Page 12 of Lost With My Enemy

We don't talk for a while after that. The highway passes through Sudbury's outskirts, nickel stacks rising against the late afternoon sky, and Jaxon follows my GPS directions to the cabin without asking for a single clarification.

The cabin is small. Wood-panelled walls, a kitchen with a two-burner stove, a bedroom through a narrow doorway, and a pull-out couch that looks like it was manufactured during the Cold War. But the windows face the lake, and the light coming through them is golden.

Jaxon carries my suitcase inside without being asked, sets it by the bedroom door, then goes back for his duffel. I unpack my toiletries, line them up on the bathroom shelf in order of use, and change into leggings and a sweatshirt I brought specifically for evenings where the dress code is "nobody's watching."

He builds a fire in the pit outside. Because of course he does.

By the time I come out with two mugs of tea from the box I found in the kitchen, he's sitting in an Adirondack chair facing the water. The fire crackles low, throwing light across his face. The ball cap is off. His hair is thick, dark, slightly wavy where the cap pressed it down. Without the cap, he looks younger. More open.

"Tea?" I hold out the mug.

"Thanks." His fingers brush mine during the handoff, and the contact sends a jolt up my arm that has absolutely nothing to do with caffeine.

The lake is turning colours. Pink, orange, copper. A loon calls from somewhere across the water, followed by its mate. The fire pops. The tea is mediocre.

"Can I tell you something?" he says.

"You've been telling me things all day. Why stop now?"

A quiet laugh. "This one's different." He turns the mug in his hands. "I almost didn't come back to Canada after my mom died. I was in New Zealand when Kenzie called. Shooting a tourism campaign in Queenstown. I flew home for the funeral, stayed two weeks, then left again. Flew to Iceland. Then Scotland. Then Portugal. Kept moving for four months before Kenzie called me and said, 'You can't outrun this, Jax. It'll be waiting wherever you land.'"

"Smart sister."

"The smartest. She was right, too. I came home, walked into my apartment, and Mom's boxes were still in the closet. Right where I'd put them after we cleaned out her house. I haven't opened them."

"In two years?"

"In two years." He looks at me across the firelight. Brown eyes, steady, unguarded in a way that makes my pulse do something I don't want to examine. "Kenzie says I keep moving because I'm scared that if I stop, I'll have to feel all of it."

"And?"

"And she's probably right about that too."

The fire settles, sending sparks up into the darkening sky. The lake is silver now, the pink gone, the loon quiet.

"For what it's worth," I say, my voice lower than intended, "I think your mom would be glad the dream catcher isn't behind glass."

His head turns. The firelight catches the line of his jaw, the curve of his mouth. He's close. Not because either of us moved, but because the chairs are angled toward each other, and the fire is small, and the night is getting cool.

"Elise."

"What?"

"You're not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Someone who reviewed me on Instagram and pre-booked fourteen days of restaurants." A pause, warm. "You're more."

My breath catches. The fire crackles. His eyes drop to my mouth for a fraction of a second, and every nerve in my body lights up simultaneously.

My phone buzzes on the arm of the chair.

Hi Elise, this is Margaret Weston. Confirming the venue walkthrough on August 25. Please advise re: dietary restriction spreadsheet by end of week. Also, the napkin situation has been escalated. Call me.

The napkin situation has been escalated.

Reality floods back in, cold and immediate. Calgary. The Weston-McAllister retreat. The reason I'm in this truck, in this province, on this trip in the first place.