“Kiss Colt?” She sat into the other chair. “Because I was drunk. And sad. And he was sort of you, but not you. And it was the end of the summer, and . . . because I was young and stupid. And—and you’d asked me to marry you!”

He stared at her, trying to compute all that.

“Did you even have a plan? Where were we going to live? I just . . . it was all so fast and—”

“I know. I did it all wrong.”

“No, Dodge.” She sighed. “You did it right. You always do it right. It’s not you. It’s me.” She looked down. “I got scared. I thought of all the things that could go wrong . . .”

Oh. “Like your mom leaving your dad?”

She drew in a breath, like he’d wounded her. “Yes. She dove into a life she wasn’t ready for and look what happened.”

“She had you.” He offered a smile.

“She got in over her head and left my dad devastated when she went off to pursue another dream.” She stirred her stew, the steam rising. “And maybe I am just like her. I dream of things, but never do them. Like the Iditarod. And my biology degree. And even my photography. But most of all . . . you.” She met his eyes. “I wasn’t ready to go all in, Dodge. To give you a yes for something that felt so . . . unplanned.” She nodded as if agreeing with herself. “It scared me.”

Oh. He hadn’t expected that.

“I loved you. Of course I loved you. You were part of the air I breathed, the smell of the pine, the majesty of the mountains, my best friend. But . . .” She looked away. “Sometimes I still think about what if—what if I ran the Iditarod or went to college or published my pictures beyond the Good News or . . . I don’t know. Left here for the Lower 48.”

“You want to leave?” And now his chest hurt.

“No. Sometimes. I don’t know.” She blew on a sporkful of stew. “And that’s what scares me. What if I dive in . . . and then it goes south?” She looked away. “I need to know that we’re not going to end up hurting each other again. I need to know that you won’t leave.”

Oh.

Right.

And maybe he didn’t have the answer, but suddenly, he knew exactly what he wanted. And shoot, Echo was right. Always had been.

He wasn’t over her. Had never been over her. And that truth had been simmering since he’d raced through a storm, fearing she’d been hurt.

Outside a wolf’s howl rose, mournful, filling the room with the sound of sorrow, then dying into the night.

Echo swallowed. “It’s all silly, anyway, because I have my dad. He needs me.”

She dug into her stew, and he ate in silence, not sure what to say.