“The ridge trails are harder. Some of them aren’t maintained. The sections I’ve been clearing are passable, but you’d want someone who knows the terrain.” I paused. “I’m heading out this morning to deal with a downed tree on the Blackrock Connector. When I’m done, I could take you up to a section I’ve been working on. There are some wildflowers up there that are on the checklist—not the hardest ones, but enough to make the hike worth it.”
She looked up from her notebook. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know.”
“I’m perfectly capable of hiking a trail by myself.”
“I know that too. But some of these trails aren’t flagged, and the ones I’ve been clearing aren’t on any map. You’d spend half the day looking for a trailhead that doesn’t officially exist.”
She studied me for a moment—weighing it the way she probably weighed everything. Pros. Cons. Risk assessment. Contingency plan. I could practically see the spreadsheet running behind her eyes.
“What time?” she asked.
“I should be done by noon. Meet me back here—and wear boots that can handle mud.”
She wrote that down too.Noon. Boots. Mud.
I watched her pen move across the page and felt something I had absolutely no framework for. I’d dated women before—casually, briefly. The kind of thing that ran its course in a few weeks and ended with a friendly text and no hard feelings. But I’d never once looked at someone across a table and felt like the ground was rearranging itself under my feet.
I’d felt it once before—not about a woman, but about a life. Standing on the sales floor of that outdoor gear store in Hartsville, surrounded by hiking boots and kayak paddles, watching customers walk out the door to go do the things I wanted to do.
Evan had been stocking shelves across the aisle, and I’d looked at him and said, “This is stupid.”
Six months later, we were eating ramen on air mattresses in a half-finished cabin, building a business out of nothing—and I’d never been more sure of anything.
This was that feeling. Different context. Same certainty. Like something clicking into a slot I hadn’t known was empty.
I wasn’t going to fight it. Fighting things you know are right is a waste of time, and I’d wasted enough time in my life selling kayaks to strangers.
“I should head out,” I said, standing. “The downed tree’s been blocking the connector since yesterday, and if I don’t clear it before the morning hikers show up, I’ll be pulling tourists off detour trails all afternoon.”
“What kind of tree?”
The question caught me off guard. “What?”
“The downed tree. What kind?”
“Red oak. Big one. Came down in the wind two nights ago—took out about thirty feet of trail.”
She nodded like she was filing it away, adding it to some internal database of information she might need later. I had no idea why a woman who planned corporate events would carewhat kind of tree was blocking a hiking trail. But the fact that she asked made me want to tell her every detail about every tree on this mountain.
I grabbed my flannel off the hook—the one next to where my hoodie had been before she’d claimed it—and shrugged it on. My gear bag was by the door. Chainsaw was in the truck. I had a full morning of work ahead of me—the kind of physical labor that usually emptied my head and let me think about nothing.
I was going to spend every minute of it thinking about her.
“Noon?” I asked from the doorway.
She didn’t look up from her map. “Noon.”
I walked out into the morning, the air sharp with pine and the first edge of warmth that meant the sun was clearing the ridgeline. My truck was in the drive, chainsaw already loaded—the same routine I’d followed a thousand mornings. But the kitchen behind me had sorted mugs and fresh coffee and a woman in my hoodie making bulletpoints, and nothing about this morning was routine.
I drove toward Blackrock with the windows down, running through the cut list in my head. The red oak would take most of the morning—it was big enough that I’d need to limb it first, buck the trunk into sections, then drag the rounds off-trail.
Hard work. Good work.
The kind of work I’d built my life around because it made sense in a way that selling things to people never had.
Hartley made sense.