River’s End

turned to give him a hand up.
    “That five hours was round trip, right, bwana?” Puffing a little, he gripped her hand and hauled himself up. “Because otherwise I’m just going to—Oh, Jesus.”
    He forgot his aches and pains and fatigue and filled himself on the view. It was an ocean of flowers, rivers of color flowing through green and washing up toward a slope of forested peak that shot into the blue like the turret of a castle. At the highest points, curving pools of snow shimmered through the rock and trees and made the flowers only more of a miracle to him.
    Butterflies danced, white, yellow, blue, flirting with the blooms, or settled delicately onto them with a quiet swish of wings.
    “Amazing. Incredible. This is where we put the house.”
    This time she laughed.
    “What are those, lupines?”
    “You have a good eye. Broadleaf lupines—the common western blue butterfly prefers them. Those are mountain daisies mixed with them. Those there, the white with the yellow center, are avalanche lilies.”
    “And yarrow.’“ He studied the fernlike leaves and flat white blossoms.
    “You know your flowers. You don’t need me up here.”
    “Yes.” He took her hand again. “I do. It was worth every step.” He turned and caught her unprepared with a soft and stirring kiss. “Thanks.”
    “At River’s End you get what you pay for.” She started to turn away, but he had her arms, eased her back around. “Don’t.” She closed her eyes before his mouth could capture hers again.
    “Why?”
    “I—” She opened her eyes again and could do nothing about the emotions that swirled into them. “Just don’t.”
    “All right.” Instead he lifted her hand to his lips, pressed them lightly to the knuckle of each finger and watched confusion join the clouds in her eyes.
    “What are you looking for, Noah?”
    He kept his eyes on hers, opened her fisted hand to press his lips to the center of her palm. “I’ve already found it. You just have to catch up.”
    He was afraid there was only one way for that to begin. “Let’s sit down. Liv. This is a good spot. It’s a good time.” He shrugged off his pack, sat on a rock and opened it to find his tape recorder.
    Seeing it in his hand, she felt her breath go thick and hot in her lungs. “I don’t know how to do this.”
    “I do. I want to tell you something first.” He set the recorder beside him, then hunted out his notepad. “I considered giving up the idea of this book. Setting it aside, as I did when I hurt you before.” He opened the notebook, then looked at her. “It wouldn’t have done any good, this time around. It would’ve been in the back of my mind. Always. Just as it would be in the back of yours. I can’t quite figure out, Liv, if that’s standing between us or if it’s why we’re here together. Why we’ve come back together after all this time. Why we’re lovers now. But I do know that if we don’t finish it, we’ll keep running in place. I need to go forward. So do you.”
    “I said I’d do it. I keep my word.”
    “And hate me for it? Blame me for being the one who brought it to the surface? Just the way you hated me that day in the hotel?”
    “You lied to me.”
    “I know I did. I’ve never been sorrier for anything in my life.”
    She’d expected him to deny it, to make excuses, rationalize. And she should have known better. He was a man with honor, one who’d been raised with it and with compassion. It was why what he did mattered, she thought now. Why he mattered.
    “I don’t hate you, Noah, and I won’t hate you for being honest about doing what you feel you need to do. But what I do feel is my own business.”
    “Not anymore it isn’t.” He said it lightly, but she heard the undercoating of steel in the tone. “But we can talk about that— about us—later.”
    “There is no us.”
    “Think again.” This time the steel was in his eyes. “But for now, why don’t you sit down?”
    “I don’t need to sit.” But she dragged off her pack, uncapped her water bottle.
    “Fine. Tell me about your mother.”
    “I was four when she died. You’d learn more about her from other sources.”
    “When you remember her, what do you think of first?”
    “Her scent. The scent she kept in one of her bottles on her vanity. I thought they were magic. There was one in cobalt with a silver band winding around it. It was something unique to her, warm, lightly sweet with a faint hint of jasmine. Her skin always