Last week, when I went in to restock the first aid kit, he was already there, sorting wedges. The room is barely big enough for one person, let alone two people with our particular history. I reached for the supply box on the top shelf and couldn't get it, and before I knew it he was right behind me, arm reaching over my shoulder, his chest pressed against my back.
His breath was hot on my neck and I got chills. I’m sure he noticed.
And when he brushed my shoulder, it felt like his hands on my hips in the truck, like his mouth on my throat, like every single thing I've been trying to erase from my memory. But it seems my body is a traitor that refuses to forget.
I almost said something, but I just couldn't get the words out.
So I grabbed the box and left, and spent the rest of the afternoon trying not to think about it.
I mean, he's making it worse by being good ateverything…and it’s so annoying. It’s impossible to ignore. It sneaks past your defenses because it's not for show. It's justhim, and I hate it.
I've been noticing it all against my will.
Monday of the second week, I watched him spend twenty minutes with a guest—an older man, maybe seventy, who'd signed up for the splitting demonstration but couldn't grip the maul properly. His hands were shaking.
Graham would've been patient enough, but Dean showed the man an alternate grip that gave him more stability, and when the guy finally split a round clean, Dean clapped him on the back and said something that made the man laugh so hard he had to sit down.
Wednesday, Jamie escaped Teagan's office again and made a beeline for Dean. I was crossing the yard with a stack of check-in packets and I stopped dead in my tracks. Dean was on his knees in the dirt, helping Jamie build a road for Blue Truck out of gravel and sticks, and dammit, the look on his face was achingly tender.
Thursday was the worst one. A couple at the crosscut sawing demo—Ewan's station, but Ewan was busy coaching another pair through their first cuts—had the husband muscling the saw on every stroke, yanking it toward himself so hard that the blade kept binding in the wood. His wife couldn't keep up. She was trying, adjusting her grip, leaning into her pull, but every time she found a rhythm he'd overpower it, and you could see the frustration building in her face. He kept saying things like, "Just hold on, babe, I've got it," which is the kind of help that isn't helpat all—it's a man making sure everyone knowshe'sthe strong one.
Dean was nearby, restacking timber. He watched for a minute, then walked over casually. He didn't correct the wife. He put his hand on the husband's arm, easy and nonthreatening, and said something I couldn't hear. But I saw the husband's grip loosen. I saw Dean gesture between the two of them—back and forth, back and forth—demonstrating the rhythm.
It's a conversation, not a competition. She pulls, you pull. You fight each other, the saw stops. You listen to each other, the wood falls.
Or something similar to that. I filled in the words based on Dean’s movements.
The husband nodded, a little sheepish. They reset. And this time—her pull, his pull, smooth and even—the blade sang through the timber, and when the round dropped free, the wife laughed, and the husband looked at her as if he was seeing her for the first time all day.
Dean gave them both a nod and walked off like he hadn't just fixed something bigger than a sawing technique.
He didn’t make it a thing. He doesn’t need the credit. He just seems to live in that quiet kindness nobody's supposed to see.
But I see it, and others who pay attention do too. And every time, the crack in my armor splits a little wider, and I dig in harder because if I stop being angry, I have to start being something else, and I'm not ready for that.
Anger is simple. Anger is safe.
I keep telling myself that.
Though it's getting less and less convincing.
Friday afternoon, Connor radios me from the office and asks if I can run a waiver update out to Dean. He's at the secondaryclearing past the cedar grove, prepping timber for next week's crosscut demo.
Usually, we text. But if something’s urgent and the person is out in various parts of the camp, cell service can be patchy. Meaning, I have to physically walk into the forest and find him.
And the universe continues its streak of being audacious at my expense.
The trail to the secondary clearing is shaded and cool, the canopy thick enough that the afternoon sun only comes through in scattered coins of light on the dirt. It smells of rich soil and sap. Unless that sweetness is the wildflowers that grow along the creek bed. It's beautiful out here, and I'd enjoy it more if I weren't marching toward the one person on this mountain I'm trying to avoid.
I hear him before I see him.
There’s the rhythmic crack of a maul hitting wood…solid and powerful. I come around the bend in the trail and there he is, splitting rounds off a downed cedar. He's stripped his flannel and is working in just a T-shirt, the fabric dark with sweat and clinging to his back and shoulders.
My god, the man is fine.
I stop walking.
He hasn't seen me yet as he sets another round on the block, straightens, lifts the maul overhead, and brings it down in one clean stroke. The wood cracks apart and falls in two perfect halves, and he kicks them aside, reaching for the next one. And those arms are—whydo they have to be so magnificent?