3. Dean
DEAN
Saturday night wrecked me.
That's the truth I keep trying to fold into something smaller, something manageable, and it won't fold.
No, I didn't call her. Because I'm a coward who protects himself by leaving first, and my real name is attached to a court record that would make her regret everything.
So I let the phone sit on the nightstand and I told myself it was the right thing to do, and fuck, it felt like swallowing shards of glass.
I went into Monday telling myself to keep my head down and my mouth shut.
Your hard work will speak for itself.
I never expected to see Kaylee there.
The ground had dropped out from under me.
She’d stood there, clipboard in hand, with her camp polo and her hair pulled back in a ponytail instead of falling loose around her shoulders the way it had Saturday night.
But whatever warmth was in those eyes two nights ago was gone…as if someone had blown out a candle.
She works here.
I keep seeing the look on her face when she heard my real name…the betrayal that solidified into a hard shell so fast I almost missed the hurt underneath it. But in that first second: the raw, unguarded second before she locked it down, she was wounded.
I did that.
The first real connection I've felt in ages, and I set fire to it before it had a chance to breathe…and grow.
But what choice did I have?
The rest of Monday passes in a fog of orientation and self-loathing.
Connor walks me through the grounds, introduces me to equipment and protocols and emergency procedures, and I absorb it all to the best of my ability.
But underneath the competence, there's a second track running, and it's just her face on repeat. The before and the after.
By Monday night, back in my cabin, I’ve decided two things.
First: If I’m allowed to stay, I’m not leaving. Connor gave me a shot no one else would, and I'm going to earn it if it kills me.
Second: Hopefully, Kaylee doesn’t say a word to anyone about this.
I know she’s going to hate me for a long time.
Maybe forever. And I'm going to have to stand in that hatred every single day, because that’s the consequence of my actions, and because leaving would mean proving her right about exactly the kind of man I am.
By Thursday, I've memorized the camp's rhythms the way I used to memorize logging roads—by feel, repetition, and showing up before the light changes and staying after it fades.
At six a.m. the kitchen starts clanking.
Six-thirty: I hear Connor's boots on gravel, doing his walk-through.
Seven: the dining hall fills with the smell of coffee and bacon and whatever Teagan's convinced the cook to add to the rotation this week.
By eight, the guests are trickling toward the demonstration areas with their expectations set by whatever Sky posted on Instagram the night before.
The crew fans out. Graham heads to the axes, Ewan to the saws, Rourke to the log-rolling pond, and Brady to the climbing rigs.
And me—I go wherever there's a gap. Wherever I’m needed.
That's the deal right now. Connor didn't slot me into one program. He's rotating me through everything, letting me find my footing, which really means he’s letting the crew decide if I'm worth keeping.
Fair enough. I'd do the same thing. You don't hand a stranger the keys until you've watched them drive.
So I haul equipment for Graham in the mornings and assist Ewan with crosscut demonstrations after lunch.
I help Brady with his climbing gear and drag logs out of the pond with Rourke at the end of the day.
I arrive before anyone else, except Conner, and leave after everyone's gone.
I don't complain about the work. I don't talk about myself.
I just do the thing, and do it well, and hope that's enough.
It's not a strategy. It's the only language I speak.
Earlier in the week, I noticed the splitting station's chopping blocks are chewed to hell—cracked and uneven from a season of abuse.
I don't ask permission. I just come in early the next morning, select three cedar rounds from the timber supply, and shape new blocks before anyone else is awake.
I set them in place, sweep the chips, and am drinking coffee in the dining hall by the time Graham arrives and notices.
He doesn't say thank you. He inspects each block, tests the surface with his thumbnail, and nods once. Then he pours his coffee and sits down across from me and says absolutely nothing, which I'm learning is Graham's version of approval.
I helped Rourke reset the log-rolling pond after a group of corporate guys in matching polos spent an hour falling into the water and laughing about it.
Most of them couldn't balance for ten seconds.
Rourke was patient with every single one…
cracking jokes, adjusting their stance, and somehow making grown men feel like champions for standing upright on a floating log.
"You're quiet," Rourke had said, hauling a birch log back into position.
His arms are sleeved in Celtic knot tattoos and he handled the timber as if it weighed nothing.
"The strong-and-silent thing works for Brady, and often Graham, but they've had decades of practice.
You're going to need a personality eventually. "
I huffed out a laugh. "I have a personality."
"Do you, now?" He grinned—all Irish charm and no malice. "Because from where I'm standing, you've got a work ethic and a five-word vocabulary. Both admirable. But neither are much fun around a campfire."
I gave him half a smile. "Give me time."
"Sure, mate." He slapped my back as he passed. "You're doing grand, by the way. In case nobody's told you."
Nobody had told me. I stood there for a second with pond water soaking through my boots, holding on to those words harder than I should’ve.
My uncle used to say something similar. You're doing grand, kid. Different accent, but it had the same weight.
I hadn’t thought about it in years.
Then, my eyes began to burn as I tried not to feel too much about a throwaway comment from an Irishman I’d known for four days.
Thursday morning, a family of four shows up for the axe-throwing demonstration. Mom, dad, and two kids—a boy around twelve who's buzzing with excitement, and a girl, maybe nine, who looks like she'd rather be doing anything else.
Graham runs the session, and I'm assisting, which mostly means I retrieve axes, check targets, and make sure nobody loses a finger.
The boy picks it up fast. He’s got a natural arm. Graham nods at him, which from Graham is a standing ovation. The girl, though…is struggling. The axe is too heavy for her grip, and after two throws that barely make it halfway to the target, her lip starts trembling.
I crouch down next to her, knees in the dirt, so we're eye-level. "Hey. Can I show you something?"
She looks at me with big skeptical eyes. Behind us, her mom is hovering.
"The axe is fighting you because you're trying to muscle it. But here's a secret—" I pick up the lighter hatchet we keep for younger guests. "It's not about strength. It's about letting go at the right time. Like releasing a basketball. You ever play basketball?"
She shakes her head.
"Okay, bad example. How about skipping a rock?"
She gives me a tiny nod.
"Same thing. You're not throwing the rock. You're letting it fly." I hand her the hatchet, adjust her grip—three fingers, thumb on top—and stand behind her, guiding her arm through the motion slowly. "Feel that? The weight does the work. You just aim and release."
She throws. The hatchet hits the outer ring of the target with a satisfying thunk.
Her face cracks open into the biggest grin I've seen all week. "I did it!"
"Yeah, you did." And I'm grinning, too.
The mom mouths thank you at me over her daughter's head. The girl throws six more times, hitting the target on four of them, and by the end she's giving her brother shit about his technique.
Graham watches the whole thing from the side, beefy arms crossed over his chest, expression unreadable.
Later, as we're cleaning up, he says, "You're good at that."
I look up from the axes I'm inspecting. "At cleaning up? Yep."
"No, teaching," he says. "Most people don't know how to talk to kids without talking down to them." He shrugs, his broad shoulders barely moving.
"She just needed a lighter axe…and maybe a little guidance."
He holds my gaze for a beat, and something passes between us that I don't have a name for. Recognition, maybe.
Then he turns and walks off toward his workshop.
Friday, I meet Jamie, Connor and Teagan's little boy made entirely of rambunctiousness and opinions.
He comes barreling around the corner of the dining hall mid-morning, small legs pumping, a toy truck clutched in one hand and what appears to be half a granola bar in the other, heading directly for the equipment shed at a speed that suggests he has somewhere very important to be.
Teagan's half a step behind him, laughing and exasperated.
"Jamie Leigh, if you touch that axe rack, I swear—"
He doesn't touch the axe rack. He sees me instead, skids to a stop on the gravel, and stares up at me with an intense assessment I've only ever gotten from foremen deciding whether to hire me.
"You're really tall," he announces, not shy about it. Just stating a fact for the record.
"Yeah, buddy. I am."
"Are you taller than my daddy?"
"I think we're about the same."
He considers this, tilting his head like a small, sticky-handed professor weighing the evidence. "My daddy's the tallest. But you can be second tallest." He holds up the truck. "This is Blue Truck. He's a rescue truck. He saved a bear yesterday."
"That's impressive."
"It was a BIG bear." He stretches his arms wide, granola bar flinging crumbs across the path. "And Blue Truck wasn't even scared."