Chapter 18 Emma
At the trailhead, the chaos of earlier had settled into quiet efficiency. Rangers spoke into radios, confirming Sarah was found, calling off the wider search. Someone tried to wrap a foil blanket around my shoulders. I waved them off.
"Ma'am, you're shaking."
"I'm fine. I'm just—" I looked at Cole, at Sarah sleeping against his back. "I'm fine."
The ranger gave me a skeptical look but moved on.
Cole settled Sarah into his truck, tucking a blanket around her with a gentleness that made my chest ache. She stirred slightly, murmured something unintelligible, and burrowed deeper into the seat.
I stood by my car, keys in hand. The logical thing was to drive home. Take a hot shower. Process everything alone in my empty cabin, the way I'd been processing everything for the past year.
The thought made me physically ill.
"Emma?" Cole had closed Sarah's door and was walking toward me. "You okay to drive?"
"I don't want to go home."
The words came out before I could stop them. Raw. Honest. Completely terrifying.
He stopped a few feet away, studying my face in the erratic glow of his taillights. "Okay."
"Can we... can we go somewhere? To talk?" I swallowed hard. "I need to say some things. And I don't think I can say them in a parking lot surrounded by park rangers."
"I know a place."
He didn't ask questions. Didn't push. Just nodded toward his truck.
"Follow me."
The drive was short. We entered a forest service road that switchbacked up the ridge, ending at a small gravel pullout. When I got out of my car, the view stole my breath.
The valley spread below us, a dark bowl dotted with the tiny lights of Pine Ridge. Above, the sky was impossible, with more stars than I'd ever seen, the Milky Way a thick, luminous river across the darkness. The air was cold enough to bite, scented with frost and distant woodsmoke.
Cole checked on Sarah. She was sleeping peacefully. He joined me at the edge of the lookout.
For a long moment, neither of us spoke. We just stood there, side by side, shoulders almost touching, staring at the vast, sleeping world.
"I've been so afraid of this place," I finally said. My voice sounded strange in the silence, so small and weak, but mine. "The mountain. The wilderness. I blamed it for taking Lily. I made it into a monster. I gave it teeth and hunger and intent."
Cole didn't respond. Just listened.
"Today, when Sarah was missing..." I had to stop, swallow past the tightness in my throat. "Every instinct I had screamed at me to run the other way. But she was up there. Because of me. Because I pushed her away. So I ran toward it instead."
"Emma—"
"Let me finish." I needed to get this out before I lost my nerve. "On that trail, I was terrified. Every step felt like walking toward my own death. But then we found her, and she was okay, and I looked at the view, really looked, and I finally understood."
I turned to face him, though his features were shadows in the starlight.
"I finally saw what Lily saw. What you see.
It's not just dangerous. It's beautiful.
It's vast. It's full of life and peace and something bigger than my fear.
I've been hating it because I couldn't control it. Because I couldn't make it safe."
"You can't make anything safe," Cole said quietly. "Not really. That's not how life works."
"I know that now." My voice broke on the words. "I've been so angry, Cole. At Lily. At the mountain. At myself. I told her not to go alone that day. I begged her. And she went anyway, and she died, and I—"
The words stopped. I was breaking in two, like a dam giving way. The grief I'd been holding back for fourteen months, the grief I'd tried to outrun by moving to Pine Ridge, by building walls, by refusing to feel anything too deeply, it all came flooding out at once.
I didn't cry prettily. I sobbed. Ugly, gasping, snot-running-down-my-face sobbing. My knees buckled, and I would have hit the gravel if Cole hadn't caught me.
"Hey. Hey, I've got you."
He lowered us both to the ground, pulling me against his chest. I buried my face in his flannel and fell apart completely.
"She's gone," I choked out. "She's really gone. And I never… I didn't get to say—"
"I know."
"She was so alive. So fearless. And I was always the scared one, always holding her back, and then the one time—the one time I said no—"
"It wasn't your fault."
"I should have gone with her."
"Emma." His voice was firm, cutting through my spiral. "Look at me."
I couldn't. My face was a disaster; swollen, wet, probably terrifying.
"Look at me," he repeated, gentler.
I lifted my head. His face was close, his blue eyes steady even in the darkness.
"Lily made her own choice," he said. "She was an adult. She loved those mountains the way I love them. She knew the risks and decided the beauty was worth it. That's not on you. Her death is not your fault."
"But if I'd just—"
"If you'd gone with her, you might have died too. Or you might have saved her. Or nothing would have changed at all. You can't know. You'll never know. And torturing yourself with 'what ifs' won't bring her back."
I stared at him, tears still streaming, something shifting in my chest.
"Grief is the price of love," he continued, his thumb brushing my cheek. "It's brutal and unfair, and it never fully goes away. But the alternative, never loving anyone, never letting anyone in, that's not avoiding grief. That's just grieving in advance."
"I've been grieving people who are still alive," I whispered, the realization crystallizing as I spoke it. "You. Sarah. My dad. I've been mourning you all before I even lost you."
"Yeah." His voice was rough. "You have."
"That's so stupid."
"It really is."
A wet, broken laugh escaped me. "God, I'm a mess."
"You're allowed to be a mess. You lost your sister."
"Fourteen months ago. I should be—"
"There's no 'should be.' Grief doesn't have a timeline." He pulled me closer, resting his chin on top of my head. "You're grieving her here. In a place like the ones she loved. That's not weakness. That's healing."
I cried against his chest until I had nothing left. Until I was empty and wrung out and strangely, terrifyingly light. Like I'd been carrying a boulder for fourteen months and finally, finally set it down.
The stars wheeled overhead. The cold seeped through my clothes. I didn't care.
"I pushed you away," I said eventually, my voice hoarse. "I hurt you. I hurt Sarah. I was so scared of losing you that I lost you on purpose."
"You didn't lose us."
"I tried really hard to."
"Yeah, you did." A hint of dark humor in his voice. "You're very determined when you set your mind to something. Even self-destruction."
"That's not a compliment."
"It's an observation."
I pulled back to look at him. "How are you not furious with me?"
"Who says I'm not?"
The words landed like a gentle slap. I blinked.
"I was angry," he admitted. "I’m angry, maybe. You put Sarah through hell. You put me through hell. You made me watch my niece fall apart because you were too scared to stay."
"I'm sorry—"
"I know you are. And I understand why you did it.
That doesn't mean it didn't hurt." He reached out, tucking a strand of hair behind my ear.
"But Emma, I didn't fall in love with a perfect person.
I fell in love with you. Messy. Scared. Determined to outrun your own shadow. I knew what I was signing up for."
"You fell in love with me?"
"Obviously." He said it like it was the most self-evident thing in the world. "Have been since the craft disaster. Maybe earlier. Definitely by the time you talked Sarah out of that bathroom at her birthday party."
"That was..." I tried to count the months. "A long time ago."
"I'm patient."
"You're insane."
"Also possible."
I laughed again, still watery, still broken, but real this time. "I love you too," I said, the words coming easier than I expected. "I love you, and it terrifies me, and I don't know how to do this without being scared."
Cole took my hand, his calloused fingers threading through mine. "The mountain can be both," he said quietly. "Dangerous and beautiful. Risky and rewarding." He squeezed gently. "Just like love."
The words settled into my bones like a blessing.
"I want to try," I whispered. "I want to be brave enough to love you. Both of you. But I don't know how to stop being afraid."
"You don't have to stop. You just have to keep going anyway."
"What if I mess up? Push you away again?"
"Then I'll be patient." He met my eyes, steady and sure. "I'll remind you we're worth the risk. I'll give you space if you need it, but I won't let you disappear."
"I don't want to disappear anymore."
"Good."
I leaned into him, pressing my forehead against his. "I have a condition."
"Name it."
"You have to teach me. About the mountain. How to be safe here, how to see what you see. I can't keep being afraid of the place you love most."
"We'll start small," he said. "Very small. Maybe a gentle hill."
"I can handle a gentle hill."
"We'll work up to the terrifying cliffs."
"Let's maybe save those for year two."
He laughed, a real laugh. It was a warm sound that made everything feel okay.
"I also need to call my dad," I said, the thought surfacing naturally. "I've been pushing him away too. He's all I have left of my family, and I've been treating him like loving him is too dangerous."
"Sounds like a pattern."
"Shut up."
"Just observing."
A small sound made us both turn. The truck door was cracking open, and a small, sleepy figure was climbing out.
"Sarah?" Cole stood, moving toward her. "What are you doing awake?"
"I heard voices." She rubbed her eyes, her pink jacket askew, her hair a tangled mess. "Are you guys fighting?"
"No, sweetheart. We're talking."
She squinted at us, then at me. Even in the darkness, I could see her uncertainty—the walls she'd built over the past two weeks, the hurt I'd caused.
"Hey, Sarah," I said softly.
She didn't respond. Just stood there, small and guarded.
I walked toward her slowly, then crouched down to her level. "I owe you an apology. A big one."
"You already said sorry on the mountain."
"I know. But I want to say it again, when you're not scared and cold and tired." I reached out, gently brushing her tangled hair back from her face. "I hurt you. I made you think I didn't love you anymore. That was wrong. That was my fear, not the truth."
Sarah studied my face for a long moment. Then she stepped forward and wrapped her arms around my neck, holding on tight.
"I missed you so much," she whispered.
"I missed you too, baby. More than you'll ever know."
Cole joined us, his large arms encircling us both. The three of us stood there in the cold and the dark, holding onto each other, the stars blazing overhead.
"We should go home," Cole said eventually. "Someone needs sleep."
"I'm not tired," Sarah mumbled against my shoulder, already half-asleep again.
"Sure you're not."
We loaded back into the truck, Sarah in the back, me in the front, the heater blasting against the cold. As Cole pulled back onto the road, Sarah's hand reached forward between the seats, finding mine.
I held on.
The mountain rose dark and immense in the rearview mirror. The same mountain that had haunted my nightmares. The same wilderness that had taken my sister.
But now, driving away from it with Cole's hand on my knee and Sarah's fingers in mine, it didn't look like a monster anymore. It looked like what it was: earth and rock and pine, dangerous and beautiful, full of risk and reward.
Just like love.
The mountain didn't take Lily. Life did, in its random cruelty. But I was still here. Still capable of joy. Still surrounded by people who loved me despite my best efforts to push them away.
And I was done letting fear steal that.
Tomorrow, I would call my father. I would start learning to see the wilderness through Cole's eyes. I would be Sarah's family, officially, permanently, with all the terror and joy that entailed.
But tonight, I just held onto Sarah's hand and watched the stars through the windshield and let myself feel something I hadn't felt in fourteen months.
Hope.
Real, terrifying, beautiful hope.
It turned out that was the bravest thing of all.