Page 140 of The Lonely Road

We walk back uptown in the summer evening. At the corner of 23rd, we stop at a red light.

I decide to give him some advice—lessons I’ve learned recently that he might find useful. “Bree is going to be furious.” I tuck my hands into my pockets. “But she’s not going to be surprised. Not entirely. She’s smart. She’s been watching you for two years, and some part of her already knows something doesn’t add up.”

The light turns green, and we start walking again. “Tell her the truth. All of it. Don’t manage it.”

He’s quiet for a moment.

“Is that what you’re going to do? With Taya.”

“Yes.”

“How’s that going to go?”

“Badly. And then, I hope, better.”

He chuckles. “Good luck.”

“You, too.”

We go our separate ways in the New York evening—him uptown toward wherever he’s staying, me north toward the Chelsea apartment and the window that faces west, and the bourbon I’m not going to pour tonight because I have an early flight out of JFK.

I set the alarm and try to sleep.

CHAPTER 35

mason

Irent a car.

I drive for three hours through canyon road, mountain, and the unimaginably beautiful North Fork Valley—all of it manages to calm me and also excite me.

I miss Taya. Yes. But I find that I missed the mountains.

It’s a surprise.

As a man who traveled around the world and never felt the need for home, the Elk Mountains sing a siren’s song that I follow right through 133, where the creek cruises alongside the road and through the cottonwoods.

I come with various plans, and the ones that have to do with Jessup and Trafton, giving the Bureau what it wants, are solid. I know what I’m doing.

The plan to get in front of Taya and ask for her forgiveness—beg for a chance for us to be what I now know we can be—well, that one forms and dissipates. I can’t imagine her forgiving me because I can’t imagine me forgiving me.

She had the courage to tell me she loves me, and I hid behind the job, my own special kind of cowardice, and rejected her, told her I was just passing through.

This drive makes a mockery of that statement because I didn’t know it then—but I know it now—that when I came to Wildflower Canyon, I came home.

The mountains, the valleys, the people—and Taya.

Her most of all.

The ache in my chest grows—the part of me that doesn’t do this kind of flutter, because men like me aren’t supposed to feel things—and the pain I caused her settles into me more deeply than it ever did in New York.

My hands shake a little as I drive through Main Street, past her law practice, past Joy’s boutique, past the Sheriff’s office, past the diner, and by the time I reach the Ridgeline Inn, I know that I won’t be leaving again—not in the way that’s more than temporary.

This means that, plan or no plan, I have to fix what I broke—mend her heart and make her believe that I am the man who loves her more than anyone else ever has or ever will.

I’m flawed, yes, and she can probably—no, definitely—do better, but I won’t be giving her that chance. Whatever it takes, I will fix this.

Even I have trouble believing myself—but that’s all I’ve got.