Chapter 5
STACIA
Iwoke up to birdsong and the feeling of Duff’s arm across my waist.
The heat had barely broken. The air was cooler than it had been—just enough to notice, the way a fever drops a half degree and your body registers the change before your mind does.
His chest was against my back, warm and solid, and we were lying on top of the sleeping bag with nothing over us because nothing was needed.
I didn't move. I lay there and let myself feel all of it—the ache between my legs that was new and all mine, the slow rise of his breathing against my spine, the humid air on my face and the warmth of him everywhere else.
My body felt different. Not because of what we'd done, though that was part of it. Because of what I'd let happen. What I'd chosen.
The bucket list was still in my shorts, crumpled somewhere near the edge of the sleeping bag. I didn't need to look at it. I'd been thinking about it wrong the whole time—treating it like a checklist, something to complete and move through and measure myself against.
Did it.
Did it.
Did it.
Am I different yet?
But that wasn't how it worked. The list wasn't a ladder with a better version of myself waiting at the top.
It was a door I'd opened, and on the other side of it was this.
A clearing in the mountains. A man whose hands knew exactly how to build a bear hang and exactly how to touch me.
And a morning I hadn't earned by being capable.
I'd earned it by showing up when I wasn't.
Duff stirred behind me. His arm tightened, pulling me closer, and his mouth pressed against the back of my neck. Not a kiss—contact. Confirmation.
"Morning," he said.
His voice was rough with sleep. It did something to my heart that I was going to have to get used to.
"Morning."
"You're thinking."
I almost laughed. "How can you tell?"
"You're holding your breath." His thumb traced a slow line across my hip. "You do that when you're working something out."
He'd known me for less than a day and he already knew that. That should have scared me. It didn't. It felt like being read by someone who wasn't going to use what he found against me.
I turned over to face him. His eyes were half-open, dark in the pre-dawn light, and he looked at me without hurry—the same way he'd looked at me in the firefly-lit dark, the same way he'd looked at me when I handed him the list. Like he had all the time in the world and intended to spend it here.
"I'm not going back," I said.
He didn't ask me to clarify. He knew I didn't mean the tent.
"To Charlotte," I said anyway, because I needed to hear it in my own voice. "To school. To the version of my life where nothing was mine and I just showed up and went through the motions." I swallowed. "I've known that for a long time. I just didn't know what to do instead."
"And now?"
"Now I know I can want things."
His mouth shifted. The full version of the smile I'd been catching edges of all night—quiet and real and aimed entirely at me.
"I know," he said.
The birds got louder. The sky was lightening, and through the trees, I could see the first streaks of gold hitting the upper canopy. It was going to be another hot day. I could already feel the warmth building, the air thickening, the woods gearing up for another round.
"I need to deal with the car," I said.
"Already handled." He sat up, and the sight of him—bare-chested in the early light, unhurried, muscles shifting as he reached for his shirt—hit me somewhere deep. "Walked down to the main road before you woke up. Called Flint. He's bringing a belt for the alternator."
"Flint."
"Works at Wildwood River Co. Runs safety and rescue. Knows his way around an engine." Duff pulled his shirt over his head. "He'll be here within the hour."
"You hiked four miles down and back while I was sleeping."
"You needed the sleep more than I did."
That was so unreasonable and so exactly right that I didn't know what to say. He'd let me sleep. He'd handled the thing I was dreading. He hadn't made it a production.
I sat up and found my tank top, pulling it on. "What's he like? Flint."
Duff laced his boots, each motion precise.
"Intense. Watchful. Doesn't say much, but when he does, it matters.
" He pulled a knot tight. "He plans for things that haven't gone wrong yet.
Which is why he asked me to check the trail—we had a washout last week and he wanted to know if it was passable before he sent anyone up. "
"So you were up here on a job."
"I was up here as a favor. Flint doesn't ask for much. When he does, you show up." He looked at me. "I'm glad I showed up."
My chest expanded. Not pain. Fullness—the feeling of a space being occupied that had been empty so long, I'd forgotten it was there.
We broke down the campsite together. He showed me how to pack the tent properly—pole sleeves left to right, stakes in the mesh pocket, rain fly folded separate—and I did it myself while he lowered the bear hang and scattered the evidence of our camp.
Methodical. Unhurried. Like two people who'd done this a hundred times instead of once.
By the time the sound of a truck engine growled up the logging road, the clearing looked like no one had been there. Duff shouldered his pack and mine without comment and started toward the road.
"Duff."
He stopped. Turned.
"Thank you," I said. "For staying."
He looked at me for a long moment—filing this away too. My face in the morning light, the words, the fact that I'd said them without hedging.
"I wasn't going anywhere," he said.
The truck appeared around the bend—a big blue Chevy with a toolbox bolted into the bed.
The man who stepped out was exactly what Duff had described.
Tall, dark-haired, built like someone whose job involved pulling people out of rivers.
He moved with the same economy Duff did but sharper—coiled where Duff was steady, watchful where Duff was calm.
"Flint," Duff said.
Flint nodded. His eyes went to me, assessed, cataloged, moved on. No judgment. Just information.
"Belt's shot," Flint said, already moving toward my car. "Brought two sizes. Should take twenty minutes."
He popped the hood and went to work. Duff leaned against my car, arms crossed, watching—not Flint, me. I stood in the middle of the logging road, morning sun on my face, listening to the click of tools and the cicadas starting back up in the trees.
Twenty minutes later, the car started on the first try. The engine sounded cleaner than it had in months.
Flint wiped his hands on a rag, tossed it in his truck bed, and gave Duff a look I couldn't read—something between acknowledgment and amusement, as if he'd assessed the situation between us and was choosing not to comment.
"Appreciate it," Duff told him.
Flint's gaze flicked to me again. A nod. Then he climbed back into the truck, pulled a U-turn on the narrow road, and drove away without another word.
The road back to the main highway was right there—four miles of gravel and switchbacks and then pavement and then decisions. "I don't want to go back to Charlotte," I said again.
This time it wasn't a declaration. It was a fact. Settled.
Duff pushed off the car. Walked toward me. Stopped close enough that I could feel the heat coming off him layered over the heat already building in the morning air.
"Then don't," he said.
I reached into my shorts and pulled out the list. Unfolded it.
I didn't cross anything off. I didn't need to.
The list had done its job—not by giving me a sequence of achievements, but by getting me out the door and into a clearing where a man with steady hands and a quiet voice showed me what it felt like to be seen.
I folded it back up. Put it away.
"Where do I go?" I asked.
"Wildwood Valley's twenty minutes down the mountain." He reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear, his fingers lingering before they fell away. "I've got a cabin. It's small. Working shower, kitchen with actual food in it."
"Are you inviting me to stay with you?"
"I'm telling you there's a place. What you do with that is yours."
I looked up at him. He meant it—every word. He wasn't pushing. He wasn't pulling. He was standing right there, letting me come to it on my own, the way he'd let me move the cooler into the shade and pack my own tent and eat my terrible sandwich without comment.
"Take me home," I said.
He kissed me. Slow, deliberate, one hand on the side of my face. The kind of kiss that wasn't trying to start something—the kind that was confirming something had already started and wasn't going to stop.
When he pulled back, I was smiling. My first real smile in longer than I wanted to admit.
He tossed his pack in the back seat and climbed into the passenger side without asking, like it had already been decided. "I'll talk you through the switchbacks," he said. "Stay close to the inside."
I started the engine. It caught on the first try—thanks to Flint—and Duff rested his hand on my knee as I pulled onto the logging road.
"Take it slow where the gravel's loose," he said.
I smiled. "You going to talk me through everything from now on?"
He looked at me—steady, unhurried, that full quiet smile I was already learning to need. "If you'll let me."
I drove us down the mountain. His hand never left my knee, and the switchbacks didn't scare me once.