We stare at each other for a lot longer than expected, and despite what my body, heart, and soul are aching for me to do right now, I know that’s about five steps ahead of where we’re at.
“I’ve got one more thing then I’ll go to my bed & breakfast for the night. Due to the short notice, I’m headin’ back to Timber Falls tomorrow.”
“But you’ll come back?” she asks automatically.
A slow-growing smile appears. “I said I’d keep comin’ back till you tell me not to and I meant it. That’s a promise,” I say before reaching into my front pocket and pulling out an envelope from the box Gramps left me. Her eyes drift to my hand as I hold it out to her. “Until then…”
She tilts her head to the side. “Homework?”
I chuckle as I slide the note against her palm, my fingertips grazing ever so softly over her silky soft skin, leaving a buzzing warmth as I do,
“Do you remember when I said I wanted to show you Henley and Marion’s letters?” She nods. “This is the first one that Marion wrote.”
Her lips part, her eyes flashing with surprise before they lift to mine. “Did you want to read it with me?”
Shaking my head, I push up to my feet. “Not tonight.” I bend down and brace my arm next to her head before dipping my face so it’s closer to hers, loving the way she doesn’t try to hide how affected she is right now.Makes two of us. “This one’s all for you.” I lower my lips to her ear. “I’m really lookin’ forward to our date, Em. More than anythin’ else in a long time.”
I press my lips to her cheek, breathing in the sweet smell of coconut and vanilla that surrounds her before mustering every ounce of my self control and stepping back. “I can see myself out and lock up behind me.”
“OK,” she whispers, doing it with a gentle smile that feels like a hammer to my chest.The good kind.
“Sleep well, wifey.”
“You too, hubby.”
And wouldn’t you know it, when I walk out to my car, I do it feeling like I’m on top of the world.
Diary entry - Marion Wilson
Mama was always telling us stories when we were young.
I loved them and used to beg her to tell us all about the mountain spirit who looked after land and the people who lived on it.
Mama shared the legend that the spirit calls soulmates to the mountain for these families as a reward.
A gift.
The one person put on earth for them and vice versa.
And today, aged 19 years and 138 days old, I realized the boy I’ve been crushing on from afar since I was 14, is the one I want to be my soulmate.
At 14, he gave me some of the Haskap berries he’d picked on the way to school.
At 15, he put tree sap on a mean girl’s chair so she couldn’t sit down for the rest of the day.
At 16, he won the school’s tree chopping contest and pointed to me when he was announced the champion.
Today, at age 19 years and 138 days old, that same boy who is so definitely a man now, slipped me a note in the grocery store. In it he asked me to meet him at the bottom of the Wilson mountain road tomorrow afternoon.
Of course, he’s from the other side of the mountain and if my Papa was to find out I was meeting a boy—a Cooper no less—I’d likely be sent to a convent in Anchorage.
But this man—my one and only crush—asked to meet ME!!
I have butterflies in my tummy just thinking about it. It feels like I’m standing on the edge of the mountain top, my toes curling over the edge, my arms stretched out wide all while my heart is reaching for something that feels so close I can almost touch it.
Maybe tomorrow when I meet Henley, I’ll know if he’s ready to catch me if I jump.
Because if Mama’s story about the mountain legend is true, there’s nobody else in Timber Falls or the whole world that I would want to be my destined one but him. Only Henley Cooper.