Chapter 10 #2
Grayson was quiet for a moment, his thumb tracing circles on the back of my hand.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I was thinking I could show you my place.” He glanced at me, something vulnerable flickering in his expression. “It’s not much. But would you like to see it?”
My heart soared.
“I’d love that,” I said, unable to keep the joy out of my voice.
He smiled then, a real smile that transformed him into something breathtaking. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The fact that he wanted to show me where he lived meant more than I could say. He was opening up to me. Maybe this wasn’t just a fling for him. Maybe he wanted more, too.
Hope bloomed in my chest, fragile but real.
Grayson’s survival school was nothing like I’d expected.
We’d driven up a winding dirt road to reach it, the truck bouncing over ruts and rocks until we emerged in a small clearing.
The main building was a sturdy log structure, clearly handmade with care, but obviously unfinished.
He gave me a full tour, showing me the teaching room with its bare plywood floors, the community bathroom with exposed pipes and missing tiles, and the kitchen that was nothing more than a concrete shell with some rough plumbing.
Grayson had built a small, one-room cabin for himself, separate from the property, enough to have heat and a place to rest his head. It was humble but functional.
“This is it, hon.”
I looked around the small, unfinished room. There was a single bed pushed against the wall, tools stacked neatly beside a wood stove, and plywood where drywall should have been.
“You live here?” I asked quietly.
Grayson shrugged. “Yup. This is what I traded my cabin for. Figured the school mattered more.”
He said it like a simple fact, but something tight twisted in my chest at the sacrifice hidden inside those words.
When the tour was over, he brought me back to what would eventually be the workshop room. We sat in two camp chairs, surrounded by half-finished walls and the smell of sawdust.
He looked away from me, his voice low, “I thought Ryan had my back. I put everything I had into this place.” I could hear the quiet pain in his voice. “It was a gamble that hasn’t paid off.”
“Ryan?”
I watched him shut down in front of me, his walls flying high into the air before tentatively dropping again.
“Forget I said his name. He doesn’t matter now.”
I sucked in a breath to say something more, but Grayson shook his head, his voice firm, “It’s in the past. There’s no need to talk about it.”
The man knew how to shut down a topic hard. So I pivoted.
“Okay then. What’s the future? Tell me what the plan is.”
Grayson gestured around the empty room. “Students would stay in the bunkhouse, take classes here in the main building, and learn wilderness skills in the woods. I’ve got two hundred acres. Plenty of room for tracking exercises, survival scenarios… the works.”
“Two hundred acres? That sounds like a lot.”
“It is. It was worth giving up my cabin for this.” His eyes lit up as he talked, and I could see how much this dream meant to him.
This wasn’t just a business venture. It was his life’s work, stolen from him by someone he’d trusted.
“What will it take to get it going?” I asked.
He scoffed, the light dimming in his eyes. “Too much money.”
“How much?”
“I need to build a whole bunkhouse.” He ticked items off on his fingers.
“Finish tiling the community bathrooms. Finish installing the commercial kitchen,” he scowled.
“Right now I’m cooking on a hot plate and keeping my food in a mini-fridge.
At least I have running water, or you might not have been so keen to sleep with me. ”
I laughed at that, even as the weight of what he was trying to build settled on my chest. I thought about the small room where he slept.
He was living a bare-bones existence while he tried to rebuild what his friend had destroyed.
“How much will all that cost?”
“The bathrooms and kitchen, maybe ten thousand if I do most of the labor myself. The bunkhouse is the bulk of it since I’ve only got the foundation poured.” He let out a heavy breath. “That’ll eat up another thirty thousand, minimum.”
Forty thousand dollars. That was a lot of money.
“What about this room?”
“This? This is just cosmetic. I need to finish the walls and put down the finished floors, but I’ve already run the wiring and I’ve bought the materials. I’ve been slowly finishing it in between tours and SAR runs.”
I looked at his old pickup truck through the window. Then calculated what a wilderness guide and part-time search and rescue volunteer probably made in a year. It seemed like it would take him years to save that much money. Maybe decades.
My mind started spinning with possibilities. I had some savings left. Not much, but maybe I could help somehow. Or maybe there were grants for small businesses, loans with decent term rates.
There had to be a solution.
Grayson stood and crossed to where I sat, pulling me up from my chair. His hands settled on my waist, warm and solid.
“Enough about my problems,” he murmured, his voice dropping low. “I’d rather focus on you. I don’t know how long I have you before you leave this town, and I want to take advantage of every minute I get.”
His mouth found mine, and the kiss was slow this time, tender. But I could feel the heat building beneath it, the hunger that never seemed to fully satisfy itself.
His hand slid down my hip, fingers trailing along my thigh before slipping between my legs. Even through my jeans, the pressure of his touch made me gasp.
All my thoughts about money and the future scattered like leaves in the wind.
If the man wanted me again, I was more than ready for round two.