Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
NORA
Morning light pours through Hunter's bedroom window, warm and golden, painting stripes across tangled sheets and bare skin.
His arm is heavy across my waist. His chest presses against my back, rising and falling in the slow rhythm of deep sleep.
His breath moves against the nape of my neck in warm intervals that make my toes curl under the covers.
Six days of careful distance. Six days of coffee and conversation and chainsaw oil. Six days of watching this man hold himself together with iron discipline while something underneath fought to break through.
Last night, it broke through.
And this morning, Hunter Marsh is still asleep past five o'clock for what Bette will later tell me is the first time in eight years.
His hand splays across my stomach, fingers spread wide, palm warm. Even unconscious, he's holding on. Possessive. Certain. The way he does everything. No half measures. No hesitation. A man who decided, and the deciding was the hard part, and everything after became inevitable.
The cabin is quiet except for the woodstove settling in the front room and the creek running loud after last night's rain. October light has a quality to it up here that I haven't found anywhere else. Thinner. Cleaner. Making everything look sharp-edged and deliberate.
My phone sits on the nightstand. Moved from the guest room at some point in the night along with a glass of water he set there without being asked, because apparently even in the aftermath of demolishing every wall he's built for eight years, Hunter Marsh still thinks about hydration.
The phone buzzes.
Bette:
It's been 12 hours since your last text. Either he kicked you out or you're in his bed. Please confirm which so I can calibrate my anxiety accordingly.
A smile pulls at my mouth. Carefully, slowly, trying not to wake the enormous man wrapped around me, my thumb moves across the screen.
Me:
Still here. Very much still here.
Bette:
NORA CHAMBERS. Are you in his bed RIGHT NOW?
Me:
I'm invoking my right to remain silent on the grounds that your brother is asleep and I don't want to wake him by laughing at your all-caps.
Bette:
HE'S ASLEEP?? It's past five! Hunter hasn't slept past five since the Clinton administration. What did you DO to him?
Me:
Made bread. Asked questions. Wore his flannel. The usual.
Bette:
I'm crying. I'm actually crying. My brother is asleep at 5:15 in the morning because a woman who bakes bread wore his flannel and he finally stopped being an idiot about it. I need to call Mom's grave and tell her.
The phone goes face down on the nightstand. Behind me, Hunter shifts. His arm tightens, pulling me back against his chest. His mouth finds the curve of my shoulder, pressing a kiss there that's slow and warm and half asleep.
"Who are you texting?" Rough. Sleep-thick.
"Your sister."
A groan. Not pain. Resignation. "What did you tell her?"
"That you're still asleep at five fifteen, which apparently constitutes a medical emergency in the Marsh family."
His forehead drops against the back of my neck.
The laugh that comes out of him is quiet, barely there, vibrating through his chest into my spine.
This is maybe the third time I've heard him laugh.
Each one feels like finding gold in river gravel.
Rare. Valuable. Something you hold carefully because you know how easily it can slip away.
"She's going to be insufferable."
"She's already insufferable. That's how I ended up here."
Another kiss on my shoulder. Then my neck. Then the spot behind my ear where his beard scratches and his breath goes warm, and my body responds with a full-body flush that has nothing to do with the morning light.
"Stay in bed."
"The bread won't make itself."
"Forget the bread."
"Hunter Marsh. You ate three slices yesterday and told me it was the best thing you'd tasted in years."
"That was before I tasted you."
Heat. Instant. From my chest to my ears. His hand moves from my stomach, sliding up to cup my breast, thumb dragging across the nipple until it tightens under his touch. My back arches into him, pressing my ass against his hips, where the hard length of him is very much awake.
"You said that on purpose."
"I say everything on purpose." His teeth graze my earlobe. "Haven't you figured that out yet?"
An hour later, after a shower that took three times longer than necessary because Hunter apparently has very strong opinions about the order in which soap should be applied to my body, coffee steams in two mugs on the kitchen table.
Two mugs. Not one. He poured for both of us without commenting on it, setting mine at the spot where I sit every morning, his at the other end, and the domestic simplicity of that gesture, two mugs of coffee at a table built for one, makes my chest ache in a way I wasn't prepared for.
The bread from yesterday is sliced thick on a cutting board between us. Butter. Honey from a jar that looks handmade, with a label that reads GRIZZLY RIDGE APIARIES in blocky handwriting.
"Local?" The honey jar turns in my hands.
"Frank Morrison keeps bees about fifteen miles south. Trades honey for firewood every fall." A pause. "He'll want to meet you."
The casualness of it catches me. He'll want to meet you. Present tense. Future-facing. As if my presence here is no longer a question but a fact that needs to be communicated to the neighbors.
"Does the whole town know about the mail-order bride situation?"
"Bette told Maggie at the diner. Maggie told everyone else. So yes. The entire population of Grizzly Ridge is aware that my sister submitted a profile without my consent and a woman from Ohio showed up with two suitcases." His jaw works. "They've been placing bets on how long I'd let you stay."
"What are the odds?"
"Last I heard, Frank Morrison has fifty dollars on three days. Maggie's got a hundred on permanent."
"Maggie sounds smart."
That almost-smile. It reaches further now than it did a week ago.
Nearly breaks through to the surface before he pulls it back.
But the eyes give him away. Hazel gone warm with morning light and the particular contentment of a man who woke up with a woman in his bed and is discovering that he doesn't hate it.
The phone buzzes again. Not Bette this time. A number I don't recognize.
This is Maggie from the diner. Bette gave me your number. If he's being difficult, send him to me and I'll sort him out. Also, my pie is better than anything he can cook and you should come try it. Bring him if you must.
Me:
Hi Maggie. He's not being difficult anymore. I'd love to try the pie.
Honey, if he's not being difficult, you've already won. The man once argued with a fence post for fifteen minutes because it wasn't plumb. Wednesday is cherry. Come hungry.
The phone goes away. Across the table, Hunter is watching me with an expression I'm starting to recognize. The cataloging look. Taking inventory. Processing information. Filing it under whatever internal system he uses to organize the world.
"What?"
"Your suitcases are still in the guest room."
The statement sits between the coffee mugs and the bread and the honey jar with Frank Morrison's handwriting. Simple. Factual. Loaded.
"They are."
"Move them."
Not a question. Not a request. An instruction delivered with the same quiet authority he uses when marking trees. This one stays. This one goes. This one gets a yellow stripe because it matters.
"Say please."
His eyes narrow. But the corner of his mouth moves. "Move your suitcases. Please."
"Where should I put them?"
"You know where."
"Maybe I want to hear you say it."
The chair scrapes back. He stands, all six foot four of him, crosses to my side of the table in two strides, and bends down with both hands planted on the armrests of my chair, caging me in. His face is inches from mine. Coffee on his breath. Morning stubble catching the light.
"My room. My closet. My side of the bed, which is now your side, because I don't care what side I sleep on as long as you're in it." A kiss. Brief. Hard. "Clear enough?"
"Crystal."
The afternoon brings the kind of October warmth that Montana grants like a favor, knowing it'll take it back by November. Golden light through amber leaves. Air that smells like pine and cold stone and the last of the season's wildflowers clinging to the meadow below the cabin.
Hunter is in the workshop. The steady rhythm of his hand plane carries through the open door, smoothing a plank of reclaimed timber that he's been shaping into something he won't tell me about. Every time I ask, he says "You'll see" in a tone that does not invite follow-up questions.
My phone rings while I'm stringing the fence section on the eastern boundary. Actual ringing, not a text. A number from Ohio.
"Hello?"
"Nora Louise Chambers, if you don't tell me everything right now, I'm getting on a plane."
Dani. My best friend from Columbus, who moved to Portland six months before I left Ohio and whose opinion on my decision to answer a mail-order bride listing ranged from "absolutely insane" to "honestly, maybe the most sane thing you've ever done" depending on the day of the week.
"Hi, Dani."
"Don't 'Hi, Dani' me. Bette texted me. She has my number because I gave it to her when you first agreed to this whole arrangement in case of emergency, and apparently you sleeping with the mountain man constitutes an emergency in her book.
Her exact words were 'she's in his bed and he slept past five, this is not a drill. '"
The fence wire tightens under the pliers. "Bette needs to learn boundaries."
"Bette is an angel of chaos and I adore her. Now talk. Is he everything the profile said?"
The profile. Quiet. Hardworking. Values self-sufficiency. Owns and operates a sustainable timber business. Enjoys solitude.
"The profile was written by his sister. He didn't know about any of it until I showed up."
"I know that part. Tell me the part where you're in his bed."
The pliers pause. Through the trees, the workshop door is visible.
Hunter steps into the doorway, shirtless because the afternoon warmth and the physical work have made clothing optional, and leans against the frame to drink from a water bottle.
Sweat tracks down his chest. Sawdust catches in the hair on his forearms. The scar on his hand catches the light.
"Dani."
"Yeah?"
"He made me coffee. Two mugs. Not one. He's been making one for eight years, and this morning he made two without thinking about it."
Silence on the line. Then, quietly: "Oh, Nora."
"He reads forestry management books by candlelight.
He grinds his own coffee beans because the store in town doesn't carry his roast. He hasn't let anyone close since his divorce, and he told me about it on a mountain while I was holding paint cans.
He built every piece of furniture in this cabin with his own hands, and the dining table has grain patterns that he sanded for so long the wood looks like water. "
"Nora."
"He kissed me on the ridge three days ago. Just my cheek. Flour on my face. And his hand was shaking."
"Stop. I'm going to cry at work."
"He told me to move my suitcases to his room."
"I'm already crying. My coworker thinks someone died."
The laugh comes out loose and easy, the kind that only happens with someone who has known you long enough to hold the full weight of your history.
Dani saw me through the engagement. Through the breakup.
Through the slow, grinding process of rebuilding a life that my ex, Kevin, had spent three years shrinking to fit his specifications.
"Is he good to you?" Dani's voice drops. Serious now.
Through the trees, Hunter sets down the water bottle. Picks up the hand plane. Goes back to work on whatever he's building, shoulders rolling with each stroke, focused and steady.
"He's careful with me. Not cautious. Careful.
There's—" The word difference forms and dies before it reaches my mouth.
"He pays attention to what I need without asking me to name it.
Put a glass of water on the nightstand. Showed me where the first aid kit is in case I cut myself on the fence.
Adjusted the woodstove in the middle of the night because the temperature dropped and he didn't want me to get cold. "
"That's not careful, Nora. That's a man who already knows."
"Knows what?"
"That you're it. You're his. Whatever term mountain men use for the woman they've decided to keep, that's you. He's just figuring out how to say it without scaring you off."
The fence wire pulls tight under my hands. Secure. Anchored. Holding the line between his property and everything beyond it.
"He said I'm his. Last night."
"Oh, honey. You never stood a chance, did you?"
No. The truth settles like October light across the meadow. Warm. Clear. Unhurried. From the moment he made coffee for a woman he didn't ask for, the outcome was already written.
"Tell your coworker nobody died."
"Tell your mountain man I said if he hurts you, I'll burn the whole forest down."
"He'd probably appreciate the sustainable regrowth opportunity."
Dani's laugh carries across two thousand miles. "You're going to be fine, Nora. Better than fine. Call me Wednesday. I want pie updates."
The phone goes back in my pocket. The fence wire gets one more pull, testing the tension. Solid. Done right.
Through the trees, Hunter looks up from his work. Our eyes meet across fifty yards of Montana wilderness, golden light falling between us through the canopy, and he holds the look for three full seconds before turning back to his project.
Three seconds. For a man who spent eight years looking away, three seconds is a declaration.
My suitcases are in his closet. His coffee is in two mugs. Tomorrow is Wednesday, and Maggie's cherry pie is waiting, and somewhere on a mountain ridge there's a spot between two granite outcrops where a garden could grow.
This life is a choice, not a default. The best one I've ever made.