Chapter 6
Clara
I expect an interrogation when I step into his cabin.
A gruff “Who are you?”
A suspicious glare.
A lecture about trespassing.
Maybe even the kind of silent, icy treatment that makes you feel like you’re contaminating someone’s space just by breathing.
Instead, I get tea.
And Nutella.
My weakness.
If humanity has ever created anything more perfect than chocolate-hazelnut spread, I have not encountered it—and I mean that sincerely.
I’ve eaten in Paris. I’ve had gelato in Rome that made me briefly consider moving to Italy and becoming an entirely different person.
I’ve had exclusive desserts plated like modern art and priced like rent.
Nothing beats Nutella on bread when you’re cold, exhausted, and emotionally unraveling.
It’s humble perfection.
And it’s sitting in front of me like this bearded mountain man somehow reached into my soul, found the one comfort food I’ve denied myself for years, and served it with a side of blunt annoyance.
I take one bite.
And I literally moan.
It’s not sexy.
Not intentionally.
It’s just involuntary.
My taste buds have a religious awakening.
“Oh my God,” I whisper around the mouthful. “I haven’t had this in years.”
His brows lift like he’s offended on Nutella’s behalf.
“Why?” he asks. “You don’t like it?”
I stare at him.
“Like it? This is my favorite.”
He leans back slightly, gaze flicking over me like he’s trying to do the math.
“Then I really don’t get why it’s been years,” he says, absurdly blunt.
I swallow, heat creeping up my neck.
Because suddenly this feels like more than a sandwich.
This feels like a question about my entire life.
“I, uh, don’t know,” I say quickly, too quickly. “It’s just—”
“Just what?”
I set the sandwich down, wiping my fingers on a napkin that looks like it was cut from a roll of paper towels because of course it was. I attempt casual.
I attempt light.
I attempt to not sound like a therapy commercial.
“It’s fattening,” I say, like that’s a normal answer. “And it has a ton of carbs.”
His face goes blank.
Not confused-blank.
Deadly-blank.
“What?”
I clear my throat, laugh a little because I’m embarrassed, and that’s my go-to when I don’t know what to say.
Just giggle, Clara, smile, and hope they stop asking the hard questions.
But he doesn’t look away or laugh with me.
He waits.
“Look, I know it might not look it, but I work really hard to maintain this size. I meticulously watch my diet and exercise.”
“Why? For health reasons?”
“Well,” I gasp, because that should be why, but my reasons are much more shallow. “I mean, yes and no. I just have to. Otherwise, I’d balloon up in no time.”
His eyes narrow.
I barrel forward because stopping would mean acknowledging how awful it sounds.
“I have a condition, polycystic ovarian syndrome, PCOS,” I add, quieter. “It causes a ton of shit, but it really makes metabolizing carbs a bitch, and if I’m not careful I will gain a ton of weight in no time—”
“Hang on, I don’t understand half of what you just said,” he interrupts, voice low.
Oh good. Great. Love that for me.
I start to explain—hormones, insulin resistance, the way my body holds onto weight like it’s preparing for famine—but he cuts me off again.
“Okay, I get the health stuff, but if it’s not hurting you, and you’re just worried about gaining weight, then I think, if you like Nutella,” he says, leaning forward, elbows on his knees, gaze locked onto mine like I’m the only thing in the room, “you should fucking eat it whenever you want.”
I blink.
It’s so direct I don’t know what to do with it.
“B-but I’ll get fat,” I blurt, then immediately want to crawl into the woodstove and die. “Um, fatter, I mean.”
The change in him is instant.
One second he’s calm—grumpy, but calm—and the next his posture goes razor-sharp, like a switch flips.
“Who the fuck called you fat?” he asks.
My mouth opens and closes like a fish.
“What?”
He doesn’t blink. “Who.”
I let out a short, nervous laugh.
“No one—well. Not like that. I mean, people don’t say it to your face. It’s just implied. You know? My ex-fiancé used to tell me I’d look like a model if I could get the weight down.”
His jaw flexes, a muscle jumping near his cheek.
“Clara,” he says, and my name coming out of his mouth like that—steady, rough, certain—makes my stomach flutter in a way I refuse to unpack. “You seem like an educated woman.”
I swallow. “Okay?”
“So I know you don’t believe what someone else calls you matters in this world.”
I stare at him, stunned, because the truth is, I do believe it.
I’ve believed it in a thousand tiny ways.
In the way I order salads when I want fries.
In the way I keep my laughs smaller in public.
In the way I’ve spent years trying to be acceptable.
His voice drops lower.
“Fat is an ugly word,” he says, fierce now, like the word itself offends him. “And it doesn’t mean shit.”
I blink again, throat tight.
“Some people have fat heads,” he continues, like he’s talking about weather, “or fat mouths. Like your piece of shit ex-fiancé. But I’ll tell you this—” he points at me with two fingers, like I’m a fact he’s decided and that’s that, “—I know beauty.”
My heart thumps once, hard.
“And you’re it,” he finishes.
I freeze.
I don’t know what to say.
No one talks to me like that.
Not without an agenda.
Not without trying to turn it into flirtation or a joke or a transaction.
He doesn’t soften.
Doesn’t smile.
Doesn’t try to make it cute.
He just looks at me like he means it.
“Anyone who says otherwise can go fuck themselves,” he adds, blunt as a hammer.
I swallow.
My eyes sting and I hate that.
“Wow,” I manage, because “thank you” feels too small and “please don’t make me cry” feels too honest.
He sits back, as if he’s done with the subject.
Like he didn’t just drop a grenade into my carefully managed self-image.
And that’s when I realize something even more unsettling.
This man is not just gruff. He’s real.
The kind of real I drove into a storm to find.
My gaze flicks around the cabin—the wood, the warmth, the quiet. The faint smell of smoke. The subtle marks in the grain here and there that I hadn’t noticed at first because I was too busy trying not to die.
Willow branches.
A burned edge of a sunset motif.
My pulse skips.
Okay, Clara. Play it cool.
Small talk first, maybe.
Don’t go in like a crazed fan girl.
Don’t blurt out ARE YOU THE LUMBERJACK ARTIST like an unhinged person.
So I take a sip of tea to buy time and try for normal.
“This tea is really good,” I say.
He grunts like that’s the highest compliment he expects from a woman who arrived in heels.
“What kind is it?” I ask, leaning into the mundane like it’s a life raft.
He shrugs. “Black tea. Strong.”
“Of course it is,” I murmur, and it comes out sounding like a flirt even though I don’t mean it to.
His eyes flick to mine.
Heat crawls up my neck again.
I clear my throat and pick up my sandwich, because apparently I’m going to cope by eating like this is a casual lunch date instead of a survival situation.
“So,” I say, forcing lightness. “Do you, um, live up here full-time?”
“Mm.”
That’s it.
That’s the answer.
I try again.
“Don’t you ever get lonely?”
His gaze narrows, like he doesn’t like the question.
“No.”
Okay. Great. Love that honesty.
My brain scrambles for safer territory.
“My name is kind of ridiculous,” I say, gesturing vaguely at myself. “Clara Belle. It sounds like a Disney character. My mom insisted.”
A beat.
Then—impossibly—his mouth twitches.
Not a smile.
But something close.
“You don’t look like any Disney princess I ever saw,” he says.
My smile drops.
“That’s not a criticism, Clara. I just meant that you don’t look fake or fragile or like you need to wait for some asshat prince to step up and rescue you. You look like the kind of woman who can save herself.”
I snort. “Says the man who just rescued me from a bear and mud.”
That earns me a huff that might be a laugh if he weren’t so determined to be grumpy.
Good. We’re talking. We’re human-ing.
“You would’ve figured it out. I have faith in you.”
God, that warms something inside of me.
Now, inch closer.
I glance down at his hands.
His hands are hands.
Rough. Callused. Strong.
The kind of hands you can’t fake.
The kind I maybe saw in those viral videos—steady as they carve, sure as they etch.
My chest tightens.
I set my sandwich down again and force myself to sound casual.
“You make things,” I say, as if it’s a guess.
As if I didn’t see the willow trees in his mudroom.
As if I didn’t drive into a thunderstorm because I needed whatever the person behind those designs had.
His eyes sharpen.
“Yeah,” he says carefully. “Why?”
My heart stutters.
This is the moment.
I can either jump right in and blow it. Or I can keep the small talk going until I’m brave enough to say the truth.
So I try to straddle the line—honesty wrapped in softness.
“I saw some designs online,” I say slowly. “They were… willow trees. Sunsets. Carved into leather and wood and iron.”
His body goes still.
Not like he’s relaxed.
Like he’s bracing.
I keep my voice gentle, because suddenly I understand something.
This isn’t just an invasion of privacy. This is a trespass.
A possible violation of the protection he’s afforded me already.
“They were beautiful,” I add. “They made me feel—”
His gaze locks onto mine. His black eyes are glittering with an impossible intensity.
“What? What did they make you feel?” he asks, voice low, “And what exactly are you doing on my mountain, Clara Belle?”
My mouth goes dry. Because now I have to answer.
And I’m not sure which scares me more.
That Greyson might be the Lumberjack Artist.
Or if he isn’t, that I drove into a storm for nothing but my own heartbreak.