With May 1 and our wedding date both drawing near, my fiancé insisted on attempting a through-hike of the Sierra High Route.
I was about to talk him out of it when I accidentally overheard him talking with a few of his backcountry hiking buddies.
“Hayden, your phone has location tracking on it. Are you seriously asking us to carry if into the Sierra High Route and just toss it somewhere?”
“Nora is going to be worried sick. What if she hikes in after you?”
“Exactly. You two are about to get married. Pulling a stunt like this is just going to break her heart for nothing.”
After hearing that, Hayden Hawthorne’s mouth curved into a lazy smirk. “I don’t have a choice. I got this girl pregnant, and she’s almost due, so I need to be there to take care of her. I’ll have to disappear for a while first.”
“On a remote high-country wilderness route like the Sierra High Route, even if someone calls for help, there probably won’t be a massive search right away.”
“Just remember to throw my phone down a cliff so it looks like I disappeared without leaving a body.”
His hiking buddies exchanged glances. “Hayden, aren’t you afraid that once Nora thinks you’re dead, she’ll turn around and marry someone else?”
Hayden let out a scoff.
“Marry someone else? She’s so blindly in love with me that if I died, she’d only mourn me like a widow.”
“She’s already waited six years for me. What’s one more year? Once I come back and say a few sweet words, she’ll fall right back in line.”
Outside the door, I slowly let go of the doorknob.
So his pre-wedding adventure was really an adventure with another woman.
