Page 28 of Lost With My Enemy

Jaxon isn't asking me not to break. He's asking me to hand him the bowl anyway.

"I love you too." The words come out rough, surprised, as if my own voice didn't expect them. "I love you, and I don't have a sub-bullet for that, and it terrifies me, and I don't care."

His whole body exhales. I feel it, the tension leaving his shoulders, his arms tightening around my waist, his mouth finding mine again. This kiss is different from the first. The first was a question. This one is an answer.

When we finally separate, he's grinning in a way that crinkles his entire face, and I'm smiling so wide my cheeks ache, which is an unfamiliar sensation for someone whose resting expression has been described as "competence with a slight air of disapproval."

"Your mom's colours," I whisper, glancing at the dream catcher through the truck window. Blue and white, swaying in the wind.

"Her favourite."

"She would've hated my itinerary."

"She would've loved you." His voice breaks, just slightly, on the last word. "She would've loved you for making me stay."

My hand finds his face. His stubble is rough under my palm. The wind pushes my hair into my eyes, and he tucks it behind my ear with a gentleness that makes my throat ache.

"For the record," I say, "you brought a canoe to a road trip. I brought a binder. And somehow we ended up here."

"Best wrong turn I've ever taken."

"I don't take wrong turns."

"You took this one."

"This isn't a wrong turn." My hand slides to the back of his neck. "This is a detour. An approved, thirty-minute, veto-authorized detour that I am choosing not to veto."

His grin spreads, wide and unguarded, and I kiss it off his face because I can. Because for the first time in my controlled, colour-coded, meticulously organized life, the plan has fallen apart, and the falling apart is the best part.

He was right about that.

I'll never admit it out loud.

The truck starts with a familiar rattle, the dream catcher swaying into motion. Calgary waits at the bottom of the mountain, real life and client walkthroughs and napkin consultants and all the logistics that make up an ordinary Tuesday. But the passenger seat is warm, and his hand finds mine across the console, and my planner is still open to the last page where Trip complete is written in blue ink.

Taking the pen from the dashboard, I cross it out, and write two new words underneath.

Trip beginning.

Then, because I am nothing if not thorough, I add a sub-bullet.

Do NOT let him go.

EPILOGUE

ELISE

SIX MONTHS LATER

The boxes are in the closet of Jaxon's apartment in Calgary, right where he said they'd be. Three of them. Brown cardboard, packing tape slightly yellowed, MOM — PERSONAL written in Kenzie's handwriting across each one in black marker.

Two years and eight months. That's how long they've been sitting on the closet floor behind his hiking boots and a sleeping bag he hasn't used since August.

"We don't have to do this today," I say from the bedroom doorway.

He's sitting on the floor with his legs crossed, the first box pulled into his lap. The tape is still sealed. His thumb runs across the edge of it, back and forth.

"Yeah we do." His voice is steady, but his knee is bouncing. "You said I had to open them before I could start staying. And I've been staying for six months. So I'm behind schedule."