Chapter 20 - The Horizon We BreatheThe morning of our fifth wedding anniversary dawned crisp, brilliant, and utterly cloudless.
We didn't go to a restaurant. We didn't exchange expensive gifts wrapped in imported paper. Instead, we packed a simple wicker basket with fresh bread, sharp cheese, and a bottle of Swiss wine, and set out early on the trail leading up to the high ridge overlooking the valley.
The climb was steep, testing our stamina, but we took our time, stopping often to listen to the wind rushing through the pines or to watch an eagle soaring effortlessly across the endless blue sky.
When we finally reached the summit—a high, flat plateau of gray stone and alpine grass—the entire world seemed to spread out beneath us like a vast, glittering kingdom of ice and light.
Julia walked to the edge of the overlook, standing tall against the wind, her hair streaming out behind her. She threw her arms wide, taking a deep, long, unobstructed breath of the high-altitude air, her chest expanding fully and easily.
I walked up behind her, sliding my arms around her waist and resting my chin on her shoulder.
"Look at that horizon," she breathed, pointing out toward the distant peaks where the sunlight met the sky in a seamless line of gold and blue.
"I am looking at it," I murmured, pressing my face into her neck, feeling the steady, powerful throb of her pulse beneath my lips.
For the first time in my forty-one years of life, standing at the apex of a violent empire in Buffalo felt like standing in a prison cell. And standing here, on a cold stone ledge in the middle of nowhere with the woman who had saved my soul, felt like sitting on top of the world.
The past was buried beneath years of snow and mountain stone. The guns were silent. The empire was gone.
And as Julia turned around in my arms, pulling me down into a fierce, breathless kiss while the mountain wind blew all around us, I knew the only truth that would ever matter again:
May you like
We had survived the dark.
And the air we were breathing now belonged entirely to us.
