“Is that the cabin?” Nora edges closer to the side of the mountain.

I set a bowl of water on the ground for Charlie and get up, going to her side. “It is. It looks so small from up here, doesn’t it?”

“I can’t believe we hiked so far. No wonder you’re in such good shape.”

I laugh and put my arm around her. Throughout the day, I’ve stopped to make sure Nora was faring all right. And every time I suggested we turn around, she pushed forward.

“You’re not so bad yourself.”

“Yoga helps, but I’m a long distance kinda girl.”

I know exactly what she’s referring to, yet I flinch. We will be a long-distance couple. She has to go back to her apartment and sort things out…and we haven’t really discussed what there is to be sorted.

I close the distance between us, and my other hand goes to her waist. Nora turns toward me, and the wind blows her hair around her face. Sunlight is streaming down on us, and we’re standing at the edge of the world.

The thought of her going back to Berkeley—back to reality—terrifies me. Not because she’ll be hours away, but what if she realizes she doesn’t want this anymore?

“Are you thirsty?”

“Yeah,” she says, and we move away from the edge, taking shelter from the sun under a pine tree. I grab two water bottles from my backpack and hand her one. “Are we going to keep going?”

“Not today. It takes a good twelve hours to hike the whole thing. We don’t have enough daylight to make it to the top and down again.”

“Have you done it before?”

“Many times. Coming out here used to be the only way I could find peace.”

Nora takes a drink and then pours some of her water in Charlie’s now-empty bowl. “Have you seen a bear?”

“Yeah. If Charlie is with me, it scares the shit out of me. If I’m alone, it’s kinda cool.”

“What does Charlie do?”

I pat my old golden on the head. “The first time a bear crossed our path he didn’t know what to do. I think he saw it as a really big dog. We had a stare off, and the people behind us on the trail had bear-spray. They hosed him.”

“For just staring at you?” Nora frowns. “That’s kinda mean.”

“I thought the same, though standing only yards from a bear makes you realize how fucking ginormous they are. With big teeth and even bigger claws. And they’re so used to humans around here.”

“So better safe than sorry.”

“Right. I respect this was their home first. We’re encroaching on their territory, after all. I haven’t seen any by the cabin, though I am careful not to leave food out.”

“You’re not far from town, but it’s a totally different world up here.”

“It is.”

She smiles. “I like it, and I like how the cabin feels like it’s in the middle of nowhere but isn’t actually that far from civilization.”

“It’s only a few miles from the lake. I can run there faster than I can drive.”

Nora narrows her eyes, not believing me. “Oh, right. The road winds all around. You can run straight there.”

“Exactly.”

Nora and I sit on the ground, finishing our water and sharing a granola bar. Nora takes a few pictures before we start out descent down the mountain.

“Do you plan to live in the cabin forever?” she asks. It’s a simple question, yet it’s another that reminds me how far we really are from each other, how we want different things in life.

“Honestly, I don’t know. I considered finishing the renovations and selling since I’m sure I can make three or four times what I paid for it. If it were just me, I’d be fine there, but I do realize it’s not exactly family-friendly.”

Nora nods, and I can tell she’s thinking. She prefers quiet nights in over going out and likes to spend her free time reading or binging TV shows. Being half an hour from town doesn’t sound terrible, but the drive gets longer in the snow. Ridge Road is one of the last to get plowed, and a four-wheel drive car is a requirement for getting in and out of the driveway in the winter.

Dale Hollow is growing, with more businesses than ever, but the chances of Nora getting a job actually in town are slim. She’ll have to commute, and since I can work from home, it makes sense for me to relocate wherever she is.

And I will.

Without Nora, I needed to find a new way to stop the flashbacks. When things would get dark and the sounds of screaming and gunshots rang out in my head, I’d leave the house and come outside. Surrounded by nothing but nature, the flashbacks would fade.

Jason couldn’t be in front of me because no one was in front of me.

“You could always put on an addition,” Nora suggests. “The cabin has good bones and would save you a lot of money over building new.”

She says ‘you’ instead of ‘we’, and I wonder if maybe, just maybe, she’s coming to the realization that loving me isn’t going to be enough.