Chapter 10
One Bed, One Blanket Wall
Beau
The crowd doesn’t quiet down until we’re halfway to my truck.
Amanda and Luis from Team Tune-Up show up out of nowhere to loudly wish us well. Amanda tosses a silk flower in our direction, and Maisie catches it as smoothly as a bridal bouquet.
Luis grumbles about bug spray. “You said you packed it!”
“I packed snacks!”
“Great, now we can feed the mosquitoes.”
“Doesn’t matter anyway, we’re not going.”
Barbie but, there’s something about it that gets to me.
She gives me a sheepish shrug and says, “I didn’t exactly plan to win.”
“Neither did I,” I tell her.
But I packed anyway. Just in case.
Her backpack joins my duffel in the back of my truck. It’s an old forest-green 1965 Ford F-250 that I rebuilt two winters ago—reliable, scratched in the right places, and simple. No pretense. I like that in a vehicle. I like that in people, too.
She didn’t expect to win, didn’t expect to come along, and yet here it is. Here she is. Part of me wonders what she packed. Part of me wonders if she second-guessed every item the way I second-guessed every step I took toward saying yes to this whole thing.
Maisie climbs into the passenger seat, cheeks pink from the frenzied packing, or possibly from the way a dozen townspeople just hollered goodbyes like we were off to consummate something.
I pretend not to notice how she tucks a loose curl behind her ear and suddenly can’t meet my eyes.
She says only, “thank you,” as she fastens her seatbelt and gives Peaches a look when the dog tries to hop in the backseat.
“Sorry, Peaches,” I say, gently nudging her out. “This getaway’s strictly plus one.”
Maisie snorts and shakes her head. I pretend not to notice the way she glances at me, quick and cryptic.
But my chest constricts anyway, cinched tight as a belt beneath my collarbone.
I press a fist there, as if that might loosen the grip.
Her look is not quite a question and not quite an invitation, but it lingers.
It’s like she’s trying to make sense of this prepared-almost-excited version of me—and isn’t sure whether she wants to. Or maybe she already has.
The cabin is deeper in the woods than I expect.
We pass the turn off to the Little Kilchis River, where the water winds slow and glassy under a canopy of evergreens.
Then the road switches to gravel, tires stirring up dust as we climb higher into thicker trees in the Tillamook National Forest. Finally, the trees open just enough to reveal a small pine-framed cabin tucked into the grove, as if the forest trees purposefully sprouted around it, hiding it until now, when we would find it.
The air smells like woodsmoke, moss, and sun-warmed bark—a scent between the inside of a forest and the memory of a campfire night you never want to end.
It smells like peace. The kind of place where your guard might slip without warning.
There’s a small stack of firewood on the porch, a hammock rolled up in the corner, and a pinecone wreath nailed crookedly on the door.
Inside, it’s warmer than the shaded woods outside. Someone started a fire to welcome us, and the heat is just enough to remove the chill from the Coast Range air.
It’s your typical one-room cabin. I glance around—pause. Then glance again. Yep. One room. One bed. My brain tries to act unfazed, but the muscles around my ribs tighten as it figures out the math. Not sure what I expected, but the whole one room situation has my nerves up.
The cabin’s interior has weathered walls, a braided rug in the center, a small kitchen, barely big enough to be useful, and in the corner, that one bed—canopy frame, patchwork quilt, and enough pillows to smother a lumberjack.
I set our bags down, shrug off my jacket, and instinctively reach up to adjust the leather cord around my neck. The guitar pick pendant rests just below my collarbone. I wore it on every stage I ever played. Been a while since it meant anything, though.
Maisie notices. “That’s a guitar pick, right?”
I nod, my thumb brushing over the edge. “My first one. It’s habit now, wearing it. But it meant a lot to me back when I thought music could change the shape of a day, or a person, even.”
She doesn’t let that go. “You have that much talent, and you’re just…hiding it around your neck?”
It’s not a dig. It’s sincere curiosity. She’s looking at me as though I’m some treasure chest the world forgot to open.
Then, carefully but without hesitation, she says, “The world deserves to hear you. The kind of gift you have. It isn’t meant to stay hidden.”
“Sometimes,” I say, “it’s easier to keep the best parts of you silent when no one knows they’re missing.”
Maisie doesn’t say anything to that. Just watches me for a second longer. Then she steps deeper into the room, turns her attention to the bed, and stops short.
“There’s only one bed,” she says.
I glance at her, then the bed. “You’re not the only one who didn’t see that coming.”
She recovers and snorts. “I’m not sure if this was matchmaking or matchmaking with intent to scandalize.”
We both stand there a fraction too long, eyes on the bed, but neither of us is willing to be the first to acknowledge just how intimate this setup is.
Then Maisie clears her throat and tosses her hands in the air with a dry, “Well, if the townsfolk want scandal, we should at least make them work for it.”
She disappears into a closet and emerges with a curtain rod and a mismatched armful of blankets. “Help me out here, handyman.”
We balance the rod between the top and bottom of the canopy frame and drape the blankets over it like a makeshift wall. Uneven folds. Zero symmetry. Not an ounce of confidence.
“Respectable,” Maisie says, hands on her hips. “As in, my grandma would approve—if she didn’t squint too hard.”
“Structural,” I reply, stepping back to examine our handiwork. “As in, it probably won’t kill us in our sleep.”
We share a look, and despite everything: the bed, the town, the tiny trace of something between us, I smile.
She claims the lamp side. I take the fireplace corner. The line has been drawn.
Dinner is simple. Not much in the kitchen besides a few shelf-stable staples and a note from the Sweetpines Committee that says, “Surprise! Romance tastes like boxed pasta.”
We find a packet of fettuccine and a jar of roasted red pepper sauce that miraculously hasn’t expired. Maisie laughs as she reads the label.
“This feels less romantic getaway and more dorm room nostalgia.”
“It’s gourmet,” I deadpan, pulling a dented saucepan from the cabinet.
We cook side by side in the miniature kitchen, trying not to bump into each other. We fail. Often. It’s impossible not to.
The space is barely wide enough for two people to breathe, let alone stir pasta. At one point, Maisie leans over to check the sauce and her hair brushes my shoulder. My arm jerks, almost knocking over the pot.
She glances up, smiling. “You okay there, Gordon Ramsay?”
“Fine,” I mutter. “Just got attacked by a stray curl.”
I stop fighting to avoid contact, and it becomes part of the rhythm. At one point, she sprinkles in too much salt, and I mock gasp. She sticks out her tongue. I threaten to take over stirring. She dares me to try.
And somewhere between a sauce-splattered counter and stolen glances, it becomes clear we’re not just making dinner. We’re building something: awkward, unexpected, but real.
Once, we both reach for the container of dried Italian spices in the same drawer. Our hips knock. Hers lingers. Or maybe mine does.
She chuckles, her voice a little breathier than usual. “I swear this kitchen shrinks every time we move.”
“Cabin’s conspiring against us,” I half-joke, but I don’t step away.
As I sit down at the small table near the window, my knees knock against hers under the table.
I glance at her, but she’s looking down at her plate.
We don’t talk about the contest or the town or what this is becoming.
Just the pasta. And how it’s somehow the best meal either of us has had in a long time.
After dinner, I clear the plates, and she sets a kettle on the stove. Then I grab for the same mug as she does at the exact same time, a plain white one with a cartoon cactus. We fumble. Our hands meet around the handle, skin against skin for half a second too long. It zings.
Years ago, I forgot I was still holding needle nose pliers when I went to unscrew the metal base of a candelabra bulb that had lodged tightly in the socket after the bulb broke. The electric jolt knocked me off the ladder.