Chapter 3 Paisley
PAISLEY
The group tour ended at the trailhead parking lot. Same place it started.
People milled around thanking Evan, asking follow-up questions about species they’d photographed and swapping restaurant recommendations.
The dad with two kids looked relieved to be heading back to his car.
One of the retirees pressed a twenty-dollar tip into Evan’s hand, and he tried to give it back before she waved him off.
I stood near the edge of the lot, pretending to check my phone while I waited for the crowd to thin.
Hartley had texted me a photo of herself and Brooklyn eating waffles at the Pancake House with the caption wish you were here instead of sweating on a mountain.
I smiled and pocketed my phone without replying.
When the last car pulled out of the lot, it was just us.
Evan walked over, slinging his pack higher on one shoulder. “Still up for Blackrock?”
“That’s why I’m standing here.”
One corner of his mouth twitched before he reined it in. I was starting to recognize the pattern—the almost-smile, like giving in fully would reveal something he wasn’t ready to share.
“Trailhead’s about a ten-minute drive,” he said. “We can take my truck.”
His truck was a beat-up pickup with mud caked on the wheel wells and a Wildwood Ridge Outfitters decal on the tailgate that was starting to peel at the corners.
The passenger seat had a thermos wedged between it and the center console, and the floor mat was dusted with dried mud and pine needles. It smelled like him—pine and coffee.
“Sorry about the mess,” he said as I climbed in.
“I’ve seen worse.”
I hadn’t, actually. But the state of his truck didn’t bother me. It looked like a vehicle that was used for actual work, not for showing off.
We drove with the windows cracked, cool mountain air filling the cab.
The road climbed away from town into denser forest—the kind where the canopy closed overhead and turned the asphalt into a green tunnel.
Evan drove one-handed, relaxed, pointing out landmarks as we went—a creek where he and Dash had built a footbridge last fall, a pull-off where you could see four mountain ridges layered on top of each other on a clear day, a gravel road that led to his business partner Ridge’s property up on the mountain.
“Ridge is the third co-founder,” he said. “Though he’s been pretty scarce lately.”
“Scarce how?”
Evan was quiet for a second, like he was choosing how much to say. “He pulled back from the business a while ago. Moved up the mountain. Keeps to himself. We still co-own everything, but Dash and I run the day-to-day.”
There was more to that story. I could hear it in the careful way he chose his words. But he didn’t offer it, and I didn’t push.
The Blackrock trailhead was unmarked—just a widened shoulder with room for two vehicles and a break in the tree line.
Evan parked, and we headed in on foot. Within minutes, the trail narrowed to something that barely qualified as a path.
Ferns brushed my calves on both sides, and the canopy filtered the light into shifting patches of gold and green.
“This is the bypass,” Evan said over his shoulder. “Runs parallel to the main trail but about two hundred feet higher. It reconnects past the washout. Almost nobody knows about it because it’s not maintained.”
“How do you know about it?”
“Dash and I flagged it two years ago when we were scouting new tour routes. Never ended up using it because it’s too technical for group hikes. But for someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s the best way to reach the upper Blackrock drainage.”
He held a branch back for me as I ducked under it. His hand hovered near my shoulder without quite touching, and I was aware of that almost-contact in a way that made my skin warm.
We hiked in a comfortable rhythm—him slightly ahead where the trail was too narrow for two, side by side where it opened up.
He pointed out species as we went, but not with the polished, tour-guide delivery he’d used earlier.
This was quieter. More personal. Like he was letting me see the mountain the way he saw it instead of how he packaged it for tourists.
“Hepatica,” he said, crouching beside a cluster of pale purple flowers near a mossy log. “They’re one of the first to bloom in spring. Most people miss them because they’re small and grow close to the ground.”
I crouched beside him. Our shoulders were nearly touching.
“Are they on the scavenger hunt list?”
“No. They’re too common. But I’ve always liked them. They don’t need to be rare to be worth noticing.”
He said it casually, but something about the words settled deeper than they should have. Maybe because I’d spent weeks chasing rare things. Rare flowers. Rare coordinates. Rare opportunities.
We kept climbing. The terrain grew steeper, and at one point the path crossed a narrow rock ledge with a drop on the left side that made my stomach tighten.
Evan went first, then turned and extended his hand. “It’s solid, but the moss is slick.”
I took his hand. His grip was warm and rough and steadier than the rock under my boots. He guided me across, and when we reached the other side, neither of us let go immediately. When he finally released my hand, I felt the absence of it all the way up my arm.
The trail opened into a clearing about forty minutes in, and I stopped walking.
Below us, the valley stretched out in a quilt of green, the creek glinting silver where it caught the sun.
Above us, the ridge climbed into a sky so blue it looked painted.
And directly ahead, growing in a sunlit gap between two boulders, was a patch of flame azalea in full bloom—clusters of orange and gold that looked like they were burning.
“That’s on the list,” I breathed.
“I know.”
I looked at him. He was watching me, not the flowers.
“You brought me here on purpose,” I said.
“I brought you here because I told you I’d show you the bypass. The azalea being here is a bonus.” He paused. “Though I’d be lying if I said I forgot it was here.”
I pulled out my phone and checked the GPS coordinates against my checklist. Match.
I photographed the colony from multiple angles, making sure the GPS tag was embedded, then lowered my phone and simply looked at them.
They really were stunning—vivid and fragile at the same time, blooming in a place most people would never see.
“Thank you,” I said. “Seriously.”
“You’re welcome. Seriously.”
We sat on a flat rock near the overlook and split a water bottle. The sun was warm enough that I’d pushed my sleeves up. I caught Evan glancing at my forearms before he looked away, and I wasn’t sure why that made my pulse kick.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Depends on what it is.”
“Why does the scavenger hunt matter so much to you?”
I’d been waiting for that question since the Pancake House. Part of me had hoped he wouldn’t ask, because as long as he didn’t know, I could keep being the woman with the maps and the plan—competent, in control, chasing a prize for the thrill of it. The truth was less polished.
The truth was desperate.
But he’d shown me his bypass trail. He’d shown me his flame azalea. He’d told me about quitting his job and sleeping on an air mattress while eating ramen. He’d been honest with me. I owed him the same.
“My mom had cancer,” I said. “Breast cancer. She was diagnosed two years ago. She’s fine now—she beat it.
She’s healthy. She’s back to teaching second grade like nothing happened.
” I picked at a loose thread on my hiking pants.
“But the treatment bills are still there. Insurance covered a lot, but not enough. There’s about fifty thousand dollars in medical debt, and it’s compounding.
She makes payments every month, and the balance barely moves.
She sold her car. She took on tutoring jobs on weekends.
She pretends it doesn’t keep her up at night, but I’ve heard her crying over the kitchen table when she thinks I’m asleep. ”
I hadn’t planned to say that last part. It slipped out, and once it did, the air between us shifted.
Evan didn’t rush to fill the silence. He didn’t reach for platitudes.
“The grand prize is fifty thousand,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And you came here to win it.”
“I came here to win it.” I looked at him. “I know that probably changes how this looks. The maps. The research. The way I signed up for your tour. I wasn’t here to enjoy wildflowers. I was scouting.”
“I figured that out this morning. You were checking GPS coordinates while everyone else was taking selfies.” There was no accusation in his voice—just observation.
“It doesn’t change how it looks, Paisley.
It makes you someone who’s fighting for her mom.
That’s not something I’d ever hold against you. ”
The sincerity in his voice loosened something in my chest that had been clenched tight for months.
I’d carried this alone—the worry, the late-night math, the research, the contingency plans.
Hartley and Brooklyn knew about my mom’s diagnosis, but not the debt.
My mom didn’t know I was here chasing prize money. No one knew the full picture.
Until now.
“Then we’d better find the rest of them,” he said.
There it was again. We. Like it was already decided he’d be part of this.
I started to tell him he didn’t have to do that, that I’d been handling it on my own and could keep handling it on my own, but the words stalled in my throat.
“There’s a place I’ve never shown anyone,” he said. “A meadow past Thornberry Gap, through an opening in the rock face that looks like it goes nowhere. The rarest wildflower on Bobbi’s list grows there—the pink lady’s slipper. If you’re going to win this thing, you’ll need it.”
My heart thudded harder. Not just because of the flower. Because of what it meant for him to share it.
“When?” I asked.
“Now, if you want. It’s about a forty-minute hike from here.”
He stood and offered me his hand again—the same hand that had steadied me on the rock ledge.
“The meadow’s something you should see.”
I took his hand and let him pull me to my feet. He held on a moment longer than necessary. This time, I knew the warmth that spread through me had nothing to do with the sun or the hike.
It was him.
Specifically him.
We hiked. He led me through dense rhododendron thickets and across a creek that required stepping on rocks that shifted under my weight.
He caught my elbow when I slipped on the second crossing, and his hand slid down to my wrist, staying there until we reached solid ground. Every brush of contact lingered.
The opening in the rock face was exactly as he’d described—a narrow gap between two boulders that looked like a dead end until you turned sideways and squeezed through.
On the other side, the forest fell away—and I forgot how to breathe.
The meadow was small—maybe half an acre—ringed by old-growth hemlocks and carpeted with wildflowers I couldn’t begin to identify.
Sunlight poured in from the open canopy above, turning the entire clearing golden.
And there, near the center, growing in a patch of dappled shade, was a cluster of pink lady’s slippers.
Delicate. Pouch-shaped. Almost translucent in the light.
“Evan,” I whispered.
“I know.”
I photographed them carefully, checking coordinates twice. My hands were shaking a little. Not from the hike.
From what he’d just given me.
When I turned back to him, he was standing at the edge of the meadow, watching me with an intensity that made my lungs tighten. I walked toward him, my phone still in my hand, and stopped close enough that I had to tilt my head back to see his face.
“Nobody’s ever done anything like that for me,” I said.
“Shown you a flower?”
“Listened. And then actually done something about it.”
He reached up and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. His fingers grazed my temple, and the touch felt deliberate—gentle but steady.
“I’d do a lot more than show you a meadow, Paisley.”
I kissed him. I didn’t think about it, didn’t weigh the pros and cons, didn’t calculate risk. I just put my hand on his chest, rose onto my toes, and pressed my mouth to his.
He made a low sound—surprise or relief or both—and then his arms came around me, one hand settling at the small of my back, the other cradling the back of my head, and he kissed me back in a way that made the meadow and the mountains and the scavenger hunt and everything else fall completely silent.
When we broke apart, I was breathing hard, and not from the altitude.
“I should tell you something,” I said. My voice came out steadier than I expected given that my heart was trying to exit through my ribcage. “I’ve never done this before.”
“Kissed someone on a mountain?”
“Been with anyone.” I held his gaze and made myself say it plainly. “I’m a virgin.”
His expression didn’t change the way I’d braced for. No surprise, no awkwardness, no subtle retreat. His hand stayed at the small of my back. His eyes stayed on mine.
“Thank you for telling me,” he said. And then, quieter, “That doesn’t scare me, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It scares most guys.”
“I’m not most guys.” He said it without arrogance—just fact, the same way he’d told me about the washed-out trail. “And we don’t have to do anything you’re not ready for.”
I looked at this man standing in his secret meadow, surrounded by wildflowers he’d shown to no one else, looking at me like I was the rarest thing he’d found on this mountain.
I thought about the last two days—the booth, the maps, the tour, the bypass, the flame azalea, this meadow.
The way he’d said we like it was the most natural word in the world.
“I’m ready,” I said. “Take me right here. Right now.”