Chapter 1
Greyson
A long time ago, I walked away from the parts of my life that made me feel like I was disappearing.
Because if I learned anything from my parents, it’s that you can have everything the world calls success and still feel completely alone.
Funny how that works.
You spend your whole childhood trying to be worth their attention, and then one day the phone rings and you realize you’ve been auditioning for ghosts.
I should’ve been furious with them. Should’ve spent years in therapy dissecting every cold look and every absent holiday until the words lost their meaning.
Maybe I was angry for a while.
But anger never settles right in me. It doesn’t land cleanly.
It slides off like water on stone—there, then gone—before I can shape it into something useful.
What sticks instead is the quiet.
The absence.
The hollow sense of of course when the world does what it always does and proves me right.
I hate being right all the time.
It’s like a fucking curse.
And the truth is, I’m done pretending my past was perfect.
It wasn’t.
Was the money to blame? Probably not.
Money doesn’t make people cold. It just gives them better ways to hide it.
The only good memories I have—the ones that stay sharp and bright—aren’t from ballrooms or boardrooms or the glossy photographs where I’m smiling like I’m supposed to.
They’re from Woodhaven, Maine.
From this mountain.
Vacations with my grandfather.
Cold air and salt, the scent of cedar and wet earth.
The steady weight of his hand on my shoulder when he showed me how to hold a tool, how to let the grain guide me instead of forcing it, how to build something that lasts.
He never talked down to me.
Never treated my brain like a problem to be corrected.
He just gave it something to do.
Chop wood. Tend the fire. Observe the wildlife. Fish in the creek. Care for the land.
And that’s why I came back here.
To the cabin.
The very cabin I live in now.
It’s older than most of the people who used to pretend to be my friends.
It creaks when the temperature drops and groans when the wind hits it just right, like it’s speaking its own language.
The porch steps are uneven. The windows don’t seal perfectly. The whole place is stubborn in a way I respect.
Out here, there’s no audience.
No expectations.
No one asking me to be smooth and charming and normal.
Just me. My hands. And my real work.
Because for all the money I was handed, all I ever really wanted—what I’ve always only wanted—was to create.
Art. All kinds.
Not consume.
Not collect.
Not pose beside expensive things like they’re trophies.
Creation.
That’s my drug.
To take a raw material and turn it into something that means something.
To leave a mark that isn’t bought, borrowed, or inherited.
And that’s the real kicker, isn’t it?
How would a rich schmuck like me ever know if my art spoke for itself or if my money paved the way?
How would I know if people wanted what I made? Or if they wanted the story they assumed came with my name?
So I took my name out of it.
I started releasing my work in secret—quietly, carefully—wrapped in layers of paperwork and intermediaries and nondisclosure agreements so tight they could cut off circulation.
No interviews. No public appearances. No face to attach to the work.
Just a signature.
Initials that look roughly like an EKG.
GCM.
Short for Greyson Cole’s Mountain.
At first, it’s a test.
A little experiment, because my brain loves a problem it can chew on.
I make things and put them into the world with no pedigree, no backstory, no billionaire label attached.
And the crazy part?
People want them.
Not because I’m me. They don’t know that part.
But they still want them.
It builds momentum.
Then my neighbor—my closest thing to a friend—orders custom pieces for his woman. His Willow.
Then, I see it.
The willow tree.
The way it bends without breaking—and fuck me, I am inspired.
I’m in the middle of this willow tree phase and I don’t know if it will burn out or what, I just can’t stop drawing them, stamping them, painting, etching, carving—everything I do now, I do with willow trees in every season.
And because my friend’s woman is a tiny, mouthy hurricane in a curvy little body with a heart of gold, she starts a social media page to show off what I made.
I don’t ask her to do it.
But I don’t ask her to stop, either.
It seems harmless at first.
A few likes. A few comments. A small ripple.
Except ripples turn into waves when the internet gets hungry.
Now I’m being stared at when I go into town for supplies.
Now people linger too long in the hardware store aisle, trying to decide if my hands look like the hands in the videos.
Now my agent calls with that careful excitement in her voice.
Like she’s trying not to spook a wild animal.
And my attorneys send emails with subject lines that make my stomach drop.
My millions? Well, they tell me they’ve turned into billions.
And not with my old money, but with my art.
Deals with major retailers.
Global distribution.
Licensing requests.
Collaborations I never asked for.
Prints of what I create slapped onto everything these days—phone cases, throws, packaging, billboards, apparel—like the work is just another pattern to be consumed and tossed.
I can’t stand that part.
The commodifying. The noise.
The way people get grabby with beauty.
But I donate seventy percent of all proceeds to charities around the world, and that makes it hard to stay angry.
If the work can fund clean water and shelters and scholarships and whatever else my team places in front of me, then fine.
Let them print it on a million things.
As long as I don’t have to stand in a suit under bright lights and pretend it’s fun.
As long as I get to stay here.
On my mountain.
Alone.
With my art.
Because I love what I do. And the mediums I get to experiment with—wood, metal, resin, ink, stone, leather—well, that’s half the fun.
My mind gets to sprint without anyone telling it to walk. I get to follow the thread of an idea until it turns into something I can hold in my hands.
I get to breathe.
I get to be.
So I keep my world small on purpose.
I keep my cabin quiet.
I keep my name locked down—the world simply calls me the Lumberjack Artist after part of my flannel cuff made it into a photo.
And I keep the roads to my cabin unmarked, the security cameras running, the phone on silent unless it’s an emergency.
I hate fame.
I just want to stay on my mountain alone with my work.
Is that too much to ask?
March is a menace in Woodhaven. Mud season is in full effect, and we’ve been pounded by thunderstorms for days.
The wind answers by hurling another sheet of rain against the window, rattling the glass like knuckles.
I’m at the workbench when I hear it—faint beneath the howl of the storm.
Not the wind.
Not the trees.
Something else.
A crunch.
A scrape.
A muffled thud.
My hands go still.
My attention snaps so hard it’s like a trap springing shut.
Because no one comes up here.
No one is supposed to.
I grab my coat off the hook, shove my feet into boots, and take the flashlight by the door.
The storm rages harder, like it’s trying to warn me back.
But I’m already moving.
Already crossing the threshold.
Already stepping into the white.
The cold slaps my face and steals my breath as I push through the side-falling rain, following the sound toward the bend where the path disappears under a mini mudslide.
And then I see her.
A figure half-staggering, half-limping up the road like she’s fighting the mountain itself.
She’s bundled in a coat that looks expensive even thoroughly soaked.
Dark hair plastered to her cheeks.
Lips pink from cold.
Eyes bright and wild and… too damn soft for this place.
Holy fuck, she’s gorgeous.
The kind of gorgeous that belongs under city lights, not under storm clouds.
My beam sweeps lower and catches a flash of something so wrong it almost makes me laugh.
A heel.
Designer.
Sinking into the mud like a bad joke.
My jaw tightens.
Because whatever she is—lost tourist, idiot daredevil, viral-hunting fan—she doesn’t belong on my mountain.
And my mountain doesn’t forgive mistakes.
Not anymore.
“H-hello? Hello! Can you help?” she calls out, and her voice—fuck, it’s husky and quaking with something—cold or kismet? I’m not sure.
She is soaked, and I can see her shiver despite her ridiculously expensive coat.
“Oh, thank God, I thought I was gonna die out here,” she gasps.
I clench my teeth as she starts towards me.
“Can you talk?” she asks, smiling, welcoming, and so damn infuriating I want to growl at her.
Doesn’t she know this is dangerous? That I might be dangerous?
Seriously, the woman must have a death wish or something. And that makes me angry all over again.
I frown, glaring at her.
“Go back the way you came. This is private property.”