Chapter 2
Graham
She cut her hair.
That’s the first thing I think as I pull out of The Burning Tree parking lot, which tells you everything you need to know about where my head is.
Because ninety seconds after Mel Hayes walked in I had a full catalog.
Shorter hair, just past her shoulders, lighter than the summer.
Same way of moving through a room, confident and smooth.
Same voice when she said my name, except lower, or maybe that’s the five months talking, because I’ve been hearing her say “Hey, Graham” in my head since July and the real thing tonight was close enough to the memory to crack it open and different enough to replace it.
I adjust my grip on the wheel. The road climbs. The headlights cut through pine and dark and the cab smells like the bar I just left and the air coming through the cracked window is too warm for December and none of this is what I should be thinking about.
What I should be thinking about is this: I just walked out of a crew night because Connor’s twenty-four-year-old sister sat down at the table.
I should be thinking about how that looked, or whether anyone noticed, or what Connor would say if he understood why his most reliable man suddenly needed an early night. I should be thinking about that.
Instead I’m thinking about the way she crossed the bar.
The way she hugged Koda and shook Boone’s hand and smiled at Sam like she’d already decided to like her.
The way she got to me and said my name and I said hers and it took everything I have to keep my voice level.
One word. I gave her one word and walked out, and the distance between that word and what I wanted to say could fill this truck.
The road curves. I take it without thinking. I’ve driven this route a thousand times and my hands know it, which is a problem tonight because it means my head is free, and my head is back in July.
She was wearing a green tank top. That’s what I remember first, not the guy, not the bar, not the noise.
The green tank top and the way her shoulders looked in it and the way she laughed at something Koda said and I watched from across the bar where I’d moved after the crew started leaving because I wasn’t going to leave her in a bar alone and I wasn’t going to sit next to her and tell her that.
Then that guy sat down.
I don’t remember his face. I remember his hand on her arm and the way her grip shifted on her bottle, thumb sliding to the neck, and I remember the exact moment I stopped being a man without a plan and became a man crossing a bar.
I didn’t think about it. That’s the part that gets me, still, almost six months later.
I think about everything. I measure twice.
I check the grain before I cut. And I crossed that bar without a single thought in my head except: no. Not her. Mine.
I said “Hey, babe” like it was true. It came out easy, like I’d said it a hundred times, and that should have been a warning, how natural it felt to put my arm around her and pull her against my side.
The warmth of her through my shirt. The smell of her hair, something clean, floral and citrus, close enough to name but I never did because naming it would mean admitting how close I was, how long I stayed.
I told the guy we were good on drinks like he was a waiter.
He left. And I sat there with my arm around Connor’s little sister and I didn’t let go.
Three seconds. Four. I counted them then and I’ve counted them since. My thumb on the curve of her arm. Her shoulder against my chest. Every second a choice, and I took too long before I chose right and took my arm back.
Then I drove her home because Connor had left and she’d been drinking and the alternative was letting her call a cab or walk, and I don’t do that. I don’t leave. Which is ironic, given what I did tonight.
In the truck she asked how long I’d been watching.
I told her. I told her about the beer and the phone and the laugh, and I still don’t know why I said all of that.
I don’t talk like that. I notice, but I keep it to myself, because noticing things about people and telling them is a different act, a more dangerous one.
I walked right into it because she was sitting in my truck and the dark made it feel safe and nothing about Mel Hayes has been safe since the first moment I saw her.
That wasn’t the part that stayed with me most, though.
The part that stayed was the way she went quiet when I asked if California fit.
The way she looked out the window like the answer had been sitting beside her for years and she’d only just noticed it had a name.
I told her coming back could be brave too, and she looked at me like I’d handed her something she didn’t know she was allowed to keep.
I’ve thought about that look more than I’ve thought about the kiss I didn’t take.
Almost.
Then the porch.
She tripped on the second step and I caught her, arm and waist, and she was close.
Closer than the bar. Close enough that I could see the exact shade of brown her eyes were in the porch light and feel her breath and smell her hair again and I tucked a strand of it behind her ear because my hand moved before the rest of me could vote and my thumb grazed her cheekbone and she went still.
I wanted to kiss her. I want to be clear about that, because I’ve spent months not being clear about it and the dishonesty is getting expensive.
I wanted to kiss her on that porch with the light on her face and her waist under my hand and the whole dark mountain behind us.
I wanted it the way I want a clean cut on old-growth timber: with my whole chest, no hesitation, the kind of want that doesn’t ask permission because it doesn’t need to.
I didn’t. She’s twenty-four. She’d been drinking.
She’s Connor’s sister. Any one of those is enough.
All three together make it a locked door, and I don’t test locked doors.
My hand came up, halfway to her face, a second try at something I’d already decided against, and I stopped it and I said goodnight and I drove home and I haven’t seen her since.
That was July. It’s December. I’ve had months of not touching her and not calling her and not driving to California, which I considered twice and dismissed both times.
Because showing up unannounced at a woman’s apartment when she hasn’t given you her number is not a thing a grown man does, no matter how many times he replays the sound of her laugh in his truck on a dark road.
I pull onto the ridge. The cabin is dark.
I leave it dark, because the dark is easier right now.
Inside, I drop my keys on the counter, put my boots by the door, hang my jacket on the hook.
Same hook. Same order. Same routine I’ve done for three years in this place, and it’s never felt empty before, but tonight the quiet has a weight to it.
Four miles. I could drive it in eight minutes. I won’t. But I know the number, and knowing it is its own kind of problem.
I stand at the kitchen window. The ridge drops away into dark pines and the valley below is invisible, but I know where Connor’s place sits.
I pour a glass of water. Drink it standing up.
Put the glass in the sink, centered, the way everything in this kitchen is centered, because I built these shelves and hung these cabinets and I like things where they belong.
This cabin has made sense to me for three years.
One man, clean lines, quiet mornings. No dishes in the sink that aren’t mine.
No noise I didn’t choose. I picked this life on purpose, and it fit.
This summer I drove past the turnoff for Connor’s place on my way to the upper ridge and thought about her for eleven miles.
Counted. Eleven miles of road where my head was in July, and when I got to the site I cut harder than I needed to because the saw was the only thing loud enough to drown it out.
The thing I’ve been managing since July is no longer a thing I’m managing.
You can manage a memory. You can manage an almost. You can’t manage a woman who’s moved to your mountain and will be doing the books for your crew and will be at The Burning Tree on Friday nights and will exist, physically, four miles from your bed.
That’s not a memory. That’s a fact, and facts don’t fade the way memories are supposed to.
I go to bed. I don’t sleep. All I think about are warm, intelligent brown eyes and soft pink lips that are so damn close, but so far away.
~~~
It’s Monday. The saw bites into pine at 7:47 AM, just after sunrise.
I know the time because I checked it when I parked, the way I check everything.
I’ve been cutting for twenty minutes before the first truck comes up the access road.
Koda’s, because Koda is always second after me and always loud about it.
“You know what’s messed up?” he says, before his door is fully open. “It’s December and I’m sweating. December, Graham. This weather’s broken.”
“Yep,” I say, and keep cutting.
Koda talks. This is what Koda does. He talks while he unloads gear, talks while he checks the chains, talks while Noah pulls in behind him quiet as a thought and Boone arrives after that, steady and unhurried, coffee in hand.
The morning assembles the way mornings do.
Familiar. Routine. I know the rhythm of it the way I know the grain in a cross-section: where the knots are, where it splits clean.
Connor arrives at eight-thirty. He’s on the phone, one hand on the wheel, giving someone directions to the mill. He parks, finishes the call, walks over. Scans the cut line the way he always does. Nods.
“Good start.”
“Ground’s soft from the warm front,” I say. “Watch the footing on the lower slope.”
He nods again, then turns to the crew. “Quick thing. Mel’s going to be handling the books going forward. Receipts, fuel logs, equipment invoices. If she asks for paperwork, get it to her. Graham, you run the most equipment. That work for you?”
“Sure,” I say.
One word. Same weight as “Mel” Friday night, which is to say: none.
Or all of it, packed into a single syllable and sealed shut.
Connor doesn’t notice. He’s already moved on, talking to Koda about the slope grade and the access road.
Nobody looks at me. Nobody registers anything, because there is nothing to register.
I’m a man cutting timber on a Monday morning who just agreed to hand over fuel receipts. That’s all anyone sees.
She’ll need to come get them, or I’ll need to bring them to her. Either way, there will be a handoff. A conversation. A room with both of us in it and no crew table to dilute it. Connor set that up in ten seconds without knowing what he did.
I turn back to the cut. The saw is loud. The pine is clean and pale where the bark falls away and the smell of it fills my head, fresh and sharp, the way this work has always smelled, and I focus on the grain the way I always focus on the grain, reading the wood, finding the line, making the cut.
The cut’s clean. My hands are steady.
My head is miles down the mountain.