5. Drew
DREW
We take the descent slow.
The sun is past its peak, and the light is softer through the trees, catching the dust we kick up on the switchbacks.
Kendall is ahead of me on the trail—same as the way up—but something between us has shifted.
She turns to point out a drainage crossing, and her eyes catch mine.
She smiles. Quick, unguarded, like she’s still deciding how much to let me see.
I want all of it. She’ll get there.
“Can I ask you something?” she says.
“Yeah.”
“Why Copper Peak?”
I knew this was coming. She’s been patient. Most people ask the new guy where he came from on day one. She waited until I was ready, and she probably doesn’t even know she did that.
“My last station didn’t work,” I say. “Not the job. The crew. I was there for three years and I never fit. I did my work, I showed up, I pulled my weight. But I was always on the outside of something I couldn’t crack.”
She slows her pace but doesn’t stop. Listening.
“It wasn’t one thing. Nobody hazed me, nobody iced me out on purpose. The crew just had a rhythm I couldn’t find. Inside jokes I was never there for. Trust that got built before I showed up. I kept waiting for it to click. Three years. It never clicked.”
“So you left.”
“I put in for a transfer. Copper Peak had an opening. Small district, mountain terrain, good captain. I didn’t know anyone. I didn’t know the town. I just knew staying somewhere I didn’t belong was going to hollow me out if I let it.”
She’s quiet. The trail levels out through a stand of aspens and the leaves are moving in the wind, throwing light everywhere. I watch her walk. Her shoulders have changed. Something has tightened there that wasn’t tight before.
“Was it worth it?” she asks.
Her voice is steady, but the question isn’t casual. There’s weight underneath it, and I know it isn’t really about me.
“I don’t know yet,” I say. “I’ve been here less than a week. I don’t know if this crew is going to be different. I don’t know if Holt is going to trust me, or if Mack is going to stop calling me the new guy, or if any of it is going to feel like mine.”
I catch up to her on the trail and we walk side by side where it’s wide enough.
“But I know I couldn’t stay. I knew what staying felt like, and I couldn’t do another year of it. So I jumped. And I haven’t landed yet. But the jump was right.”
She doesn’t answer. I glance over. Her jaw is set and she’s looking straight ahead, past the trail, past the view. Somewhere inside herself that I don’t have access to.
I’ve hit something. And this time it’s different from the ridge, when I told her she could do more and she pulled the professional distance back into place.
This is deeper. She’s not shutting me out.
She’s processing something, and it has nothing to do with my old station and everything to do with hers.
I don’t push. We walk.
The silence stretches through the last mile.
She doesn’t break it, and I don’t try to fill it.
The aspens give way to pines. The trail narrows and widens again, and neither of us says a word.
I can feel it working. Whatever broke open in her on that descent is still moving, and pressing it would only make her close it back up.
The trailhead comes into view through the trees. Her truck, my truck, the dirt pullout, the brown post with the trail number.
Kendall stops walking.
She’s standing at the edge of the tree line with her pack on her shoulders and her hands on the straps, and she’s looking at the trailhead like it’s a threshold she’s not sure she wants to cross. Whatever she’s fighting, it’s been going on a lot longer than this afternoon.
I stop beside her. I don’t touch her. I don’t speak. I just stand close enough that she knows I’m here.
She takes a breath. Then she walks out of the trees.