Chapter 5 Paisley
PAISLEY
Iwoke to the smell of coffee and the sound of a door closing softly, like someone was trying not to wake me.
For a few disoriented seconds, I didn’t know where I was.
The sheets were flannel, worn soft from washing, and the pillow smelled fresh, like it had been laundered recently.
The bedroom was small and spare. A dresser with a folded stack of T-shirts on top.
Hiking boots lined up by the closet door. A window that framed nothing but green.
Then my body reminded me. The pleasant ache between my thighs. The faint rawness on my lower back from bark I’d barely noticed at the time. The heaviness in my muscles from a hike that had turned into something I hadn’t planned for.
I sat up and pulled the sheet to my chest, even though I was alone. My clothes were folded neatly on the chair near the bed—he must have done that after I fell asleep. My phone sat on top of them. When I picked it up, I had eleven texts from Hartley and Brooklyn.
Where are you??
Paisley, answer your phone.
Bobbi says she saw you leave with one of the outfitter guys. GET IT GIRL.
Are you alive?
If you’re dead, I’m taking your suitcase. You have better hiking boots than me.
Update us when you surface.
I smiled, but it faded quickly.
Underneath those messages was a notification from my bank.
The auto-payment on my mom’s medical debt had gone through that morning—the usual two hundred dollars that barely covered the interest. The same two hundred dollars that would keep getting withdrawn every month for the next thousand years at this rate.
And just like that, the meadow and the sex and the laughing on the trail all disappeared, and reality rushed back in.
I was in a man’s cabin. Not a stranger—Evan. A man I’d known for two days, in a town I didn’t live in, while my mom was back home making minimum payments on a debt that was slowly drowning her.
I’d come here with a plan. A checklist. A strategy. A clear objective. Win the money. Save my mom. Go home.
The plan did not include falling for a mountain man with a secret meadow and hands that made me forget my own name.
I dressed quickly and found Evan in the kitchen. His cabin was small—one bedroom, an open kitchen and living area, a bathroom I’d used last night that had a shower stall barely big enough for one person, let alone two—though we’d managed.
He stood at the counter in jeans and no shirt, pouring coffee into two mugs like this was something we did every morning.
“Hey,” he said, turning with both mugs. His face was open, relaxed, happy in a way that made my chest tighten. “How’d you sleep?”
“Good.” I took the mug he offered and held it in front of me like a shield. “Thank you.”
He leaned against the counter and watched me over the rim of his coffee.
I could feel him registering the shift—the way I’d taken the mug but hadn’t stepped closer, the way I stood in the middle of his kitchen like a guest instead of the woman who’d screamed his name against a hemlock less than twenty-four hours ago.
“I should head back to the inn,” I said. “Hartley and Brooklyn are probably filing a missing persons report. And I need to go through my photos and get my scavenger hunt entry organized. The submission deadline is tonight.”
All true. Every word of it was practical and reasonable.
And every word was a brick I was stacking between us.
Evan set his mug down. “Paisley.”
“I also need to charge my phone properly—my charger’s at the inn—and—”
“Paisley.”
I stopped. He was looking at me the way he had on the trail when I’d asked him why he cared—steady, patient, like he had all the time in the world and planned to use it waiting for me to stop spiraling.
“You’re doing that thing,” he said.
“What thing?”
“The thing where you start listing tasks because it’s easier than saying what’s actually going on.
” He crossed his arms and leaned back. Not confrontational.
Just settled—like a man who’d planted his feet and wasn’t budging.
“I watched you do it on the tour. Anytime someone got too close to a real conversation, you pivoted to logistics. GPS coordinates, trail conditions, checklist items.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but nothing came out. Because he was right.
“Talk to me,” he said. “Whatever it is.”
I looked down at the coffee. My hands were trembling slightly. Not enough for anyone else to notice. Enough for me to.
“I live four hours from here,” I said. “With my mom. I work two jobs—one at a bookstore, one doing data entry from home at night. Every spare dollar goes toward her medical bills. That’s my life. That’s what I go back to when the festival ends.”
“Okay.”
“And you live here. On this mountain. Running your business with Dash. Your whole life is here.”
“It is.”
“So what is this?” I gestured between us. “Because I can’t afford a distraction right now, Evan. I mean that literally. I can’t afford it. Every dollar, every hour, every ounce of energy I have goes toward digging my mom out of this hole. I don’t have room for—”
“For what?”
“For someone I have to miss.”
The words came out quieter than I intended.
He uncrossed his arms and crossed the room in two steps. He took the mug from my hands and set it on the counter behind me. His hands settled on my hips—not pulling me closer, just steadying me.
“You’re not going to miss me,” he said. “Because I’m not going anywhere. And four hours isn’t the other side of the planet. It’s a morning drive. I’ve hauled kayaks farther than that for a weekend rental.”
“This isn’t about kayaks.”
“No, it’s about you thinking you have to choose between taking care of your mom and having a life.
” His thumbs traced slow circles against my hips.
“You don’t. The fifty thousand dollars is going to handle the debt.
You’re going to win that scavenger hunt because you’re the most prepared person who’s ever entered it—and because I showed you a meadow no one else knows about. ”
“A meadow that the organizer of the scavenger hunt apparently saw me leave to go find with you.” My voice sharpened.
“Bobbi saw us. That’s in my texts. She saw me leave the parking lot with an employee of a participating business—an employee who’s excluded from competing.
I spent three weeks memorizing those rules.
If there’s anything in there about assisted entries or outside help—”
“There isn’t.”
He said it calmly, the same way he’d told me about the washed-out trail—like he’d already checked the footing.
“The rule is that employees can’t submit entries.
It has nothing to do with who you hike with.
I lead guided tours for the festival, Paisley.
Bobbi designed the scavenger hunt knowing participants would learn trail conditions and species locations on those tours.
Half the people on my hike were checking their lists while I pointed out wildflowers.
” One corner of his mouth twitched. “You just stayed after class.”
“You’re sure? Because if she decides—”
“I’ve worked with Bobbi for four seasons. She’s not policing who explores together. She’s making sure employees don’t enter and win their own prize money. You found those flowers. You photographed them. You documented the coordinates. That’s your work. Not mine.”
The knot in my chest loosened—not fully, but enough to breathe.
“Your mom’s going to be okay,” he said, quieter now. “And you’re allowed to want something for yourself in the middle of all of it.”
My eyes burned. I blinked hard and focused on his collarbone because looking at his face would undo me. “I’ve been carrying this alone for two years. I don’t know how to let someone in.”
“You let me in yesterday. In the meadow. When you told me about your mom.” His voice softened. “That’s all it takes—just not putting the wall back up afterward.”
I let out a breath. His hands moved from my hips to my face, tilting it upward so I had to look at him.
His eyes were the same ones that had locked on mine at the restaurant.
The same ones that tracked me on the trail.
The same ones that had looked down at me against that hemlock with an intensity I’d carry in my bones for the rest of my life.
“I’m not asking you to move here tomorrow,” he said. “I’m asking you to let this be real. Come back when you can. I’ll drive to you when I can. We figure it out as we go.” He paused. “I already cleared out a drawer.”
A sound escaped me—half laugh, half sob. “You cleared out a drawer.”
“Top one. I moved my stuff to the second.”
I pressed my forehead to his chest and breathed him in. He wrapped his arms around me, chin resting on the top of my head, and for the first time in two years, the weight I’d been carrying felt like it had somewhere to go.
“Okay,” I said into his skin.
“Okay what?”
“Okay, I’ll take your drawer. But I’m staying through the end of the festival first. I need to submit my entry. And I want to say goodbye properly. Lauralie’s been keeping my coffee full since I got to town. She deserves more than me disappearing.”
He kissed the top of my head. “I’ll drive you to the inn. You can get your charger, organize your photos, submit your entry. Then I’m taking you to dinner.”
“Dinner where? This town has, like, four restaurants.”
“Five if you count the Pancake House. They make a mean stack of blueberry pancakes I’d argue counts as dinner.”
I leaned back and looked at him—this man who’d shown me his mountain. His meadow. His secret wildflowers. His home. Who’d taken the heaviest part of me and held it without flinching.
“Pancakes for dinner,” I said. “Now you’re speaking my language.”
He grinned—not the almost-grin, not the restrained half-smile, but a full, open grin that transformed his entire face. I’d done that. Me, with my maps and my mission and my complicated life.
He grabbed his keys, I grabbed my pack, and we stepped out into the morning together. The mountains glowed gold and green. The air smelled like pine and something blooming. And somewhere inside my phone was a folder full of GPS-tagged wildflower photos worth fifty thousand dollars.
I was going to win that money. I was going to pay off my mom’s debt. And then I was going to come back to this mountain and this man and that top drawer—and find out what happened when I finally let myself have something good.