The Lumberjack and the Sawmill Jill (Woodhaven Mountain Men #3)

Prologue 1 Kelly

Ever wake up and start running through your usual mental checklist for the day—coffee, shower, try not to embarrass yourself in public—only to realize your life isn’t the same anymore?

Like somewhere along the line something big happened and now everything feels totally unrecognizable.

You’re still brushing your teeth and putting your pants on one leg at a time, but suddenly you’re living in a version of your life you never planned for.

And you find yourself standing there, staring at your own reflection, wondering how the hell you got here, and whether you’ve been making questionable life choices for a lot longer than you realized.

Because that’s exactly where I’m at right now.

And believe me when I say, if someone had told me a few months ago that this is where I’d end up, I would’ve laughed in their face, right before backing slowly out of the room.

See my life has always been planned out.

Girl meets boy.

They fall in love.

They get married.

They have a great kid.

Then they grow old together.

That kind of thing—only, it didn’t end quite that way.

Mike and I started dating when I was barely in high school. Fifteen and green as spring grass.

Back then everything felt simple. The world was small—just the sawmill, the mountains, Friday night football games, and the little diner on Main where we’d split fries and milkshakes like it was the most romantic thing on earth.

Mike was older.

Confident.

Handsome in that careless way boys are when they know girls are watching them.

And he chose me.

At fifteen that felt like the most important thing in the world. Especially since I was a little bit chubby and a lot snarky—so, my options were kind of limited.

Still, he saw something in me. Or maybe I wore him down, following him around my baby brother’s baseball games where he worked as an assistant coach and umpire.

At any rate, we started dating. He started waiting outside my classes. It was sweet, really.

He would walk me home from school. Kiss me behind the bleachers when nobody was looking. And we talked about everything.

Talked about what our lives were gonna be like. Talked about college and the jobs we’d have.

We talked about the future like it was something already decided.

Us.

A house.

Kids.

A life right here in Woodhaven.

And I believed him.

God help me, I believed every word.

Now I’m forty-two.

Forty-two and single for the first time in decades.

Literal decades.

The number rolls around my head like it belongs to someone else.

Because I’ve never been single. Not really.

There was always Mike.

Mike through high school.

Mike when I started working at the mill.

Mike, when we got married in a courthouse with my brother as a witness and a cheap breakfast afterward because we didn’t have money for anything fancier.

Mike when Evan was born.

Mike when life got hard.

Mike when the years blurred together in a rhythm of work and family and routine.

Mike was always there.

Until he wasn’t.

The house is too quiet now.

I stand in the bedroom we used to share, staring at the half-empty closet where his clothes used to hang.

The space looks wrong.

Like a missing tooth.

What happened to Mike?

Good question.

Because the Mike Stevens I thought I knew bears absolutely zero resemblance to the man who ran off with a younger woman.

A girl young enough that when I first heard about her, I thought someone was joking.

Young enough that the word betrayal doesn’t even begin to cover it.

The man I built my life with didn’t just leave.

He vanished.

Took money with him.

Took pieces of the life I thought we’d built together.

Took the illusion that what we had meant something real.

Sometimes I try to picture the moment it changed.

The moment he stopped loving me.

But the truth is, maybe I just didn’t know him very well.

Even after all those years.

And maybe he didn’t know me either.

Maybe we both saw the people we wanted to see.

And ignored the rest.

The thought makes something hot and angry twist inside my chest.

I yank open another drawer in the dresser.

Then another. Papers slide everywhere as I dig through them.

Bills.

Receipts.

Old photos.

Anything that might explain how the man I trusted with my life turned into someone I barely recognize.

“Kelly, what are you doing?”

Willow’s voice comes from the doorway.

I don’t stop. I slam another drawer shut and open the next one like I’m hunting for buried treasure. Or maybe a ghost.

“I’m looking,” I mutter.

“For what?” she asks gently.

“For anything.”

Anything he left behind.

Any clue.

Any piece of the man I thought I knew.

But the deeper I dig, the clearer something else becomes.

There’s nothing here.

No explanation or apology. No sudden reason why he’s gone.

Just empty space where a life used to be.

My hands finally go still.

I stare down at the mess of papers and photos scattered across the bed. For a moment, the weight of it all presses down so hard I can barely breathe.

Forty-two.

Single mother.

I am starting over, whether or not I want to. I should feel like my life just ended. And maybe a part of it did. But as I stand there in the quiet of that room, another thought creeps in.

Small.

Uncertain.

But it’s growing. And it’s telling me, maybe there’s a silver lining somewhere in all this wreckage. Maybe after the storm, I’ll find my calm.

Maybe.