5. Dean
DEAN
For the next two days, Kaylee disappears.
Not physically—she's at work, at the registration cabin, doing her job the way she always does. But the Kaylee who existed before Tuesday night is gone.
And it’s difficult to accept that once again it’s because of me.
I see her crossing the yard with a stack of folders, and her eyes are puffy. Like she’d been crying all night. She couldn’t hide it with tea bags or concealer, though it’s obvious she tried. Her ponytail is looser than usual, as if she didn't have the energy to pull it any tighter.
She doesn't look at me. Before she didn’t look on purpose, and you could tell it took effort. She was using that as a weapon. This is different. This is someone who's used up all their fight and has nothing left.
At lunch, she doesn't come to the dining hall. Her usual seat is empty. Imogen glances at it, then at me across the room, and her expression isn't angry. It's worse. It's sad.
I wonder how much she knows.
Thursday, it’s the same thing. Kaylee eats at her desk or doesn't eat at all. When she has to interact with the crew, her smile is mechanical…there’s no dimple to be found.
She's polite to guests, but it seems completely hollow, and I know I'm not the only person on the crew who can tell.
A slow, sickening clarity hits me and settles in my gut like a stone.
I thought my silence was protecting her. Protecting the camp. Protecting Connor's trust and the fragile thing I'm building here. I told myself the lie was a kindness, that the truth would do more damage than the not-knowing.
But look at her.
My silence isn't a shield, it's a blade. And I kept telling myself I was falling on it for her sake, when really I was just too scared to put it down.
The thing I thought was protecting her is the thing that's taking her apart…and in turn tearing the whole camp apart.
Every day I don't tell her the truth is another day she sits at that desk believing she's the kind of woman men use and discard.
I can't do this to her anymore.
On Friday evening, the crew's wrapping up. Guests are heading to their cabins before Heritage Night. I'm cleaning the splitting station, sorting mauls by weight the way Graham prefers them, when I hear boots on gravel behind me.
Rourke crosses his big tatted arms crossed.
"Got a minute?" He asks casually, but his green eyes aren't casual at all.
"Sure," I reply.
He doesn't say anything right away. Just stands there, studying me with an expression I haven't really seen from him before. It’s serious.
Shit.
"I like you, Dean." He says it plainly, as if he's establishing a fact before building an argument on top of it. "You work hard. You're good with people. You've earned your place here, and I mean that."
"I hear a 'but' coming."
"Aye, you do." He uncrosses his arms and hooks his thumbs in his pockets. "I don't know what's going on between you and Kaylee. And before you tell me nothing—don't. I'm not blind, and neither is anyone else who knows her around here."
My jaw tightens and I set the maul down slowly.
"She's not sleeping," Rourke says. "She's not eating right.
She looks like someone kicked the light out of her, and she's doing everything she can to pretend otherwise.
But she's not fooling anyone." He pauses, his voice measured.
"That girl is family to me. To all of us here at Timber Run. She was here before you, and I will not stand by and watch her grind herself down to dust.”
"Rourke—"
"I'm not done," he interrupts, but there’s no heat in it.
"Whatever you're carrying—hiding—I don't need to know what it is.
That's your business. But I need you to hear what I'm about to say.
" He holds my gaze, and his eyes are steady and patient.
"Your silence is already hurting people. So what exactly are you protecting?"
The words are a punch to the gut.
He's right, of course. I’d come to the same conclusion just yesterday. Every justification I've been clutching for weeks—loyalty to Connor, protecting the camp, keeping the secret between us—crumbled like a rotted log.
There's nothing left between me and the truth except the parts I've never let anyone see…the identity, the shame, the story I've never said out loud because it makes it real in a way that a court record doesn't.
"You're right," I say.
Rourke nods slowly. "Then do something about it, mate. Before there's nothing left to fix."
And with that he pushes off the wall and walks away.
I stand at the splitting station for a long time after he's gone. The evening light is now amber through the trees, and somewhere across the camp, Ewan's tuning his fiddle for Heritage Night, and the smell of the fire pit is starting to drift through the air.
My uncle used to say that the hardest part of felling a tree isn't the cutting. It's choosing the direction it falls. Once you make the notch, gravity does the rest.
You just have to commit to the cut.
I find Kaylee at the registration cabin. She's alone—everyone else has migrated toward the fire pit—and she's shutting down her computer for the night, bag over her shoulder, keys in her hand. When she sees me in the doorway, her face goes blank.
"I'm heading out, Dean. Whatever it is, it can wait until—"
"It can't." I step inside and close the door behind me. What I'm about to say can't have an audience. "Please. Five minutes. And then if you want me to leave, I'll leave."
She stares at me. I can see her calculating whether to stay, whether to bolt, whether she has the energy for another round of me saying nothing useful.
The exhaustion in her eyes nearly breaks me.
"Five minutes," she says. She drops her bag on the desk, but doesn't sit. Then she crosses her arms, as if it’s the only protection she has left.
I don't know where to begin, so I begin at the beginning.
"My mom left when I was seven." The words come out rough, as if they've been stored in a place that doesn't get accessed often.
"Just took off one morning and never came back.
My dad was…he drank. A lot. He was there, but he wasn't, if that makes sense.
He was more interested in the bottom of a bottle than in raising a kid. "
Her throat bobs as she listens.
"My uncle took me in when my dad’s drinking got out of control.
Uncle Joe was a logger—old school. Lived in a cabin outside Spokane with no TV and a wood-stove and about forty acres of timber he knew by heart.
" I swallow. "He taught me everything. How to read a tree.
How to fall timber safely. How to sharpen a blade, maintain a saw, and respect the land while you're working it.
" My voice wavers, and I let it. "He was the only person in my life who ever made me feel like I was worth something.
Those years with him—eight through nineteen—they were the only stable thing I had. "
Kaylee's arms loosen slightly.
"He died when I was nineteen. He had a heart attack on a remote job site.
By the time anyone found him, he'd been gone for hours.
" I look at the floor. "I went off the rails after that pretty bad.
Fighting. Drinking. Doing every stupid thing a nineteen-year-old with no family and no direction can do. "
I force myself to look up. This is the part I've never narrated. The part where the court record becomes a story told in my own voice, and I have to watch her face while I tell it.
"When I was twenty-one, I was outside a bar in Missoula.
There was a man in the parking lot. He had a woman against the wall and she was crying and trying to get away from him, and nobody was doing anything.
" I feel the old anger flare, distant but still hot.
"I beat him up. Bad enough that when the cops showed up, I was charged with assault and arrested.
I couldn't afford a lawyer who'd make the context matter, so I went to prison. "
Her hand has come up to her mouth, stroking her jaw. I can't read her expression past it.
"I did eighteen months. And when I came out, I had a felony record and a certainty that I'd never be anything except what that piece of paper said I was."
It’s silent in the cabin, except for the distant murmur of Heritage Night beginning without us.
"I spent fifteen years with seasonal crews making up fake names and leaving before anyone got close enough to find out about my past. Every time I thought about staying—putting down roots, telling someone the truth—I'd picture their face when they learned what I am. And I couldn't take it."
I drag both hands down my face, and they're trembling.
"Connor found me through a contact in the industry.
He knew everything before he offered me the job.
The record, the drifting…and he gave me a chance anyway.
" My throat is so tight the words barely make it through.
"That night at the bar—the night I met you…
.in a town this small, if you'd searched my real name and told anybody, I would’ve put Connor in the worst position imaginable.
I couldn't risk that and everything he’s built here. "
I look at her. She's lowered her hand from her mouth, and her eyes are soft.
"That's why I gave you the fake name. That's why I didn't call." My voice cracks. "You were everything, and I didn't think I deserved to keep you. I thought the best thing I could do for you was disappear, the way I've always disappeared."
She doesn't say anything for a long moment. Her chin is trembling, and she's looking at me like she might not hate me.
“I get it. Though I still think you should’ve told me,” she whispers. But there's no ice in it, just ache.
"I know."
"I thought I wasn't enough. I thought you—" She presses her lips together and looks away, blinking hard. "I thought I was just a good time and nothing more."