Chapter 5
MAC
Aweek after the festival, I’d settled back into my routine like nothing had happened. Up before dawn. Stretches. Coffee. Chop wood. Breakfast. Work.
Routines didn’t care if you’d humiliated yourself in front of half a town. They’d be there waiting for you, steady and indifferent, and all you had to do was follow them.
Except my brain hadn’t gotten the memo.
It kept circling back to Main Street. The noise, the crowd, the crates hitting pavement like rifle fire, and then…
nothing. The gap. The black hole between the bang and Arek’s voice pulling me back.
I didn’t remember any of it, which was somehow worse than remembering all of it.
I knew the shape of what had happened the way you know the shape of a bruise you can’t see—by the tenderness when you press on it.
I pressed on it anyway because, apparently, I was a goddamn masochist.
Had anyone seen? Arek had been in front of me, blocking the crowd from view, but that didn’t mean no one had noticed.
Forestville was small. People talked. The hermit on Bear Creek having a meltdown at the spring festival was the kind of story that would make the rounds at Brianna’s over coffee and muffins.
The thought made my stomach turn.
I drove a pry bar under a section of ruined plywood and wrenched it free. The wood groaned, releasing a wave of damp, musty air from beneath. I tossed it aside and sat back on my heels, breathing hard.
This was why I stayed on my mountain. This was why the routine existed. Down there, I was a liability. Up here, the only thing I could damage was plywood.
Fay had understood that. Not right away after the incident, as she referred to it.
She’d been terrified, and she’d had every right to be.
I’d awoken in the dark with my hands around her arms, pinning her to the mattress, my full weight on her, and the sound that had cut through the nightmare had been my wife screaming my name.
I would never forget the look on her face when my eyes focused.
The bruises were already blooming on her biceps, where my fingers had dug in.
I closed my eyes, opened them again, and with a sigh, picked up the pry bar.
Boden had been down the hall. Asleep. Ten years old, dead to the world the way only kids can be.
He hadn’t heard, and the reason I knew that was because I’d checked after.
I’d stood in his doorway with my hands shaking and looked at my sleeping son.
What if he’d been the one to wake me up?
What if he’d come into the bedroom for a glass of water or because he’d had a bad dream, and he’d touched my shoulder, and I’d—
No.
That was the thought that had driven me to pack a bag and leave, and keep leaving until I ended up on top of a mountain in Washington, where there was no one to touch in the dark.
What if next time it’s Boden? There was no answer to that question that didn’t end with me alone. So alone was where I stayed.
I worked until noon, gutting the rest of Cabin 4’s floor and stacking the debris outside.
My shoulders burned. My knees were raw. Good.
I made a sandwich, ate it on the porch, and was considering whether to spend the afternoon on framing or plumbing when I heard an engine on the service road.
The one that led directly to the campground.
Only one person used that road, but it wasn’t Fraser’s truck.
The dark-blue BMW came around the last bend and parked next to my truck, and Arek Jacobson got out, carrying a paper bag.
He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled to his elbows.
He looked different from how he did at Collins or the festival. Less polished, somehow. More…real.
Something in my chest tightened.
I stayed on the porch and watched him walk toward me with that easy, unhurried stride, the paper bag tucked under one arm, those green eyes already taking in the campground, the cabins, the debris pile from this morning’s demo work, then me.
“You drove up my mountain,” I said. “Don’t you have patients to see?”
“It’s my day off.” He stopped at the bottom of the porch steps and held up the bag. “I told you I’d replace what we used from your medical kit.”
“And I told you not to worry about it.”
“I heard you. I just didn’t listen.” He said it with a grin that wasn’t apologetic in the slightest. “You going to make me stand here, or can I come up on your porch?”
I looked at him for a long moment. Every sensible instinct told me to take the bag, say thanks, and send him back down the mountain. That was the smart play, the safe play. “You drink coffee?”
“I’m a doctor with teenage twins. Coffee is a food group.”
“It’s not good coffee.”
“I’ve done Army coffee, Mac. I can handle anything.”
Army coffee? Had he served? That was new information. Welcome information.
I went inside and poured two mugs of the dark roast that tasted like a grudge. When I came back out, Arek had settled into the one chair on the porch—an old Adirondack I’d sanded and restained—which left me the top step. I handed him the mug and sat down.
He took a sip. Didn’t flinch, which earned him something.
“So,” he said, looking out at the valley. The view from the porch was the one thing about this place that didn’t need renovation, ridge lines layered in shades of green and gray, the river a silver thread at the bottom. “This is what you see every morning.”
“Yeah.”
“I get it. Why you’re up here. I mean, it’s spectacularly beautiful.”
I said nothing. He wasn’t wrong, but the beauty wasn’t why I was up here, and we both knew it.
He set the paper bag on the deck between us. “Take a look. Make sure I got everything right.”
I opened the bag. Inside, neatly organized, was everything we’d used on Jules’s leg.
Sterile saline irrigation in the exact same brand and size.
Nitrile gloves, same size. Butterfly strips, same brand.
ACE bandage, same width. Antibiotic ointment, gauze pads, trauma shears—every single item was an exact match for what had been in my kit.
I looked up at him. He was watching the valley, sipping his coffee, not making a thing of it, but it was a thing.
Matching military-grade medical supplies wasn’t something one did by accident.
It required paying close attention during a high-stress situation, retaining the details afterward, and then sourcing the exact products from a medical supplier, not a drugstore.
This man had cataloged the contents of my first-aid kit while his son was bleeding and had remembered every item.
“These are exact,” I said.
“Of course they are.”
Like there was no other option.
I put the bag aside and drank my coffee. The silence sat between us, and it was not uncomfortable. Different from the silence I was used to, which was the silence of one. This was the silence of two, and it had texture, a weight that pressed differently against the walls.
“Nobody saw,” Arek said.
I didn’t pretend to not know what he was talking about. “How do you know?”
“Sheriff Frant saw and blocked the view from his side. He’s good at that, reading situations. By the time anyone might’ve noticed, you were around the corner.”
I processed that. Sheriff Frant, a man I’d exchanged maybe ten words with since I’d moved here, had shielded me from public exposure without being asked. A man protecting the privacy of someone who wasn’t even really part of his town.
“You’ve been thinking about it all week,” Arek said. Not a question.
“Haven’t had much else to think about.”
“That’s not true. You’ve got twelve cabins.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Eight structurally sound, four full rebuilds. I remember.”
Of course he did.
He let a beat pass. Two. Then, carefully, “How long have you had PTSD, Mac?”
I stared at my coffee. I could shut this down.
Could say it was none of his fucking business, could go monosyllabic, or stand up, walk inside, and let him take the hint.
That was the playbook. That was what the walls were for.
Yet, somehow, I couldn’t bring myself to do what I’d always done. “Twelve years. Give or take.”
I didn’t know why I said it. Maybe because his voice had brought me back from the dark on Main Street.
Maybe because he’d sat next to me on that bench and hadn’t filled the silence with platitudes.
Maybe because this man had matched my first-aid kit down to the brand of butterfly strips, and that kind of attention meant something I didn’t have the vocabulary for.
Arek nodded. No surprise on his face. “You’ve had treatment?”
“Tried, but it didn’t take.”
“What kind?”
“Group talk therapy through the VA. Some meds that made me feel like I was underwater.” I took a sip of coffee. It tasted like shit, as always. “I gave it a year, then gave up.”
“And moved to a mountain.”
“Not immediately, but yes.”
He sat with that the way he’d sat with me on the bench, letting the information exist without trying to fix it.
“I was a medic in the Army,” Arek said after a while. “Four years, before med school. Nothing like what you did, obviously, and my one deployment was short. But I saw enough to know what it does to people. The good ones, especially. The ones who take it seriously.”
I looked at him. He was still watching the valley, his profile lit by the afternoon sun, flannel shirt open at the collar. There was no performance in his face. No doctor mask. No small-town charm. Just a man on a porch drinking bad coffee and telling me something honest.
“I had a sergeant in my unit,” he continued. “Best NCO I ever served under. Tough, competent, would’ve died for any of us. He came back stateside and couldn’t sleep in the same bed as his wife. Used to wake up swinging.” He paused. “It’s not a character flaw, Mac. It’s an injury.”
“Doesn’t feel like an injury. Injuries heal.”
“Some take longer than others. Some may need the right treatment, not the first one you try.”
“That a professional opinion?”
“Partially, but also a human one.”
I finished my coffee and set the mug on the step. A hawk was circling over the valley, riding a thermal with its wings barely moving. Efficient. No wasted energy. I envied that bird. “I’m not your patient.”
“No, you’re not. And I wouldn’t want you to be.” He looked at me directly. “I’m not here as a doctor, Mac. I’m here as a guy who saw something and gives a shit.”
The bluntness caught me off guard. Not the words so much but the honesty underneath them.
This wasn’t pity or professional concern dressed up as friendship.
Arek Jacobson had driven up my mountain on his day off because he gave a shit, and he wasn’t going to pretend otherwise, and he wasn’t going to apologize for it.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
“Fair warning, I’m not great company.”
“Fraser seems to disagree.”
“He puts up with me, yes.”
“He’s a good guy. One of the first people I met when I moved here. How’d you two connect?”
“Thanksgiving dinner at Sunshine Corner. I still don’t know why I even went, but he was there and we talked. I guess he decided we’d be friends. It sure as fuck wasn’t me.”
Especially not after I’d experienced a full-blown episode as soon as I’d walked out of the restaurant. No one wanted to deal with that. Except Fraser, apparently. Or maybe he was just as goddamn stubborn as I was.
Something that was almost a laugh escaped from Arek. “That sounds like Fraser.”
“He drives up here every couple of weeks and brings coffee. He tells me things about town I don’t need to know. Sometimes we just sit.”
“Sounds like friendship to me.”
“You’re doing the same thing right now.”
“I am.” He took the last sip of his coffee and grimaced. “Though his coffee’s probably better.”
“Everyone’s coffee is better.”
He grinned, and something in my chest shifted. Not much. Just a fraction of a degree, the way a compass needle adjusts when you move. I filed it away without examining it.
Arek stood and stretched, rolling his shoulders the way he’d done after treating Jules. His forearms were tanned below the rolled sleeves, dusted with fine blond hair that caught the light. Another observation that I didn’t examine.
“I should get back. The boys will be fending for themselves for dinner, which means Kace will order pizza and Jules will eat cereal, and both of them will tell me they had a balanced meal.”
“Sounds like they’ve got it figured out.”
“They’ve got me figured out, which is worse.” He set his mug on the railing. Looked at me with those green eyes that saw too much. “Thanks for the coffee, Mac.”
“Thanks for the replacements.”
He nodded. Walked down the steps. Halfway to his car, he stopped and turned back. “The invitation still stands, by the way.”
I frowned. “What invitation?”
“You said I should come by sometime to see the renovation. I’m taking that as a standing offer.
” He opened the car door. “And if you feel like coming down the mountain for a meal that isn’t cooked by you or purchased from Collins, the boys and I eat dinner at six most nights.
You know where we live. I left my phone number on a piece of paper in the bag. ”
He didn’t wait for an answer. Just got in, started the engine, and drove back down the mountain. I listened to the sound fade through the trees until it was gone and the silence resettled.
I sat on the step for a long time.
The supplies were in the bag next to me. The exact right products. A man who paid that kind of attention wasn’t doing it casually. A man who drove up a mountain on his day off to deliver a paper bag he could’ve handed off through Fraser wasn’t doing it out of obligation.
Arek Jacobson gave a shit. About me. For reasons I couldn’t see and didn’t trust.
But he’d sat on my porch and drank my terrible coffee and told me about a sergeant who used to wake up swinging. And he hadn’t flinched when I said twelve years, and he hadn’t tried to fix me, and when he left, the silence came back, and it was—
Wrong.
Not wrong like broken. Wrong like ill-fitting, like a shirt that used to fit fine but didn’t anymore, and you couldn’t figure out what had changed until you realized it wasn’t the shirt. It was you.
The silence was the same. I was the one who didn’t fit into it anymore.
I picked up both mugs and went inside. Washed them. Put them upside down on the drying rack, side by side.
Two mugs. Drying on the rack. And it felt…different.
It felt right.