Page 26 of Lost With My Enemy

Yes you do. Call me later. Whatever you decide, I love you. But Elise, please. For once in your life, don't let the plan be the reason.

My phone goes dark.

The mountains grow taller with every kilometre. Jaxon drives with both hands on the wheel for the first time since we left Ontario, and the set of his jaw tells me he's having his own version of this conversation inside his head.

"Pull over," I say.

He looks at me. "What?"

"The next viewpoint. Pull over."

"We're forty minutes from Calgary."

"I know. Pull over."

A viewpoint appears on the right shoulder, a gravel turnout with a low metal railing overlooking a valley. The Rockies fill every direction. Below, the Bow River cuts through green. Above, the sky is the ridiculous blue that Alberta pretends is normal and the rest of the country resents.

Jaxon pulls in, cuts the engine. Neither of us moves.

"I lied to you last night," I say, staring straight ahead through the windshield. "When I said we were always going to different places. That was a lie."

"Elise..."

"Let me finish." My hands are in my lap, trying desperately to hold myself together. "I've spent my entire life building systems to prevent exactly this. Colour-coded planners, laminated itineraries, pre-booked rentals. All of it exists because when I was twelve, I watched my parents' entire world shatter over a salad bowl, and I decided that if I could control every variable, nothing would ever hurt that much again."

The truck ticks as the engine cools. The dream catcher sways.

"And then you showed up with your canoe and your Timbits and your complete inability to measure rice, and every system I've ever built started failing. Not because you broke them. Because you made me want to stop hiding behind them."

My voice cracks on the last word. I press my lips together, hard, and force myself to keep going.

"You asked me last night if I'd turn down a dream job, and I said no. But the truth is, I don't know what my dream is anymore. Two weeks ago, it was the Weston-McAllister retreat and a clean itinerary and a promotion by January. Now I'm sitting in a truck in Alberta, looking at mountains I've never seen, and the thing I want most is to not get out of this vehicle."

Silence. Not the painful kind. The kind where someone is listening with their whole body.

"Take the Patagonia job, Jaxon. I mean that. Go photograph the most beautiful place on earth. But don't go because you're running from your mom's boxes and a grief you haven't finished feeling. Go because you want to, not because standing still is scarier than leaving."

My door opens before he can respond. The mountain air is cold and clean, and my heels make no sense on the gravel, and I'm walking toward the railing because if I stay in that truck for one more second, I'm going to cry, and I don't cry. I organize. I plan. I build systems.

The railing is cold under my hands. The valley stretches below, impossibly green, the river a silver thread.

His boots crunch on the gravel behind me. Slow, deliberate steps. Not rushing. Giving me space to change my mind.

"Elise."

"Don't." My voice is thin. "Don't say the nice thing. Don't make this into a moment. We've had enough moments. Moments don't survive geography."

"Turn around."

"No."

"Please."

I turn around.

He's standing three feet away, no ball cap, hair in his eyes, hands at his sides. The mountains rise behind him in a wall of snow and stone. His brown eyes are red-rimmed, and his jaw is tight, and he's holding his phone out to me, screen facing up.

An email. The Meridian Outdoor thread.