Page 11 of Blazing Mountain Man

“I’d come back. That’s the part I never had before you.” The light spreads across the glass and settles over us, two people in a stopped rig at first gray light. “I finally found the place I don’t want to leave. It’s not a town, Elyse. It’s you.”

She doesn’t say anything. She unbuckles, and she crosses the space between the seats the way she did before the storm sealed us in. I hold her while the dawn climbs the last of the dark off the mountain.

“Okay,” she says. “Okay. We go. Both of us. This time, both of us.”

Outside, the light comes up full over the clearing, and the pass will open before long, and neither of us reaches for the door. There’s a whole world down that mountain, and the road’s about to open onto it. For the first time in four years, I’m not in any hurry to get moving.

I’m exactly where I want to be, and I’m going to stay a minute longer.

EPILOGUE

ELYSE: 5 YEARS LATER

The new postcard goes up dead center, right where everyone can see it.

Patagonia. My handwriting on the back, my name at the bottom. The fourth one this year with my own words on it instead of somebody else’s.

The wall’s a different wall now. It used to be every place I’d never go. Now there’s a growing knot of cards in my own hand—places we’ve actually been—and around them, the old collection has turned into something else. Not a list of everywhere I’ll never go. A list of where we’re headed next.

I don’t get that ache looking at it anymore. I get impatient. There’s a difference, and it took me a while to learn it.

Outside, Copper Peak is buried and roaring. First real week of ski season, the lifts spinning since dawn, the shuttle running full loops with Marco on days and two new drivers on nights. The board got too big for one person to hold about the time I stopped wanting to hold it alone.

The office is packed with skiers stamping snow off their boots. My office. I own the contract now. I still work the desk when I want to—and I want to, because it turns out I never hated the desk. I hated being stuck to it.

Cash comes in the back with snow on his shoulders and the flame ink showing where his sleeves are shoved up. Five years in, the sight of him still speeds up like it did the first night he walked through that door asking if the last run had left.

“Booked solid through March,” he says, dropping into the chair beside mine. He guides out of Copper Peak now. Same mountain every season. “Three couples on the intro tour Saturday. You want to run the top of it with me?”

“On my own mountain? Try and stop me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” He hooks a finger in my belt loop and pulls my stool closer. “Everybody who’s coming’s already up the mountain. Nothing moves through here until the lifts close and the 4:15 runs. One of the night guys has the board until then.”

“Cash. Somebody could come down early.”

“Not for an hour, they can’t.” He’s already up and crossing to the door, and I hear the bolt turn, final and quiet. Then he’s back, both hands on the arms of my stool, turning me to face him, his mouth at my ear and warm against all the cold coming off the glass. “And I have a whole hour where the only place I want to be is right here.”

After five years, he still says it like the first night. Like staying is the adventure. Like I’m the horizon he finally stopped running at and started coming home to.

I reach up and kill the light over the desk.

We undress in the half-dark, snow light painting the glass. Cash peels my sweater off slowly, knuckles brushing the curve of my breasts, then the soft plane of my stomach. Even after five years, he still looks at me like he’s memorizing the map.

I shove his thermal up and off, dragging my palms over the flame ink on his forearms, the solid heat of his chest. Boots, jeans—everything hits the floor in a quiet scatter.

The office is warm from the baseboard heaters and our own breath. Outside, the mountain keeps roaring, lifts grinding, wind throwing powder against the windows. But in here, it’s sealed tight, just like the stranded cab the night this all started.

He lifts me onto the desk, papers skidding. My bare thighs part around his hips as he steps in.

Cash doesn’t rush. He never has. Not once he’s decided he’s staying. He cups the back of my neck, thumb stroking the hinge of my jaw, and kisses me deep and sure until I’m already wet against the cool wood.

“Lie back, my girl.”

I do. Confident now. No more wide-eyed uncertainty from that first night. I plant my heels on the edge of the desk and open for him, watching the way his eyes darken when he sees how ready I am. He drops to his knees between my legs like it’s the only place he belongs.

His mouth finds me without preamble. Hot, open, deliberate. He licks a long, slow stripe up my center, then seals over my clit and sucks. The sound is wet and filthy in the quiet office. I gasp, hips jerking. He pins them with one forearm across my belly and keeps going, tongue working in tight, relentless circles.

Two fingers slide into me, curling exactly where he knows I need them. I feel every ridge of his knuckles, the stretch, the steady pressure that builds behind my pubic bone.