Nearly a month later, Jules hadn’t gotten around to leaving Obsidian. About two weeks after she’d quit her job, the cable internet had finally come through, and now that she was unemployed, why not job hunt from a dining room with a gorgeous view of a mesa?

The job hunt was kind of a problem, though. As much as she was discovering that she liked being in Obsidian — beautiful landscapes, starry nights, oh, and Seth in her bed — there weren’t any geology jobs there. In fact, Obsidian had almost no jobs, period, so she was having to look further afield for work.

Much further afield. The closest cities of any size were St. George, Utah, and Grand Junction, Colorado, each about four hours away. Neither had a lot of science jobs. For what she wanted to do, she’d probably need to go to Salt Lake, Denver, or maybe Flagstaff.

The thing was, how did she bring that up to Seth? The two of them, along with Zach, had fallen into their lives together almost instantly, in a way that felt so perfect and right that Jules knew she could never bring herself to leave.

But she also couldn’t resign herself to a lifetime of waitressing at Big Mary’s, not if she could help it. She loved what she did.

It was a hell of a pickle, that was for a sure.

Before Jules could get any further in her worrying, she heard tires on the gravel driveway. Seth had finally fixed his truck — for now, anyway — and she didn’t have to drive him to his job anymore. The front door opened and she heard the familiar sound of his footsteps, the pause as he took off his shoes, then the slight echo as he walked down the hallway.

“Hey there,” he said. He crossed the room and moved to kiss her, leaning his tall frame down.

“Hey yourself,” she said back.

Seth flopped onto a couch, letting out a long exhale.

“How’s it going?” he asked.

Jules bit her lip. She hated to have this conversation as soon as he got home, but what else could she do?

“One of my former professors emailed me about an opening at the Geological Survey outpost in Salt Lake,” she said.

Seth raised his eyebrows.

“Are you going to apply?” he asked.

Jules put her laptop on the coffee table and twisted her hands together in her lap, pulling her feet up under her.

“What’s going on... here?” she asked, gesturing to indicate everything around them. “It’s just, Seth, there are no jobs in a two hour radius of Obsidian, and I really like being here with you, but...” she trailed off, shrugging helplessly.

Seth nodded, his face darkening a little.

“Yeah, I knew this was coming,” he said. Slowly, he rubbed his hands together, then sat forward. “You ever heard that if you love something, you should let it go?”

Jules’s mouth dropped open.

Did he just say he loved me and then break up with me all in one platitude? She wondered.

“What are you trying to say?” she asked, holding back tears.

“I think you should apply for the job in Salt Lake,” he said. “It’s closer than Dallas, isn’t it? Some weekends, I’ll drive up there, you can come back down here. We can do that video thing you showed me, on the internet.”

He looked at her, eyes pleading.

“Maybe after everything has settled down with the land ownership, Zach and I can rent this place out and I can move to Salt Lake. He’s gotta move to college anyway.”

“You can’t do that,” whispered Jules. “You can’t move away from here. You can’t sell this place, and nobody’s gonna rent it out, it’s in the middle of nowhere.”

Seth grinned.

“It’s a relaxing, holistic retreat in the middle of the most untouched natural splendor that Utah has to offer,” he said, grinning.

Jules blinked.

“You’ve been thinking about this,” she said.

“Of course I have,” he said, his face going serious. “Look, I know I sound insane, but when I see you, when I hear your laugh or watch you stick three pencils into your hair or see the way your freckles scrunch up when you get mad, I think to myself, this is it. And God knows that there’s not a whole lot in Obsidian. I love it here, yeah, but I’d rather be with you.”

Don’t blink or you’ll cry, Jules thought, her eyes welling.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“It’ll work out,” Seth said, taking Jules’s hands in his. “Trust me.”