Chapter 9
Greyson
Last night is the first night I dream in a long time.
Not the usual half-sleep, half-restless blankness I’ve lived in for years—the kind where you close your eyes and wake up hours later like someone hit a switch.
Nope.
This is a real dream.
The kind that leaves you disoriented when you open your eyes. The kind that makes your chest ache with something you can’t name.
I dream of springtime on the mountain.
Not the brutal, endless white of winter.
Not the dirty slush season where everything looks tired and half-dead.
Real spring—soft mud, bright green buds, sun warming the bark, air that smells like wet earth and possibility.
I dream of my grandfather.
He’s younger in the dream, the way he was when I was a kid, his hands strong and steady, his laugh low and real.
He’s sitting on the porch steps of this cabin with a mug in his hand, watching me work like he always did—quiet approval, no judgment.
I dream of Scar.
The old grizzly with the torn ear, lumbering through the trees like he owns them, stopping just long enough to huff at me like I’m an idiot before wandering off again.
I dream of turning wood into art.
Of willow branches etched into leather and iron, of sunsets burned into grain, of the satisfying bite of blade against material, the way my mind locks in when I’m creating, the way the world narrows until there’s only the work and my hands and the truth of it.
And I dream of thunderstorms that last for days.
Of the cabin wrapped in wind and rain like the world is trying to tear it apart.
Of Clara stuck here with me on my mountain.
Not panicked, not miserable, not counting the minutes until she can run back to the city.
In the dream she’s barefoot, wearing one of my shirts like it belongs to her.
Laughing at something I say.
Sitting at my table and arguing about what kind of tea is best like she’s done it a hundred times.
She looks at home.
She looks like mine.
But dreams are just that.
Make-believe.
Or wishes, maybe—if you’re stupid enough to admit you have them.
When I wake, the sun is bright and clear, pouring through the window in a clean wash of light that feels almost offensive after last night’s storm.
The mud outside is already drying beneath it, the world pretending the thunder never happened.
Clara is still asleep.
She’s on her side, hair spilled across my pillow in a messy dark fan, lips parted slightly as she breathes.
One arm is tucked under her cheek, the other draped across my sheets like she belongs here.
For a moment I just watch her.
Not like a creep.
Like a man trying to memorize something he knows he’s going to lose.
And fuck, that about breaks my heart.
In the sunlight she’s even more beautiful.
Last night she was storm-lit and wild-eyed, all sharp edges and survival. Now she’s soft.
Warm. Peaceful.
Her skin looks pale and pretty against the dark blankets.
She has a tattoo—high on her right shoulder—inked in bright lines even in the muted morning light.
A sunflower.
My throat tightens.
Sunflowers turn toward the sun.
They reach for light even when everything else is gray.
I lean down before I can talk myself out of it and press a kiss to the tattoo—slow, careful.
Like I’m apologizing for what I’m about to do.
Clara shifts, makes a small sound in her sleep, and my chest aches harder.
I slide out of bed quietly.
I can’t keep her.
I know I can’t.
Not even if I want to.
Especially if I want to.
Because Clara doesn’t belong here.
She’s a city slicker.
She’s got that polished, too-bright energy even when she’s muddy and half-frozen.
She’s the kind of woman who knows restaurants by reservation and probably owns matching luggage.
And I know things.
I heard enough last night—little pieces she let slip between jokes and sarcasm and the moments where she got quiet.
She’s not just some random lost woman.
She’s a professional. She doesn’t need to say it.
And I’ve read her column.
I know she has a platform. A blog. Articles about city life. A following.
There are eyes on her. Attention.
And that’s the exact kind of world I ran from.
If she stays, it’s only a matter of time before she posts something by accident.
A picture of the view.
A caption about a mysterious cabin in the Maine mountains.
A little wink to the internet.
And then the mountain gets loud.
Then the world comes climbing up my road with cameras and questions and greedy hands.
No.
I won’t let that happen.
I can’t.
And even if none of that were true—even if she could keep her mouth shut and her followers magically vanished—she still wouldn’t stay.
She doesn’t want this life. Not really.
Not the reality of it.
The cold.
The isolation.
The quiet that turns into a roar after a while.
The way the mountain takes what it wants and doesn’t ask permission.
She’d hate it.
Eventually.
And then she’d hate me for bringing her into it.
Or worse?
She’d want me to leave with her.
And I can’t.
I don’t belong out there.
I did my time in that world—suits, smiles, staged conversations, the constant pressure to be palatable.
I felt myself disappearing day by day until I couldn’t recognize the man in the mirror.
Out here, I’m real.
Out there, I’m a brand. A headline. A story.
No.
Fuck.
NO.
Best to say goodbye now.
Cleanly.
Before I start building castles on clouds like some romantic idiot.
I stalk into the kitchen, bare feet silent on the worn wood floor.
The cabin smells like last night—smoke and tea and sex and something softer I don’t want to name.
I scrub my hands at the sink like I can rinse off the memory of her mouth.
It doesn’t work.
My eyes keep flicking toward the hallway.
Toward the bedroom door.
Toward the woman sleeping in my bed like she has every right.
Fuck.
I need to deal with her car.
A fucking Tesla.
A snort of laughter escapes me—short, sharp.
Only this woman would think she could tackle a mountain in a thunderstorm with a battery-operated car.
Only Clara Belle.
The thought makes warmth curl in my chest, and I hate it.
Because somewhere in the last sixteen hours I’ve gotten attached.
Not just because she fucks like a poem and looks like a dream—though, yeah, that doesn’t hurt.
It’s because she’s funny. Smart. Honest in a way that catches you off guard.
She doesn’t shrink.
She doesn’t pretend—not when she’s talking to me.
She looks at me like I’m a person, not a spectacle.
And I’ve been alone a long time.
Long enough that the idea of a woman wanting to stay—wanting me—feels like a trick.
Women haven’t changed that much since the last time I tried to have one in my life.
They want things I can’t give. They want a future. They want normal.
They want out there.
So I don’t wait.
If I give myself time, I’ll falter.
I pull on yesterday’s jeans and a sweater, jam my feet into boots, and grab my coat from the hook.
The sun might be out, but the air still bites.
I head out to the shed where I keep the radio—old-school, reliable, the kind of thing that works when cell towers don’t.
The door creaks open, and cold air slaps my face, sobering me for half a second.
Good.
I need sober.
I need practical.
I need to do the right thing even if it feels like cutting my own damn hand off.
Inside the shed, I find the radio on the shelf where it always sits, dust it off, and flick it on.
Static crackles.
I adjust the dial until I get a signal.
Then I key the mic.
“Thatcher,” I say.
A beat.
“Thatcher, answer the fucking radio,” I growl.
Then his voice comes through, lazy and amused, like he’s been waiting his whole life for me to need something.
“Well, damn,” he drawls. “Didn’t think you still remembered how to talk to people, Grey.”
I close my eyes, already regretting this.
“I got a damsel in distress,” I say, voice clipped. “In need of rescue.”
There’s a pause.
Then a low chuckle.
“A damsel,” he repeats like he’s savoring it. “On your mountain.”
“Don’t fucking start,” I warn.
“You finally get lonely up there?” he asks, and I can hear the smirk in his voice. “Decide to order one off the internet?”
“Fuck you, Thatch.”
He laughs like that’s his favorite thing in the world. “So what do you want me to do about it?”
I grip the radio tighter.
“Her car’s dead on the road,” I say. “Battery. She tried to drive a Tesla up here in a storm like she’s got a death wish.”
“That’s your type now?” he says, amused. “City girls with expensive problems?”
“She’s not my anything,” I snap, too fast, too sharp.
Thatcher goes quiet for half a second—the kind of quiet that means he heard me, heard the edge under the words.
Then he hums like he’s entertained.
“Uh-huh.”
I grit my teeth.
“Come get her,” I say. “Bring your truck. We’ll pull the car out later. She—” My throat tightens around the next words. “She doesn’t belong here.”
The line crackles.
“She at the cabin now?” Thatcher asks, the teasing fading into something more serious.
“Yeah. You know the coordinates,” I grunt because he does.
He knows all the usual landmarks, the way you do when you live off-grid—because he does too.
But it’s been a minute, so I repeat them with the practiced ease of someone who’s had to guide people in before.
He listens without interrupting.
When I finish, he says, “I’ll be there in an hour.”
“Make it quick,” I reply.
A pause.
Then, softer, “You okay, Greyson?”
The question hits harder than it should.
I swallow and stare out at the bright morning, at the mountain pretending it didn’t almost swallow someone whole last night.
“I’m fine,” I say, because that’s what men like me say when we’re anything but. “Bring Willow. She might feel better with another woman in the truck.”
So will I, but I don’t add that.
Thatcher exhales. “Sure you’re fine. And yeah, I was bringing her anyway.”
He doesn’t go anywhere without his wife these days. Not since she told him they were expecting a baby this fall.
Can you believe that? Thatcher McCrae is having a baby.
I exhale and click the radio off before he can say anything else.
Then I stand there in the shed with the silence pressing in again, and I realize something that makes my chest go tight and my hands shake slightly.
This is the part I hate.
Not the storm.
Not the bear.
Not even the attention.
This.
The moment after warmth when you choose cold.
I turn back toward the cabin, jaw set.
Because I’m going to wake Clara up.
I’m going to get her dressed.
I’m going to get her off my mountain before she becomes something I start needing.
And if she looks at me with those luminous eyes and asks me to let her stay?
I’m just going to have to say no.
Even if it breaks something in me.