Chapter 20 Jace
JACE
I spent hours in town and most of it thinking about her.
The hardware run took forty minutes. The rest was errands I could have done next week, stretched thin because I needed the distance to think.
Didn't help. Every aisle in the supply store, every conversation with the kid behind the counter who wanted to talk about crampon ratings, my brain kept circling back to the same place.
Maya in the kitchen this morning, color climbing her throat when I pushed too hard on the teasing.
I pull the truck onto the gravel road toward the cabin and the mountains open up on either side, late afternoon light turning the snowline copper and gold, and I realize something that would have bothered me six months ago.
I missed her. Not in the abstract, not in the way you miss a good meal or a warm bed.
Specifically. The particular way she frowns when she's concentrating.
The sound she makes when I say something that catches her off guard, half laugh, half protest. Three hours away from her felt like wearing a boot that didn't fit right.
Irritating. Wrong in a way I kept noticing.
This is new.
I've liked women before. But I've never rearranged my internal calendar around one.
The trip has been on the books since October, gear tested, route mapped, clients confirmed.
Two weeks ago I started quietly looking at whether the dates could shift.
Not cancel. Postpone. Because the idea of being four thousand miles away from this valley right now, from this specific stretch of gravel road that leads to a cabin where she is, makes something in my chest go tight.
Up until her, the next trip was always the point. The thing pulling me forward. Now the pull is different and I'm driving toward it and I don't regret the change. That surprises me more than the change itself.
I think about this morning. Reid's knee against hers under the table. The way he sat down beside her like he'd been doing it for years, like the chair next to Maya was simply where he belonged and always had.
I waited for the jealousy. It didn't come.
What came instead was something I don't have a clean word for.
Rightness, maybe. The sense of a pattern completing.
Reid has been carrying this family on his back for fourteen years and I have never, not once, seen him look the way he looked this morning.
Settled. Present in a way that wasn't about duty or vigilance but about wanting to be exactly where he was.
I'm not threatened by that. I'm glad of it.
The cabin comes into view through the trees and I see her.
She's on the porch. Cross-legged in one of the wide Adirondack chairs, sketchpad on her knee, pencils fanned out on the table beside her.
Her hair is pulled back but pieces of it have escaped, catching the late light.
She's frowning at whatever she's drawing with the specific concentration of someone who has forgotten anyone else exists.
She looks up. Sees the truck. Sees me. Smiles.
And there it is. The thing I've been driving towards.
I've got it bad.
I park the truck and climb out. The cold hits immediately, clean and mineral, the mountain air carrying pine and the faint metallic edge of snow coming. I cross the gravel to the porch steps and take them two at a time.
"Working al fresco?" I lean against the porch railing, arms crossed. "Bold choice."
"It's not that cold." She's wearing one of the True North fleeces, sleeves pushed up to her elbows. Her fingers are pink at the tips. "I wanted to draw the treeline in this light."
Her smile dims slightly. She looks down at the sketchpad, adjusts a line with her thumb.
"Also…Owen's on calls. Important ones, it sounded like. I thought he could use the space."
There it is. Owen, doing what Owen does.
Retreating behind the work, behind the closed door, behind the careful, bounded version of himself that nobody outside this family knows is a fortress and not a preference.
People read his quiet as coldness. It's the opposite.
Owen feels everything. He just processes it at a depth most people don't have the patience to reach, and when something threatens to pull him out of that depth before he's ready, he goes still and goes internal and waits for the world to become manageable again.
"Owen's fine," I say. "He gets like that when the numbers are talking to him. Don't take it personally."
She nods, but I can see she’s not buying it.
She shifts in the chair and winces. Just a small thing, a tightening around her mouth, a hitch in the movement.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Just stiff." She rolls her shoulder. "I've been sitting in the same position for too long."
I look at her. At the stiff set of her shoulders, the way she's holding herself slightly crooked. Then I look at the sky above the cabin, the light going amber and rose along the ridge, the kind of Montana sunset that makes you understand why people believed in gods.
"Funny," I say. "I'm stiff too. Hours in a truck will do that." I push off the railing. "I know exactly what fixes it."
She raises an eyebrow trying to find out where I am going with this.
"Hot tub. Out back. Best thing for it."
The eyebrow stays up. "I don't have a swimsuit."
"Swimsuit." I say the word like it's a foreign concept. "Maya. There is no swimsuit protocol for the hot tub. The optimal hot tub experience is, in fact, completely naked."
Her lips part.
"However," I continue, before she can form whatever objection is loading, "you can wear whatever you want. T-shirt. Shorts. Full evening gown. I'm not particular." I hold up my hands. "I’ll be on my best behavior. Scout's honor."
"Were you actually a scout?"
"Absolutely not. But the sentiment stands."
She's chewing her lower lip. The hesitation is visible, a small war between the part of her that wants to and the part that's been trained to calculate the cost of wanting anything. I've watched this war play out across her face a dozen times since she arrived.
"Where's fun Maya?" I tease. "I know she's in there."
Her chin lifts. Just slightly. Just enough.
Challenge accepted.
"Go get ready," I say. "Meet me around back."
She stands, gathers her pencils with quick, precise movements, and goes inside without looking back.
The screen door closes behind her and I stand on the porch for a moment, breathing cold air and willing my body to calm the hell down because the image of Maya in a hot tub is already doing things to me that are going to be very difficult to disguise in water.
I go around the back of the cabin. The hot tub sits on the weathered deck, sunk into the platform, ringed by granite boulders and tall pines that block the wind and frame the sky.
I pull the cover off, check the temperature.
Perfect. Steam curls off the surface into the cold air, softening the edges of everything it touches.
I consider the lights. Decide against them.
The sunset is doing enough, painting the steam gold and copper.
The pines are going dark at their bases while their tops still catch the last of the light.
Behind them, the mountains are turning that specific shade of blue-violet that only happens in the fifteen minutes before the light goes completely.
I strip down to my boxers, leave my clothes folded on the deck, and lower myself in.
The heat hits my muscles and I groan, loud enough that I'd be embarrassed if anyone were listening. The tension in my back and shoulders starts to dissolve, the cold-stiff knots in my calves letting go one by one. I settle against the molded seat, arms stretched along the rim, and tip my head back.
Steam. Pine. Cold air on my face, hot water on everything else.
A minute passes. Two. The sky shifts from copper to rose. I catch myself listening for the screen door and realize I'm nervous. The kind where something matters enough that the possibility of it not happening sits in your stomach like a stone.
She might not come.
She might have gotten inside and let the doubt win and decided that getting into a hot tub with me was one step further than she was ready to take. And if she did, that's fine. That's her call. I meant what I said about best behavior.
But I want her to come.
The screen door opens.
Maya comes around the corner of the cabin walking like someone who has made a decision and is not entirely certain it was the right one.
White fluffy robe pulled tight. Bare feet on the cold deck, quick steps.
Hair piled up in a messy knot that exposes the full line of her neck and I lose the ability to form sentences.
She stops at the edge of the deck. Looks at the water. Looks at me. Her cheeks are already pink, and she hasn't even gotten in yet.
I open my mouth to ask if she needs help. Nothing comes out. My throat has apparently decided to participate in the general mutiny happening south of my belt. I clear it. Try again.
"Need a hand getting in?"
She shakes her head. Clutches the robe tighter. "Can you… hum… Close your eyes?"
I move to the far side of the tub, turn my back to her, and close my eyes.
I hear the robe drop, a soft sound of fabric hitting wood. Then the careful sound of her stepping in, one foot, then the other, the water shifting to accommodate her weight.
And then the sound she makes.
A low, involuntary exhalation. Half sigh, half moan, the kind of sound a body makes when heat hits muscles that have been holding tension for longer than they should.
It travels through the water and straight through me and any hope I had of controlling the situation below my waistline is gone. Completely, irreversibly gone.
"Okay," she says. Small voice. Shy. "You can look."
I turn around.