Chapter 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.”
He grinned. “What do you do? When you’re not on a girls’ trip getting displaced by plumbing emergencies.”
“I’m an events coordinator. Corporate events, mostly. Galas, conferences, product launches. I plan everything—venue, catering, timelines, vendor management, contingency plans for the contingency plans.” I took a sip of water. “I’m very good at making other people’s events perfect.”
“What about your own events?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, you plan everyone else’s big moments. What do you do for yourself?”
I didn’t have an answer. Not a good one. Not one that didn’t make me sound like exactly what I was—a twenty-three-year-old woman who’d poured everything into being useful and organized and indispensable, yet had somehow never gotten around to building a life she was actually living.
“I reorganize lumberjacks’ kitchens, apparently.”
He laughed—a real one, not the half-grin from yesterday. It changed his face entirely.
“You’re the most organized person I’ve ever met,” he said. “And I mean that as a compliment.”
“That’s not usually how people mean it.”
“It is how I mean it. My whole life is improvised. I quit my job because it felt stupid, moved to a mountain because Evan said yes, built a business because we didn’t have a better idea.
Everything I’ve ever done right, I did on instinct.
” He turned to look at me, and the late-afternoon sun caught his eyes in a way that made my breath hitch.
“You’re the opposite of everything I am. And I can’t stop looking at you.”
The words landed in my chest like a stone dropped into still water—heavy, spreading, impossible to ignore. I stared at the creek below us because looking at his face right then felt dangerous.
“I should tell you something,” I said. “Before this goes—wherever it’s going.”
“Okay.”
“I’ve never been with anyone.” I said it to the water, not to him.
“Not like that. Not at all. I’ve been so busy planning everyone else’s everything that I just…
never got around to it. Which sounds ridiculous when I say it out loud.
Like I forgot to schedule it between the catering walkthrough and the venue walkthrough. ”
I was deflecting with humor. I knew I was doing it. It was easier than sitting in the silence and letting the vulnerability breathe.
Dash was quiet for a beat. Then his hand covered mine on the warm rock—just rested there, steady and unhurried.
“It’s not ridiculous,” he said. “And it doesn’t change anything for me. If anything, it makes me want to be more careful with you, not less.”
“I don’t need careful. I need—”
I stopped, because I wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence. I needed someone who didn’t treat my inexperience like a problem to solve or a fragile thing to handle. I needed someone who just showed up and let it be what it was.
“You need someone who doesn’t overthink it,” he said. “Good news. I’ve never overthought anything in my life.”
I laughed, and it came out shakier than I wanted. His thumb traced a slow line across my knuckles, and the warmth of the boulder beneath us, the sun on my skin, and his hand on mine all merged into a single feeling I couldn’t separate into parts.
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said.
Not a question. Not a request for permission. Just a statement of intent, delivered with the same easy certainty he brought to everything—like he’d already made the decision and was giving me a courtesy heads-up.
“Okay,” I whispered.
He leaned in and pressed his mouth to mine, and the creek and the sunlight and the scavenger hunt and every plan I’d ever made went completely quiet.
His hand slid from mine to the back of my neck, tilting my head, deepening the kiss. He tasted like mountain water and warmth, and when I made a small, involuntary sound against his lips—something I’d probably blush about later—he pulled me closer, one arm circling my waist, and kissed me harder.
When we broke apart, I was breathing like I’d hiked another mile uphill. His forehead rested against mine, his hand still warm on the back of my neck.
“For the record,” he murmured, “I don’t overthink things. But I’m thinking about you. A lot. And I want to do this right.”
I looked at this man—sawdust in his hair, sun on his shoulders, sitting on a boulder above a creek in the middle of a mountain he’d made his whole life—and I stopped planning.
“Then don’t stop,” I said.