Lindsey

A Mother Finds Her Mate

You have been driving toward these mountains for years in your mind. After a long time traveling up the roads in your car, you cut the engine at the tree line. Something in the dark exhales like it has been holding its breath waiting for you. You are a wife, a mother, a woman who has spent half her life shrinking herself into rooms that never fit — and tonight, standing in the cold pine-scented air, you feel the ground hum beneath your boots like a heartbeat that matches yours. Then the trees part, and he steps out: six-foot-four, silver-eyed, and looking at you like you are the only thing in the universe that has ever made sense.