Chapter 8
AREK
Idrove up Bear Creek Road on Saturday morning with the windows cracked, the radio off, and a feeling in my chest that I refused to name.
The week had been brutal. A twelve-hour day on Tuesday when a stomach flu ripped through half the families in Forestville.
The clinic waiting room had looked like a field hospital.
It was only by the grace of some divine intervention—plus a mask, fastidious handwashing, and copious amounts of hand sanitizer—that I’d escaped the bug myself.
Wednesday had included a tough conversation with the parents of a teenager whose anxiety was escalating faster than the medication could manage.
On Thursday, I’d battled my way through a stack of referral paperwork that had kept me at my desk until seven.
And Friday, Kace had gotten into an argument with Tyler, which had necessitated a phone call to Tyler’s mother that required every ounce of diplomacy I possessed, which was considerable, but still.
I was exhausted with a bone-deep tiredness, yet here I was, driving up a mountain on my day off with something fluttering behind my sternum that felt suspiciously like excitement, which was a word I hadn’t associated with my own life in a very long time.
I’d left the boys at home. Kace had wanted to come, predictably.
He’d been fascinated by the hermit on Bear Creek ever since the first-aid incident and had lobbied hard over breakfast. I’d told him it was a quick visit to check on the renovation, not worth the trip for them, and Kace had narrowed his eyes in a way that said he was filing away this excuse for future cross-examination.
Jules hadn’t said anything, only looked at me over his cereal with those dark, knowing eyes and gone back to his book.
It wasn’t a quick visit. I was driving up this mountain because Mac had texted and asked me to come, and Mac didn’t ask for things. The fact that he’d invited me had done something to my chest that I was still trying to diagnose days later.
I bought better coffee today. In case you come back up.
In case. Like it was hypothetical. Like there was a universe in which I would’ve said no.
I turned the last curve, and the campground came into view through the trees. Mac was on the porch, which didn’t surprise me. What surprised me was the porch itself.
It held two chairs.
I parked and got out, and stood there for a moment, looking at the pair of Adirondack chairs side by side, both sanded smooth, both stained the same warm cedar tone. The second one was new, the wood slightly lighter where it hadn’t fully weathered yet.
Mac watched me notice, but his face gave away nothing.
“New chair,” I said.
“Got tired of sitting on the step.”
“You built it yourself.”
“Wasn’t hard.”
Like building a chair between Thursday and Saturday for a man who was coming to visit was a thing you did because the step was uncomfortable, and not because you wanted someone to sit next to you.
I climbed the porch steps and sat in the new chair. It was solid, well-crafted, built by hands that knew what they were doing. “It’s a good chair, Mac.”
He looked away. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
He went inside and came back with two mugs. The coffee immediately smelled different, richer, more complex, without that scorched-earth quality of his usual brew. I took a sip, and instead of that sharp bitterness, a rich, complex flavor hit my tongue. “This is a significant upgrade.”
“I liked the other stuff just fine.”
“The other stuff, as you call it, is an act of aggression against taste buds.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. I was learning to read that twitch the way I interpreted vital signs—small data points that revealed more than the patient intended.
We settled into the quiet. The valley spread out below, green and gray, silver where the river caught the light. A breeze came up, carrying the smell of pine and wet earth. Two men, two chairs, two mugs of good coffee. Something about the symmetry settled me.
“Busy week?” Mac asked.
“Stomach flu hit Forestville like a plague. Half the town came through the clinic, and I think I saw more vomiting children in three days than in my entire residency.”
Mac winced. “Sounds rough.”
I shrugged. “It’s the job. The hard part isn’t the sick kids. It’s the parents. They’re scared and need reassurance, so they turn to me. Everyone does. By Friday, I’ve reassured so many people that I’ve got nothing left for myself.”
I hadn’t meant to say that. This porch had a way of making me say things, of obliterating my usual filters. It had to be something about the altitude, or the quiet, or the man sitting next to me who didn’t need me to be fine.
Mac looked at me, those blue eyes direct and unblinking. “You do that a lot? Run on empty?”
“It’s a character flaw I’m working on.”
“Sounds like you give a shit about too many people.”
I laughed, and it came out more honest than I intended. “That might be the most accurate diagnosis anyone’s ever given me.”
He didn’t smile, but something in his face eased.
“How’s the renovation going?” I asked, desperate to change the subject.
“Slow but steady. I hired Cas Sicotte to do the electrical work.”
I nodded. “He’s a great guy. I used him to renovate my primary bathroom, and he did a fantastic job.”
“Glad to hear it.” He angled his head, his eyes sparkling. “You didn’t want to do it yourself?”
A snort was my only response. “How many cabins will be done by the end of summer?”
“If Cas stays on schedule, eight should be fully operational. The other four need more structural work.”
“So you’ll open next season?”
A look of absolute horror passed over his face. “I won’t be running the campground. Absolutely not. When it’s done, I’ll sell.”
I knew that, but hearing him confirm it still hit harder than it should. Still, I kept my tone light. “And find another mountain to retreat to?”
“That would be perfect, but I can work with a remote location in a forest as well, as long as it’s far removed from society.”
He really was a hermit, as much as I loathed admitting that to Kace.
We talked more. I told him about growing up in upstate New York, about my decision to join the Army first, then medical school in Chicago, about the decision to leave the city for a small town.
He listened with that intense, focused attention that made you feel like you were the only person in the world, which was ironic coming from a man who avoided people.
Then he said, “I was married. Before.” The shift was subtle, but I felt it, like a door opening a crack. “It didn’t work out. We have a son, Boden. He’s fifteen.”
Boden. Two syllables that carried a weight I felt but couldn’t measure. There was a story behind that weight, something heavy and painful, and every professional instinct I had wanted to ask. I clamped down on that urge. Hard. “Fifteen’s a tough age.”
“Yeah.”
“Does he live with his mom?”
A nod. “San Francisco. I haven’t seen him in a while.”
The words sat between us, deliberately vague and aching with it. I understood the words people used when the truth was too heavy to say aloud in full.
“My boys were five when I met them,” I said in an offering, a quid pro quo.
“They were in the foster care system and came in for a routine checkup in the family practice where I was working.” I paused, remembering.
“They were so small, so fragile, and oh so serious. Jules wouldn’t make eye contact.
Kace wouldn’t stop talking, which I later realized was his defense mechanism.
And when they walked out of that exam room, I promised myself I would find a way to give them a safe home. ”
Mac listened, his eyes fixed on me.
“It took two years. Foster first, then adoption. Two years of paperwork, home visits, court dates, and a system that doesn’t make it easy for a single guy, especially a single gay guy, to adopt. But I did it. And it’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
“They’re good kids. You did right by them.”
“They did right by me. I needed them more than they needed me, honestly.”
He looked out at the valley for a long moment. “I doubt that.”
The conversation had opened something between us, enough that the air felt different. Warmer. Closer. Like the space between two chairs had contracted by an inch.
It made my skin itch, and I got up. “Can we go for a walk, maybe? I need to… I need to get up. Burn some energy.”
He studied me for a few beats, then nodded. “There’s an overlook about twenty minutes up the ridge on this side of the mountain. If you’re up for it.”
Hell yes, I was.
The trail started right behind his cabin, and it was narrow, winding uphill through Douglas fir and western red cedar, the forest floor carpeted in needles and moss.
Mac moved through it with the ease of a man who’d walked this path a hundred times, his stride sure and unhurried, boots finding solid ground without hesitation.
I followed. And I noticed things.
The width of his shoulders under the gray Henley.
The economy of his movement, every step deliberate, nothing wasted.
The lean, wiry build that my medical brain read as strong but carrying too little weight, a body that worked too hard and ate too little.
His forearms, exposed where the sleeves were pushed to his elbows, scarred and tanned and corded with muscle.
The silver hair at the back of his neck, curling where it met his collar.
I was looking at Mac’s body. Not as a doctor assessing a patient.
Not as a friend noticing a friend. I was looking at him the way I looked at men I found attractive, with an awareness that lived in my chest and my skin and lower, and the realization hit me like a diagnosis I should’ve caught weeks ago.
Oh.
No. He was most likely straight. He’d been married to a woman. He had a son. And he’d never given me any indication he was into men. Into me. Whatever I was feeling was misfiled, misidentified, a crossed wire in a brain that was tired and lonely and confusing gratitude for something else.
Instead, I focused on my too-labored breathing, betraying the lack of exercise I got—other than running around like a madman in the clinic.
I really needed to get more movement in, especially since it was what I recommended to most of my patients.
The hypocrisy wasn’t lost on me. The recent hike with Kace and Jules had been the first outing since we’d moved here.
I’d told myself we’d been settling in at first, and then it had been because of the winter. Oh, how I could lie to myself.
At the overlook, we stood side by side, and the view was everything Mac had promised. The valley opened up below in layers of green and gray, the Skykomish winding through it, mountains stacked against the horizon. The air was clean and cool, and the silence was the kind that didn’t need filling.
Mac’s face was almost peaceful, the hard lines softened by something.
Maybe the altitude, or the familiarity of this place, or maybe the simple fact of not being alone in it.
The light caught the silver in his hair and the blue of his eyes, and I thought, with a clarity that bypassed every filter I had: He’s beautiful.
And then, immediately: Stop it. He’s straight, he’s hurting, and he’s not yours to want.
I looked at the view and wished with all my heart that the mountain air would flush whatever this was out of my system. It didn’t.
We hiked back down. The morning had somehow become early afternoon, and I needed to go.
The boys would be hungry, the house would need attention, and all the responsibilities that never stopped accumulating were waiting for me at the bottom of this mountain.
But leaving felt like pulling a warm blanket off on a cold morning. Necessary but unwelcome.
Mac walked me to my car. “Thanks for the coffee. I appreciate you getting the good stuff for me.”
“Seemed like the least I could do. After everything.”
After everything. The first-aid kit. The festival. The porch visit. The text. The chair. All of it folded into two words that Mac delivered like they cost him nothing, even though I suspected that was a lie.
“Same time next week?” I said, and I meant it as casual, as open-ended, as no pressure, but it came out sounding like something I needed the answer to.
Mac nodded. “I’ll be here.”
Of course he would. He was always here. Until he wouldn’t be anymore, and then what?
With a last wave, I got into my car and made myself leave.
Professional interest. Friendship. One veteran looking out for another. A doctor who cared about a community member’s well-being. These were the explanations, and while they were all true, they were also insufficient and incomplete.
I’d driven up a mountain on my day off, sat in a chair a man had built for me, drank coffee a man had bought for me, and hiked a trail behind a man whose body I couldn’t stop watching.
I was a forty-five-year-old gay man with two kids, a career, and a life I’d built with care.
I did not develop feelings for likely straight men on mountains.
I did not confuse loneliness with attraction.
I did not project my own need onto someone who was dealing with enough without adding my complications to the pile.
These were the rules. I knew the rules. I’d lived by them for twenty years.
But the rules didn’t account for blue eyes that looked at you like you were the only real thing in the room.
The rules didn’t account for a man who listened with a single-minded focus that was impossible to ignore.
The rules didn’t account for the way my name sounded in Mac’s rough, underused voice, like a word he was learning and wanted to get right.
The rules didn’t account for Mac.
I pulled into my driveway and sat in the car, and pressed my palms against my face.
Friendship. That’s what this was. That’s all it could be.
I almost believed it.