Page 93 of Carry On (Love Doesn’t Cure All #4)

LINCOLN

one month later

Sunrise peeked through the trees, illuminating every chilly breath I let out.

The ground crunched under my feet as I stuck to the trail.

The sounds of nature were mesmerizing. Birds sang overhead, and the ground rustled with noises that probably should’ve worried me.

Despite having been raised in a small town, I hadn’t spent a lot of quality time with nature. It wasn’t my thing.

But Canada? Oh, Canada was gorgeous.

I’d spent two days in Banff National Park, hiking and sleeping. Honestly, while I worked out, my exercise routine was nothing compared to hours of hiking in the forest. My body was sore, but my mind was clear for the first time in over a month.

Only when I was completely settled in and ready did I catch a shuttle to hike to Moraine Lake.

“Holy…” Words escaped me as the trail spilled into the valley.

No amount of research could prepare me for just how blue the lake was.

I’d never seen anything like it. With the reflection of snow-capped mountains and forests around me, the lake was something otherworldly.

It was calm and serene. Beautiful and haunting.

It was everything Nash would’ve loved.

And he was the entire reason I was here.

I hadn’t buried him in Seattle or Pine Creek.

Nash belonged to neither of those places.

Charlotte and Mitchell paid for a headstone in Pine Creek’s cemetery to give him an empty memorial place.

It didn’t feel right to bury him there, and his family respected that.

But it didn’t feel right to bury him in Seattle either.

Because of that, my marriage, which started as a felony, was ending in what was probably another one. But I couldn’t think of a better place for him than the one he’d always dreamed of visiting.

I spent the day sitting by the lake. I watched the sun rise over the mountains and dance across the water as I listened to the songs Nash had recorded for me.

For the first time in a while, I felt peace.

The ache in my chest was a permanent fixture, one I had to learn to live with, but even that eased enough to let me breathe a little easier.

“You would’ve loved it here,” I whispered as I unlocked the pocket that held his ashes. That single notion made the whole trip worth it. This was where he belonged, free and uninhibited by the world that rejected him.

“I miss you,” I said aloud. I poured his ashes over my palm and let the light breeze carry his ashes into the wild.

Every day, I missed him as little pieces of the world reminded me of him.

A conversation.

A moment in a book.

A song.

I found him most often in music. I experienced the world differently because I knew him.

That was the thing about grief, though: it was transformative in both an ugly and beautiful kind of way. No part of my life would ever be the same because I had loved and been loved by Nash Calhoun.