Chapter 2
two
Mac
I’ve spent three years in Silver Ridge. Three years of keeping my head down, doing my work, staying invisible. And one woman with dark curls and a warm smile nearly unravels me in under ten minutes.
The yarn bag feels heavier than it should as I head to my truck, parked at the end of Main Street where I always park. It’s far enough away that I don't have to talk to anyone. Snow is still falling, light and steady, covering the town in that particular quiet that only comes with fresh powder.
I should go straight home. Deliver this to Birdie, get back to my cabin, back to the safety of solitude.
Instead, I sit in my truck with the engine running, staring at nothing, her face filling my mind.
Those eyes. Brown and warm, lighting up when she smiled. The way she moved around her shop, graceful despite the ribbon chaos. How she smelled like vanilla and something floral when I got close. The slight breathlessness in her voice when she first saw me.
She felt it too. That pull.
Fuck.
I put the truck in gear and force myself to drive toward Birdie's place, up the winding road that leads to our side-by-side properties on the outskirts of town. My cabin sits hidden in the trees, a quarter mile past Birdie's yellow house with its flower boxes and wind chimes.
I should go straight home. But after that fall last week, I need to check on her. Make sure she's okay.
The yarn bag sits on the passenger seat, and I can't stop thinking about how Isla's fingers felt brushing against mine.
Three years ago, I rolled into Silver Ridge with nothing but a duffel bag, my discharge papers, and a head so full of noise I couldn't think straight.
I'd spent two years after leaving the military drifting—Vancouver, Calgary, random tiny towns whose names I barely remember.
Working construction, getting in fights, drinking too much, sleeping too little.
The nightmares got worse. The hypervigilance. The rage that would come out of nowhere over nothing.
My last therapist—the one I actually listened to—suggested somewhere remote. Quiet. A place where I could learn to be still.
I found the cabin listing online. Fifty acres, off-grid, a fixer-upper that would keep my hands busy.
The owner mentioned an elderly neighbor who'd been worried about the property staying vacant.
That neighbor turned out to be Birdie Callahan, and she turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.
She appeared on my porch the second day I was here, carrying a casserole and wearing a flowing purple dress that looked like it came from a commune in the seventies. Probably did.
"You're the new neighbor," she'd said. "You look like you could use a friend and a good meal. I'm Birdie."
I'd tried to send her away. Told her I wasn't good with people. She'd laughed and walked right past me into the cabin, setting the casserole on my makeshift counter like she owned the place.
"Nobody's good with people, darling. We're all just pretending and hoping for the best."
Within a week, she was bringing me dinner twice a week. Within a month, I was fixing things around her house without being asked. Within three months, she'd figured out my secret.
I'd been knitting on my porch—stupid, careless—and she'd walked up the path without me hearing. By the time I noticed her, she was already smiling.
"My late husband used to whittle," she'd said, settling into the chair beside me like it was the most natural thing in the world. "Said it kept his mind quiet. Is that what the knitting does for you?"
I'd expected judgment. Mockery. Instead, she'd asked if I'd teach her a few stitches, claiming her crochet skills weren't translating well to knitting.
That's how it started. Her selling my work at craft fairs, keeping my secret, funneling the money to veterans' charities that help families with kids. Never pushing me to be anything other than what I am.
I pull into her driveway, leaving the yarn in the truck. She's eighty-five and stubborn as hell, and that fall last week has been eating at me ever since. I need to see with my own eyes that she's okay.
Before I can knock, the door swings open.
"Mac!" Birdie beams at me, her long gray hair draped over one shoulder. She's wearing a tie-dye tunic and about fifteen bracelets that jangle when she moves. Her wardrobe hasn't changed since Woodstock, and I doubt it ever will. "Come in, come in. I just made tea."
She steps back from the door, and I catch the slight hitch in her gait. Still limping.
"Just checking on you." I follow her inside to her warm, cluttered living room, watching to make sure she doesn't stumble. It smells like incense and the rosemary bread she's always baking.
She settles into her favorite chair, wrapping a crocheted blanket around her legs. "I'm fine, Mac. The hip barely even twinges anymore."
I grunt, not entirely convinced, but she looks steady enough.
"So." She eyes me over her teacup, that knowing look on her face. "How was town?"
I freeze, halfway to standing. "Fine."
"Did you get your yarn?"
"Yeah."
"From Mountain Treasures?"
Fuck. "Yeah."
"Isla's a sweet girl. Struggling a bit since her grandmother passed, but she's trying."
"Seems like it." I don't turn around. If I do, she'll see too much. Birdie always sees too much.
"Pretty, isn't she? Those big brown eyes and all that curly hair."
Fuck. "Didn't notice."
Birdie laughs, that knowing sound that means I'm not fooling her for a second. "Of course you didn't, darling. Just like you didn't notice she's exactly your type: smart, creative, kind."
"Don't." The word comes out in a snap. I force myself to breathe, to gentle my tone. "Don't, Birdie. I'm not... I can't."
"Why not?"
I finally turn to face this woman who's become the closest thing to family I have. "You know why. You know what I am. What I've done. The things I still deal with."
"I know you're a good man who's been through hell and came out the other side." She sets the yarn down and crosses to me, her hand warm on my arm. "I know you've built a life here, a quiet one, and that's okay. But Mac, honey, there's a difference between choosing solitude and hiding from living."
"I'm not hiding."
"You order yarn online instead of walking into a shop on Main Street. You park at the far end of town. You work jobs that keep you away from people." Her voice is gentle, no judgment in it. Just truth. "You're hiding, and that's been okay. You needed time. But maybe it's time to stop?"
I think of Isla's smile. The way her fingers brushed mine. The heat that shot through me at that simple contact.
"She's too young," I say finally. "Too bright. She deserves someone whole."
"She's twenty-five. And you're more whole than you think." Birdie squeezes my arm. "I'm not saying marry the girl tomorrow. I'm saying don't run from a connection just because you're scared."
"I'm not scared."
"Alright." She doesn't push. That's one of the things I love about Birdie, she knows when to let something go. Instead, Birdie pats my arm. "The craft show is Saturday at the church. I'll need your help setting up."
I nod, grateful for the change in subject. "What time?"
"Eight. And Mac? That new afghan. The gray one? Bring it. I have a feeling it'll sell fast."
I leave before she can say anything else, trudging through the snow to my truck. The drive to my cabin takes five minutes, winding through trees until I reach the clearing where my place sits.
It's not much. One bedroom, a main room with a kitchen at one end, a bathroom I renovated myself. But it's mine. Quiet. Safe.
Inside, I shed my jacket and boots, build up the fire, and sink into my chair by the window. The chair where I spend most of my nights, knitting while the darkness presses against the glass.
I pull out my current project from the basket beside the chair. The afghan I started last week, the one I bought the yarn to finish. My hands move automatically, the needles clicking in the silence, the repetitive motion smoothing out the rough edges in my head.
This is what the therapist taught me, in that hospital, after the last deployment went to shit. When the nightmares were so bad I couldn't sleep, when my hands shook so hard I couldn't hold a gun anymore—which is probably what saved my life.
"Find something repetitive," she'd said. "Something that requires focus but becomes meditative. Something that creates instead of destroys."
So I found knitting. It helped. Slowly, painfully, but it did.
Now it's the only thing that keeps the noise at bay. The only time my hands are steady, my breathing even, my mind clear.
I work until the light fades, until my phone buzzes with a reminder to eat dinner. I force myself to stop, to heat up leftovers, to go through the motions of normal human existence.
But when I return to the chair, when the needles start moving again, my mind drifts where it shouldn't.
To dark curls escaping a braid. To warm brown eyes and a soft smile. The way Isla looked at me. Me.
To the possibility that maybe Birdie is right.
Maybe it is time to stop hiding.
The thought sits heavy in my chest.
I knit faster, the stitches tight and even, the pattern emerging row by row. Creating something beautiful from nothing. Making order from chaos.
It's all I know how to do anymore.
The needles click in the silence. The fire crackles. Snow falls outside my window.
I let myself wonder what it might be like to let someone in.
Even if I'm not sure that I know how anymore.