Chapter 7
Greyson
“Leave the dishes,” I say, voice like gravel. “You can take the bedroom.”
I don’t wait for her answer.
I stand so fast the chair legs scrape, then I turn my back on her and move to the sink like the dishes are an emergency and not an excuse.
Plates. Mugs. Knife.
I stack them with too much force, the clink too sharp in the quiet cabin.
Because if I stay at that table—if I look at her too long in my robe with her hair still damp and her cheeks still flushed from the storm—I’m going to do something I can’t take back.
And it’s been less than an hour since I found her on my road, screaming in designer heels like the mountain was personally insulting her.
Now she’s in my kitchen.
Invading my space.
Infiltrating my solitude.
And she’s making me want things.
Impossible things.
Fuck. It pisses me off.
Not at her—well, yes at her, a little—but mostly at myself.
I shouldn’t want anyone.
Wanting is a door.
Wanting is letting someone step over the threshold and start leaving fingerprints on the life I fought to build.
I don’t want to know what she’s about to say.
I don’t want to hear whatever she has to say about my art.
About my willow trees. About my sunsets.
About the stupid, traitorous part of me that still believes beauty can be something pure and that maybe I can change a life with my art.
I sure as fuck don’t want to hear about why she’s really here.
Because I know. I know.
She wants to meet the artist. Wants to out me to the public.
Goddammit.
I know her name now.
Clara Belle.
She writes a blog about life in the city.
Her articles have even been picked up by the New Yorker and the Times.
And she found me.
Which means the world has found me.
Fuck.
It always does.
It comes sniffing around with its cameras and its greed and its headlines and its hungry hands, and I can’t stand it.
I didn’t come up here to be seen.
I didn’t come up here to be consumed.
I came up here because this is the only place that feels real.
This mountain.
The wilderness.
The stark reality of facing down a bear or an eagle or a wolf on any given day.
Weeks without seeing another soul.
Splitting wood when it’s twenty below.
Fixing what breaks because there’s no one else to call.
Spending days on a project just because I can.
Looking myself in the mirror and living with who and what I am.
That is reality.
Out there—where she lives in a city blinded by lights and filters and noise? Where everything is curated and sold and spun into a story?
Is that reality?
Fuck no.
Not to me.
And that’s where she belongs.
So I keep my back to her.
I focus on the sink.
On the faucet.
On the hot water steaming over my hands like I can wash off the fact that she’s here.
I scrub harder than necessary.
My jaw is tight.
My chest feels too full.
Anger vibrates under my skin, sharp and restless, because anger is easier than admitting the truth.
The truth is, I want to turn around.
I want to see if she’s still watching me with those impossible eyes.
I want to know what her skin tastes like when it’s warm and dry instead of rain-cold.
I want—a movement, a sound behind me.
Soft.
A shift of fabric.
Bare feet on wood.
I don’t turn.
I should.
I should tell her to go to the bedroom like I said.
I should tell her to sleep and leave in the morning and never come back.
I should do a lot of things.
But I’m too lost in my own head to catch her until it’s too late.
Her hand lands on my back.
Just one palm, gentle—barely pressure—but it hits me like lightning.
Hot and soft against my flannel shirt, searing straight through the fabric and into my bloodstream.
My breath catches so hard it hurts.
I go still.
Every muscle locks.
Because touch is rare, up here.
Because I don’t let people close.
Because my body recognizes softness and decides, instantly, violently, that it has been starving.
“Greyson?” she says.
My name in her voice is the final match.
I spin around and catch her hand in mine, not rough but not gentle either—just fast, instinctive, like I need to control the point of contact before I lose control of everything else.
Her eyes widen. But she doesn’t pull away.
She’s close.
Too close.
I can feel the heat of her.
I can smell the clean freshness of her skin where the perfume has faded. Likely from the rain she must’ve wiped off in the mudroom—and underneath it?
Her own scent blossoms. It’s sweet and real and not the expensive shit that pissed Scar off.
I shake my head once, a warning I can’t quite put into words.
Don’t.
She sees it.
I know she sees it.
I need her to see it so she stays.
She doesn’t. And I don’t know if I feel relieved or not.
“What are you doing?” I ask, low. “What the hell are you doing here, Clara?”
Her throat moves when she swallows.
Her lips part like she’s deciding whether she’s brave enough to tell me the truth.
Then she lifts her other hand and touches my wrist—the one holding hers—like she’s anchoring herself.
And that should be nothing.
It isn’t.
It’s everything.
“I came to find you,” she whispers.
The words shouldn’t matter.
But they do.
They hit some place in me that hasn’t been touched in a long time—the place that still wants to be chosen for something other than a name on paper.
My grip tightens around her hand before I can stop it.
“That’s a bad idea,” I say, voice hoarse. “You don’t know me.”
Her gaze doesn’t waver.
“I know you, Greyson. I know what your art means to me,” she says, like she hates the honesty but can’t help it.
“It makes me feel something. And I need more of that. I need—” Her voice catches.
“I need to believe there are still people who make things because they mean it. Not because they’re trying to sell me a filtered version of myself. ”
My chest aches at the words, sharp and unexpected.
Because I know that world. I know that hollow, shiny kind of loneliness.
I can see it in the way she holds herself like she’s used to defending her right to take up space.
I should step back.
I should let go.
Instead, my eyes drop to her mouth.
Plump. Pink.
Still a little chapped from the cold.
And I hate myself for wanting it.
Clara takes a breath like she’s about to say more—about the artist, about the willows, about how she found me—I can’t hear it.
I can’t let her make it real.
So I cut the distance.
Not with force.
With choice.
I raise her hand—still trapped in mine—and press my mouth to her knuckles, just once, like a test.
Her breath shudders.
The sound wrecks me.
Her fingers curl against my palm, and something inside me snaps loose.
I let go of her hand only to bracket her waist, pulling her close with the kind of care that feels like violence because it takes effort not to take more than she’s offering.
“Tell me to stop,” I murmur against her temple, voice raw. “Clara—tell me to stop and I will.”
She tilts her face up, eyes bright, fearless in a way that makes my throat tighten.
“Don’t,” she whispers.
One word.
And that’s it.
All bets are off.
I kiss her.
Harder than I mean to at first—months of restraint, years of silence, all of it crashing into this moment—but I catch myself, adjust, slow it down, because she isn’t a fantasy, and she isn’t mine to devour.
She makes a sound into my mouth that feels like relief.
Like surrender.
Her hands slide up my chest, gripping the flannel at my shoulders, pulling me in like she’s been waiting for this too.
I deepen the kiss anyway, because I can’t help it, because the taste of her is warm and sweet and human, because it makes the whole cabin feel suddenly too small for the heat building between us.
She presses closer, the robe parting just enough for me to feel the curve of her thigh against my jeans, the soft give of her belly against my hard stomach, and my control fractures again.
I lift her—without thinking, without effort—and she gasps, arms tightening around my neck as I carry her a few steps back until her hips bump the counter.
Her eyes flash wide.
“Greyson—”
I kiss her again, cutting off whatever she was about to say, because words are dangerous right now.
Words make promises.
Words open doors.
My hands slide up her sides under the robe, fingers splaying across her warm skin, and I swear I can feel my own name carving itself into my bones.
She shivers—not from cold this time.
It goes straight through me.
I pull back just enough to look at her, breath rough, forehead almost touching hers.
“Fuck, I knew you were gonna be trouble when I saw you,” I tell her, like it’s an accusation.
Her mouth curves—small, trembling, beautiful. “So are you.”
I huff something that might be a laugh if my body wasn’t on fire.
Then I kiss the corner of her mouth, her cheek, her jaw—slow, deliberate, like I’m learning her.
Like I’m imprinting her on my memory in case I have to force myself to let her go in the morning.
She tilts her head, granting me access, and the trust in that simple motion does something to my chest I don’t have a name for.
My hands slide to the knot of the robe belt.
I pause.
I look at her again, making sure.
“Last chance,” I say, rough. “You sure?”
Her fingers thread through my hair, tugging just enough to make my vision spark.
“Yes,” she breathes. “I’m sure.”
The last piece of restraint I have left crumbles.
I lift her into my arms again, and this time I don’t stop at the counter.
I carry her down the short hallway toward the bedroom, the storm raging outside like it’s furious I’m choosing warmth over solitude.
She clings to me, mouth against my throat, kisses turning my skin into a live wire.
And for the first time in a long time, I don’t feel alone.
Not even for a second.