7. Haven
Chapter Seven
Haven
The evening before
“Elsa, Elsa, Elsa,” Jude teased.
Cole eyed him. “Are you practicing how to say her name?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Jude...” I warned.
“Just wondering if that crush is still a thing,” Jude said in a singsong voice.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” I muttered.
Jude shrugged, waggling his brows.
“Dude, don’t,” I warned. “It’s been years. It was high school.”
“Yeah, but—” Cole cut in.
“But what?” I prompted. “I’ve even had a relationship.” As if that had anything to do with my only high school crush who’d materialized in my world in the here and now.
“What relationship?” Jude interjected.
“I dated…” I had to scramble in my memory. “Sherry, in college.”
Cole’s brows rose as he cast me a skeptical look. “I don’t even know who you’re talking about.”
“Dude, that wasn’t even serious,” Jude said with a hard eye roll. “You just went through the motions of dating.”
I decided to barrel through this. “Well, Elsa’s staying. Mom would want us to let her stay. She doesn’t have anywhere to stay because their house also burned in the fire.”
“This isn’t about her staying,” Jude said. “It’s about your crush.”
“Guys, please don’t do this.” I didn’t need this, not today. Or any day, for that matter.
“Okay, fine. We won’t,” Cole said. “We’ll save it for leverage.” He tossed a sly grin over his shoulder.
My brothers left me in peace, and I carried on filling out paperwork.
There was so much fucking paperwork to deal with, and this part got assigned to me because I was the idiot who went to law school to make money.
I did get that degree, but I kind of hated the work.
Now I was home, doing what was way better than law school—being a firefighter and getting ready to start wilderness guide trips again.
Yet I was still dealing with all the legal papers associated with the insurance and the mess after the fire.
I wished my brothers didn’t know that I’d once had a crush on Elsa, but they did, and they didn’t hesitate to gleefully remind me now.
She was that girl for me back then, but a few years younger than me, so I left her alone. She moved away, and that was that. I let out a sigh.
I hadn’t seen her in years, and just because she was still as cute as could be and bright as a drop of sunshine didn’t mean I was still crushing on her. Not at all.
That evening
“Do you remember how her dad was?” my mom asked.
“A little,” I replied, rifling through my memories.
What I remembered about Elsa’s dad was a series of fragmented memories that didn’t quite make sense.
Seventeen-year-old boys weren’t known for their discernment.
But I did know that things at her family’s home had been, well, odd.
Her dad had been one of those prepper guys, totally into the off-the-grid life.
He’d been loving in a bumbling sort of way.
“He got sick and died, right?” I prompted.
My mom nodded. “That’s the easy explanation.
He got pneumonia and wouldn’t go to the doctor.
He didn’t believe in modern medicine, vaccines, or anything like that.
Lucky for Elsa, her mom made sure she had all her vaccines.
Anyway, that fool man had Elsa and her mom trying to keep him alive on their own.
Elsa was with him when he died. The poor girl called me because her mom had gone to town to get some medicine, to try to talk him into taking something, anything to help. ”
“Oh wow. That’s awful.” I shook my head.
“It was. His folly led to his daughter feeling like she couldn’t keep him alive when he should’ve gone to the hospital the minute he got that sick.” My mother clucked. “Elsa was only fifteen. Elsa was just a sweetheart, you know?”
I did know. Elsa had always been that girl to me once I was old enough to pay attention to girls.
Back to this afternoon
Elsa had been just as pretty then as she was now.
My adolescent self had been moonstruck over her in high school.
Crushes that happened in the midst of the rush of teenage hormones were made of heady stuff.
I’d hardly seen her even though she lived next door.
These thoughts tumbled through as she stood before me.
Her blond hair twirled from a gust of breeze.
Sunshine. I always thought of sunshine with her.
Her golden locks, those green eyes, and that fresh-cheeked beauty spun together with her smile.
A moment of silence stretched between us. Elsa looked uncertain, as if she wasn’t sure what to do next.
“Let me show you around,” I finally offered, having no clue how long I stood there staring at her.
She nodded, and I contemplated where to take her. I’d offered her a room to stay, and we had plenty to choose from, but it needed to be a practical choice because we would open soon.
“It looks amazing,” Elsa commented, her voice soft.
I glanced down, momentarily drawn into the depths of her gaze. Her eyes were mostly green with shimmering flecks of brown and gold.
“We’ll start in the kitchen,” I said, leading her forward. “My mom is ecstatic about being able to cook for guests here.”
A small smile pulled at her lips. “I bet she is.” Elsa spun around. “I don’t remember much of how it was before, but this is really nice.” She paused, her gaze sobering. “I’m sorry about the fire.”
My jaw tightened slightly. “Wildfires happen all the time. You all lost your house too.”
“I know, but we weren’t here,” she said softly.
I couldn’t dwell on this because that meant pondering losing Bree.
“I’m grateful we can rebuild. The old one was…
” I hesitated, choosing my words. “Well, old. My great-grandparents originally built it, and then each generation kept adding on. Up through my mom and dad.” I shrugged. “And here we are now.”
Another silence stretched between us. All of this brought to mind how her dad passed, and I wasn’t sure what to think or say or if I should acknowledge it at all.
She looked up at me. I imagined that event had been a dividing line in her life—just as the fire had been a dividing line in ours. There was the before and the after .
I tipped my head to the side. “How are you?”
It might be an out-of-place question at the moment, but somehow, it made sense. An unexpected feeling of kinship flourished between us.
When something or someone truly significant was lost in your life, it was easy to feel alone.
As if no one else could grasp how big it felt in your small world.
Though my details were wildly different from Elsa's, I felt like she understood.
Maybe she understood beyond the surface how disruptive the fire had been for my family.
Just as I could perhaps understand pieces of what she had gone through.
She was quiet, her gaze softening. “Just like you can’t change the fire,” she said, “I can’t change my father passing away. I’ve learned to live with it. I came home.” Her shoulders rose as she took a slow, deep breath. “Thanks for asking.”
I wanted to hold her close. Although it felt okay to acknowledge the ghosts of loss dancing in our lives, I wasn’t sure hugging her just now would make sense to her. Even though I deeply wanted to.
“Let me show you around,” I repeated, forcing my focus away from Elsa.
I took her through the kitchen first, then back through the open space we had walked through to get here and gestured to the two hallways stretched off the sides.
“We have enough rooms for twenty guests at the moment,” I explained. “Jude and Cole have backup plans for up to forty.”
“Forty?” Elsa’s eyes widened as she stared up at me.
I chuckled. “That’s what I said.” I shrugged. “Since we got to redo this place from the ground up, if we can expand, and if we have enough guests and interest, we figure, why not?”
Elsa’s lips curved into a small smile. “Aim high,” she said lightly.
“Let me show you the staff rooms,” I continued. “We don’t have any staff yet. Unless you count Cole, Jude, Grady, my mom, and me.”
“What about Tommy?” she asked.
I grinned as we walked. “And Tommy. He helps out with the rescue animals, and he loves it. And they do pay him. Rest assured on that.”
When she smiled again, my pulse kicked up. The need that had been simmering in the back of my mind since I first laid eyes on her the other day sharpened its claws. Once we reached the main entry, I led her upstairs.
“For now, we have this upper floor above the kitchen and the common area. If we get busy enough, we’ll add a second story above the guest rooms.”
“Oh, wow.” Elsa spun in a little circle, taking it in.
“There’s also a finished space on the upper floor of the barn,” I added. “I’ll take you out there. That’s where I stay.”
“Tommy seems like he’s doing great,” Elsa commented as we walked outside.
I flashed her a smile. “He is. He’s happy we’re rebuilding this place.”
“How long has this taken?” she asked as we walked down the stairs.
“We’ve been working on it for almost three years now.
It took years to get all the insurance stuff sorted after the fire.
I don’t do much with it, but I have a law degree and kept my license.
I had to threaten to sue. That’s—” I shook my head, almost to myself.
“It was a lot of tedious work. We had a crew to help with the foundation and framing, but we’ve done all the finishing ourselves.
Insurance helped, but it only went so far, and we wanted to improve it. ”
I gestured around. “I don’t know how much you know about how Heartfire Falls operated before, but we did guide trips. Fishing, hunting, climbing, ice climbing, hiking, you name it, we did it. We upgraded the smaller buildings first since we needed somewhere to stay.”
“Where did you originally stay after the fire?” Elsa asked.
“Upstairs in the barn,” I admitted, rolling my eyes as I gestured toward it. “We did some quick work to make the apartment up there work for us.”
I led her into the barn. “Come on in.” I walked her up to the upper floor, gesturing around. “And this is where I stay.”
Her gaze arced about the space. “It’s nice.”
I shrugged. “We did our best. There are three rooms for you to choose from,” I added, leading her down the short hallway.
“We’ve got a few rooms ready in the resort, but between my brothers, my mom and Tommy, there’s not much privacy at the moment.
Tommy was staying out here with me, but he likes being close to the action in the new building. ”
She lingered by one of the rooms. “Do you mind if I take this one?”
It was beside mine, but I didn’t offer that detail. “I said you could take any.”
Peering inside, she lifted her gaze to the windows, which offered a stunning view of the field beyond, currently ablaze with fireweed in bloom, a landscape of fuchsia. “I like this one. What’s the rent?”
“Nothing.”
Elsa put her hands on her hips. Her eyes flashed. “Haven, you have to charge me something.”