Page 27 of Lost With My Enemy

Subject: Re: Assignment Opportunity — Patagonia Series

Hi Liam,

Thank you for the offer. I'm honoured and I know this is a once-in-a-career opportunity. But I'm going to decline. I've spent the last two years saying yes to every assignment that took me somewhere new, because new places felt safer than the place I already was.

I'm done running. I want to see what happens when I stay.

Best, Jaxon

My vision blurs. My hands grip the railing behind me.

"You turned it down."

"I sent that at 6 AM."

"Before I said any of this."

He takes a step closer. "Kenzie told me something last week. She said the photo you took of me was the first time I looked happy in two years. And I kept thinking about that. Why I looked happy. And it's not the truck or the road or the prairie or the mountains." One more step. "It's you. Sitting in my passenger seat with a laminated itinerary, arguing about rice-to-water ratios, reviewing me on Instagram before we'd even met. You make me want to stay in the frame."

"Jaxon."

"I'm not asking you to give up Toronto. I'm not asking you to move to Calgary or change your plan or abandon your spreadsheets. I'm asking you to let this be real. Whatever it is. Whatever shape it takes. Flights and weekends and colour-coded visits scheduled a year in advance. I'll take your system. I'll take whatever you want to build, because the thing I've figured out over the past two weeks is that you build things that last, Elise. Everything you touch holds together. And I want to be something you build."

The mountain air fills my lungs. Cold, thin, sharp with pine. The Bow River moves below us, indifferent to the fact that my entire world is rearranging itself on a gravel pullout forty minutes from Calgary.

"You're going to have to open those boxes," I say, and my voice is barely there. "Your mom's things. You can't start staying if you haven't finished grieving."

"I know."

"And I'm going to need a better couch in the Calgary rental, because the pull-out has destroyed my back and if we're doing this, I'm visiting regularly, and I refuse to sleep on Cold War surplus furniture."

His laugh is sudden and wet, startled out of him. "Deal."

"And the canoe stays on the roof. I'm never getting in it again."

"Understood."

"And you learn to measure rice."

"Now you're pushing it."

The last thing I see before I close the distance is his face. The crinkled eyes, the crooked smile, the look of a man who has been holding his breath for fourteen days and just remembered how to exhale.

My hands find the front of his flannel shirt. His hands find my waist. The kiss is soft, careful, warm, and when it deepens, I feel the last board come off the wall I built when I was twelve. The one that says: don't need anyone, and nobody can take anything from you.

The board comes off, and underneath it is just me. Elise Boyd. Thirty years old. Standing at a viewpoint in Alberta, kissing a man who sleeps anywhere, eats Timbits for breakfast, and treats schedules like polite suggestions.

When we pull apart, his forehead rests against mine. His breath is uneven. Mine isn't much better.

"I love you," he says, quiet and certain, like he's stating a fact he's known for days and just now found the right moment to say out loud. "I know it's been a few weeks, and I know that probably breaks every rule in your planner, but I love you, Elise. I loved you somewhere around the canoe. Maybe before."

A laugh escapes me, wet and shaky. "The canoe was day five."

"I'm a fast learner."

My fingers tighten on his flannel. The mountain wind pushes between us, cold, and he pulls me closer. My forehead is still against his, and the words are right there, sitting on my tongue, the truest thing I've ever been afraid to say.

My mother held onto a salad bowl because she couldn't say what it meant. My father scheduled his love into two-week increments because he didn't know how to offer it freely. And I have spent eighteen years building walls out of spreadsheets and itineraries because wanting someone felt like handing them a ceramic bowl and praying they wouldn't drop it.