Not the way my cabin made sense. Or the trails. Or the weight of a saw in my hands. She made sense the way the mountains had made sense the first time I’d seen them—like something I didn’t know I was looking for until it was right in front of me.
Twelve hours. I’d known her for twelve hours, and she’d reorganized my kitchen, my morning, and things I wasn’t ready to think about yet.
Some things you just know.
3
HARTLEY
He was a different person on the mountain.
I’d gone back up to the apartment to swap my sandals for boots and grab my day bag, but I’d kept Dash’s hoodie. It was warm and broken-in and thick enough that I hadn’t bothered with a bra underneath—a decision that would have horrified the version of me who packed a lavender packing cube specifically for intimates. But the hoodie covered everything, and something about this trip was making me care a little less about the checklist.
In the cabin, Dash was a mess—mismatched mugs, engine parts on countertops, a life held together with duct tape and good intentions. Out here, he moved through the woods like they were an extension of his body. He stepped over a downed log without looking, steadied a loose rock with his boot before I reached it, and pointed out a cluster of white flowers growing in a crevice I would have walked right past.
“Bloodroot,” he said, crouching beside them. “They’re on the checklist. Lower-point species, but they only bloom for a few days, so most people miss them.”
I photographed them, checked the GPS tag, and tucked my phone away. I was getting into the scavenger hunt more than I’d expected—not with Paisley’s intensity, not like a mission—but there was something satisfying about spotting these small, hidden things and documenting them. Like checking items off a list, which had always been my favorite part of any job.
The trail climbed steeply after the bloodroot. Dash had warned me it would get rougher, and he hadn’t been exaggerating. We scrambled over rocks that required using our hands, ducked under branches he held back for me, and crossed a section where he’d literally chainsawed a path through fallen timber. The sawdust was still fresh—pale and fragrant, clinging to the ferns on either side of the cut.
“You did this today?” I asked, stepping over a limb.
“This morning. The red oak came down across the connector trail, but a couple of these smaller ones were blocking this route too. I cleared them while I was up here.”
“Before noon.”
“I start early.”
The condition of his cabin made sense now. He poured every ounce of effort into the mountain—the clean cuts, the cleared paths, the careful way he identified which trees were safe and which ones needed to come down. By the time he got home, he had nothing left for domestic life. The kitchen wasn’t laziness. It was the leftovers of a man who spent his best energy on the thing that mattered most to him.
I understood that more than I wanted to admit.
My apartment back home was immaculate—color-coded closet, labeled pantry, a cleaning schedule on the fridge. But my personal life was the junk drawer. I could coordinate a two-hundred-person fundraiser without breaking a sweat. I couldn’t plan a Saturday night that didn’t involve my laptop and a glass of wine.
We reached a creek crossing where the water ran fast over a bed of smooth rocks. Dash went first, then turned and extended his hand.
“Current’s stronger than it looks. The rain last week fed it.”
I took his hand. His grip was warm and rough, and when I stepped onto the first rock and it shifted under my weight, his other hand caught my waist—firm, steadying, gone the moment I had my balance.
Except the heat from his palm stayed on my hip like a handprint.
On the other side, the trail opened into a spot that made me stop walking. The creek widened into a shallow pool, clear enough to see the pebbled bottom, edged by a massive granite boulder that rose out of the bank like it had been placed there on purpose.
The boulder’s flat top was broad enough to sit on, sun-warmed and angled toward the water. Ferns and wildflowers lined the bank, and the sound of the creek was constant and soft, like white noise with a heartbeat.
“This is where I eat lunch when I’m working this section,” Dash said, like he was showing me a break room instead of one of the most beautiful places I’d ever seen.
He climbed the boulder first and offered me a hand up. The rock was warm under my palms, almost hot where the sun hit it directly. We sat side by side, feet hanging over the edge, the creek below us catching the light in flashes of silver.
He pulled two water bottles from his pack and handed me one.
For a minute, we just sat there, drinking water in the sun, listening to the creek. It was the most relaxed I’d been since I’d arrived in Wildwood Valley. Maybe longer.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“You’re going to anyway.”