Chapter 5
HARPER
Iwake up not knowing where I am.
It lasts about three seconds—that particular blank panic of an unfamiliar ceiling, unfamiliar light, and unfamiliar weight of a quilt that isn't mine—and then it all comes back in a single, organized rush.
The venue. The east wing corridor. The drive.
The mountain. The cabin. The man who answered the door and said it's alright like he meant it.
I lie still for a moment, stare at the ceiling, and take inventory.
I'm alive. I'm warm. I'm in a stranger's guest room on a mountain I couldn't find on a map, wearing clothes that belong to someone twice my size, and outside the window, the sky is the particular pale gold of early morning in a place that has never heard of light pollution.
I can see the tops of the pine trees from the bed, dark green against the brightening sky, moving slightly in a wind I can't hear yet.
It's genuinely beautiful, which feels like a rude thing to notice given the circumstances.
I sit up, push my hair back, and get on with it.
Downstairs, the fire is going, the kettle is on, and Logan is in the kitchen with two mugs already out, which does something small and unexpected to my chest that I don't examine.
He looks up when I come down the stairs—that same steady gray attention, taking stock without making a production of it.
"Morning," he says.
"Morning." I stop at the bottom of the stairs and look around the cabin in daylight for the first time.
It's different from how it was last night—less overwhelming, more itself.
The bookshelves are packed with a mix of field guides and worn paperbacks.
The stone hearth takes up most of the far wall.
Through the kitchen window, I can see the treeline, close and dense, and beyond the porch, the beginning of a clearing that I couldn't make out in the dark last night.
No road. No other buildings. No visible sign of anything resembling a town in any direction.
"How far are we from—" I pause. "From anywhere?"
"Nearest town is about forty minutes down the mountain." He sets a mug on the counter in front of me. "No shortcuts."
I wrap both hands around the mug and look out the window again.
Forty minutes. I think about that for a moment—and then, underneath the obvious inconvenience of it, something else moves through me entirely.
Forty minutes means no one will show up at the door.
Forty minutes means the phone calls and the questions, and Dawson's carefully constructed version of yesterday can't reach me yet.
A couple of days with a broken car on a mountain—I'm not on any map means I can breathe before I have to figure out what comes next.
I take a sip of coffee and decide that's not the worst thing.
"My car," I say.
"Garrett has it."
I look at him. "Who's Garrett?"
"Good mechanic. Part of the group up here." He says it easily, with no further explanation offered. "He picked it up early this morning. Coolant hose blew—he's already got the part ordered."
"You had someone get my car." I set the mug down. "This morning. Without telling me."
"You were asleep."
"Logan."
He meets my eyes directly, unbothered. "It was sitting on the side of a mountain road. I wasn't going to leave it there."
I open my mouth and close it again, because the honest truth is that it's a completely reasonable thing to have done, and I can't actually argue with it, which is its own kind of frustrating. "How long until it's fixed?"
"Couple of days, maybe less, depending on the damage."
I pick the mug back up and look out the window at the trees. A couple of days. No signal, forty minutes from civilization, and a car in pieces. Three days ago, that would have felt like a crisis. This morning, it feels, quietly and without much logic, like exactly the amount of time I need.
"Okay," I say.
A twitch crosses his mouth that doesn't commit to being anything. "Okay?"
"Don't push it."
He tells me there are people outside who want to meet me, which is a sentence I am not remotely prepared for at seven in the morning. I look down at the sweatpants cinched at my sternum and the gray Henley, and my general situation.
"I look like I lost a fight with a mountain," I say.
"You kind of did," Logan says. "They won't care."
He opens the front door, and I follow him onto the porch, and that's when I realize people were an understatement.
There are four of them in the clearing, and they all look up at exactly the same moment with the kind of unified attention that should feel unsettling and somehow feels present. Like they were actually waiting and are actually glad the waiting is over.
The first one I notice is the man standing closest to Logan—lean and athletic, with dark hair shaved close on the sides and warm brown eyes that are doing quick, intelligent math about the situation.
He's in worn work clothes that have seen real use, and he carries himself with the particular ease of being the steadiest person in any given room.
"Mateo," Logan says by way of introduction.
Mateo nods at me, and there's something in it—a warmth underneath the calm that feels genuine rather than performed. "Harper. Good to meet you."
"You too," I say and mean it more than I expect to.
Before I can say anything else, someone steps forward, and I don't have time to prepare.
"Oh, finally." The woman who says this is tall and athletic, with sun-browned skin and curly auburn hair that moves with her like it has opinions of its own.
Her eyes are a sharp amber, and they are absolutely lit up in a way that suggests she has been waiting to say oh, finally for some time.
She's in trail clothes, restless energy practically radiating off her.
"I'm Nora. I've been standing out here for forty-five minutes. "
"Nora," Logan says it with the tone he’s used many times before.
"What? I'm just saying." She looks at me with unfiltered curiosity and something that reads like immediate, uncomplicated warmth. "You look like you need a hot shower, dry shampoo, and about sixteen hours of someone not asking you questions."
I blink. "That's—yes. That's exactly right."
"I have all of those things." She says it like it's settled. "Well, not the sixteen hours, but the shower and dry shampoo for sure. I've got a whole bag of stuff at the lodge. We'll get you sorted before breakfast."
The other two have hung back slightly, giving me room, which I notice.
The larger of the two is immediately striking—big-framed, with a graying beard and deep-set blue eyes that have a quiet, patient quality to them.
He's in a canvas work jacket with a set of keys in one hand, turning them over slowly, like he's already thinking about the job waiting for him.
"Garrett," he says when I look at him. The one word, like that, covers it, and somehow it does.
"You have my car," I say.
"I do." He holds up the keys briefly. "Coolant hose. Maybe some heat stress on the overflow tank, but I won't know until I get in there." He says it the way someone else might discuss the weather—matter-of-fact, no drama. "She'll run again."
"Thank you." I mean it completely. "Seriously."
He nods once, turns the keys over again, and seems satisfied with that exchange.
The fourth is younger—mid-twenties, petite, with long black hair and bright green eyes, and the kind of open, perceptive expression that makes you want to tell her things before you've consciously decided to. She has a notebook tucked under one arm, and she smiles when I look at her.
"Lila," she says warmly. "I help out with medical stuff around here. I wanted to make sure you weren't hurt from the trail last night."
"I don't think so," I say. "My pride, maybe."
That gets a real reaction—Nora laughs outright, warmth moves through Mateo's face, and even Garrett's mouth does something in the vicinity of a smile. It moves through the group easily, the way laughter does when people are genuinely comfortable with each other rather than performing it.
I stand in the middle of it in borrowed sweatpants and feel, strangely, like I'm not entirely on the outside of it.
Logan is watching me from beside the door.
When I glance at him, he doesn't look away, and there's a flicker in his face that I haven't seen there before—something quieter than his usual neutral, something that takes a beat to identify.
Like he's watching something he hoped would happen and is making sure not to make a thing of it.
I look away first. Again.
Nora takes charge of me with the cheerful authority of a woman who was built to solve problems, knows it, and finds the whole enterprise genuinely enjoyable.
Within twenty minutes, I've been walked to the lodge—a large, solid timber building set back in the trees that manages to feel both functional and like the center of something—handed a towel, pointed toward a proper shower, and presented with a bag of toiletries that is significantly better stocked than my bathroom at home.
"I keep an emergency kit," she explains, leaning against the doorframe while I look through it. "Shampoo, conditioner, the good kind. Dry shampoo. Face wash." She pauses. "Do you have a preference for moisturizer?"
"Whatever you've got."
"I've got three. Dewy or matte?"
I look at her. She is completely serious. "Dewy," I say.
"Good answer." She produces it from the bag. "There are clothes on the chair—mine, so they'll probably be long on you, but they'll fit better than whatever you've got on."
"Thank you," I say. "For all of this. You didn't have to—"
"Go shower," she says simply. "We can do the thank-yous over breakfast."
An hour later, I am clean, dressed in clothes that actually fit, and sitting at a long wooden table in the lodge kitchen while the smell of coffee and something cooking fills the space.
It's a good kitchen—worn and practical and clearly used by people who actually eat together, which is something I didn't realize I'd notice until I noticed it.
Nora moves around it like she owns it, which I suspect she functionally does. Lila sits across from me and asks quiet, practical questions—did I sleep, did anything hurt from the trail—the attention behind them genuine, not gap-filling.
Mateo refills everyone's coffee before anyone has noticed it needs refilling and says almost nothing. I'm beginning to understand that this may be who he is.
Logan takes his usual seat—the one that gives him the full room.
He doesn't hover. He doesn't insert himself into the conversation that Nora is cheerfully carrying on her own.
He exists in the room in that grounded, unhurried way he has, and every so often, I'm aware of him in my periphery without meaning to be.
Through the window, I can see the garage—a long, practical building on the border of the property. Garrett is already in there. I can hear the faint, purposeful sounds of someone working, metal and movement, the particular industry of knowing exactly what he’s doing and is getting on with it.
My car. Being taken apart and put back together by someone who is treating it with more care than I have in years.
I think about the venue. The texts. Dawson, in his tailored suit, with his hands up like I was something to be managed. I think about my mother's name in my missed calls and the version of yesterday that's being constructed without me somewhere in a city I drove away from.
And then I think about forty minutes down a mountain. A couple of days. This kitchen, and the smell of coffee, and four people who have known me for less than an hour and are already feeding me breakfast.
"You okay?" Lila asks, quietly.
I look at her. The honest answer is complicated. The true answer is simpler.
"Yeah," I say. "Actually, yeah."
She nods like that's exactly what she was hoping to hear and slides the butter across the table without making a thing of it.