist, an unreadable expression meeting mine.
"Now you know why I can't keep touching you,” he says.
My eyes lift to his. “Too late.”
Thunder booms, distant and deep, the storm matching my pulse. He drops my wrist. Rises, then steps back, but I won’t let him retreat. I follow, my fingers brushing his arm where the tattoos still glitter.
“This looks like language,” I marvel.
He shrugs. “I don’t know.”
My eyes meet his. “Do they feel like that to you? Communication?”
“They feel like a longing that I shouldn’t have.”
My voice catches in my throat.
“If you stay here any longer,” he says, voice fraying. “I won’t stop.”
“Don’t.”
Light and sound swell. The cabin hums, walls trembling with the same frequency that’s been haunting the range.
I don’t know how it’s possible. How any of this is.
“Josephine.” My name leaves him like a prayer, like surrender.
The word collapses the space between us. I lift my face as his lips descend—not spontaneity—inevitability.
The roots of the same tree finding each other again.
Heat, light, breath.
The cabin disappears in his kiss, leaving only the sound of our names dissolving into each other.
The hum threads through us, a living current. My hands on his burning chest, his heartbeat answering mine.
Everything burns away to radiance.
Desire bends the air between us into something older than language.