Chapter 6 Jax
Chapter six
Jax
Wrong. Everything's wrong.
I know before I'm fully awake. The cabin's too quiet. The air feels different. It’s empty in a way that makes my chest tighten before my brain catches up.
I walk into the bedroom. Cold sheets. Not just an empty bed. She's been gone a while.
I'm up and moving, pulse hammering. Checking the bathroom. Kitchen. Porch. She's not here. "Claire?" My voice echoes back, mocking.
No boots by the door. No sketchbook on the table. No mug half filled with tea. Her camera bag is gone. The flannel shirt she was wearing last night is gone. Every trace of her, gone.
The panic forms a knot in my chest. I can't breathe. Can't think. There’s just this roaring certainty that I've fucked up the best thing that's ever happened to me.
I stand in the middle of the living room, my hands clenched and useless at my sides. I look at the door like it might give me an explanation, but all it offers is silence. She didn’t leave a note. No goodbye. No see you soon.
She’s just gone.
It shouldn’t feel like something vital’s been torn out of me and left the place hollow.
I cross the room and lower myself into the chair where she liked to curl up. My knees crack louder than usual. The fire pops as if in response, and for a second, I imagine her still here. Her knees pulled up under her. Her smile soft and tired. Her voice asking what I’m thinking.
She made this place feel different, less like a bunker. More like a home.
I lean forward, elbows on my thighs, hands knotted together. That’s when I see it. A folded piece of paper, half tucked under the blanket in the bench cubby by the door.
I pull it out, blinking at the handwriting. It’s not Claire’s.
It’s not mine, either.
I open the note and scan the words. They hit like a hammer to the sternum.
Thank you for everything. For the quiet. For reminding me what it feels like to be seen. I’ll never forget this place, or you.
My mouth pulls into a grimace, not at the sentiment, but at the timing. Claire must’ve found it and thought it was for me.
It’s from years ago. Cal, another wilderness guide, brought someone here when I was away on business.
She was running from something and needed stillness.
I remember him telling me about her, about how they only spent one weekend talking and drinking cocoa and not touching each other at all.
I remember him saying she was the first person who didn’t want anything from him but company.
He kept the note like a souvenir from a life he didn’t get to live.
Claire thought it was mine.
She thought I’d rescued someone before. Held them. Let them think they mattered, and probably gotten physical in the same ways we did. What wrecks me is that she believed I’d give her something that wasn’t real.
The pain is almost impressive in its precision.
I stand, aimless, and pace the cabin. My heart cracks a little, seeing the tiny red camera ornament where she left it on the table.
I carved a heart into the lens. I don’t know if she meant to leave it or if it slipped from her bag.
I hang it front and center on the Christmas tree.
It stands out, the solitary ornament among the baubles, as alone as I feel.
There’s a knock, and the front door creaks open behind me. Cal steps in, stamping snow from his boots. “Did you get my text? The crews worked all night and the roads have been passable since before dawn.”
I look up, the note still in my hand. My jaw works against the words I don’t want to say.
“She’s gone.”
Cal’s face shifts. His eyes dart to the note in my hand, then back to me. “What happened?”
I hand him the note. His brow furrows as he reads, then his mouth thins in understanding.
"Shit." Cal folds the note, tucks it in his pocket. "This is from Mina. Five years ago, remember? That winter I let her stay here when you were in Denver for the guide certification course."
"I know it's yours." My jaw aches from clenching. "But Claire doesn't."
"Mina was running from an abusive ex. Needed somewhere quiet, somewhere safe.
I never…" He runs a hand through his beard.
"Never touched her. She left this note when she went back to Boston.
I kept it because it meant something, that I'd helped someone. I couldn’t find it when I got home, and then I forgot about it. "
"Claire saw it. She thinks I've done this before. Rescue women, bring them here, let them think they're special." The words taste like ash.
"But you haven't." Cal's voice is firm. "In five years, you've never brought anyone here. Not clients, not friends, not women. Just her."
"She doesn't know that."
"Then tell her." Cal grips my shoulder. "Look, that note? Mina’s therapist convinced her to leave that ex, start over.
She's married now. Two kids. Happy. But that's my story, not yours.
" His words shake me. "Claire's your story.
And if she were mine? I wouldn't waste a single second standing here talking to me. "
The words grip me. He's right.
"Where would she go?" he asks.
"Into town. The Christmas market. Where else?"
Cal's already moving toward the door. "Go get your woman, Jax. Bring her home."
I’m on my feet before I think it through, grabbing my coat and the keys.
The sky is pale and flat outside, clouds holding back another storm.
I slam the truck door shut and throw it into gear, tires crunching over the snow.
The road twists down the mountain, slick in places, familiar in others.
I drive faster than I should, but not reckless. Not now.
The roads blur past. Snow. Trees. The same mountain I've navigated a thousand times, but today it feels like every mile is too long. Every curve takes too much time.
What am I going to say when I find her? How do I explain that note without sounding like every other asshole who says "it's not what it looks like"? Except it really isn't what it looks like. It's Cal's story, not mine. Mina's gratitude, but not toward me.
But will Claire believe me?
I think about her face when she talked about her parents and the divorce. How they made her feel like an afterthought. How she learned to make herself small so she wouldn't be in the way. How she's spent her whole life waiting for someone to choose her.
And the first time she's scared, the first time she doubts, I let her slip away.
Fuck that.
I'm choosing her. I chose her the second I saw her in that storm. I'll keep choosing her every day for the rest of my life if she'll let me.
The town comes into view. Christmas lights. Festival crowds. I scan faces, looking for dark hair and her impractical city coat. Looking for the woman who made my cabin feel like home.
Looking for mine.
She’s not just some woman I helped out of a snowbank. She’s the one who made me remember what it feels like to want a future with color and noise and soft laughter in the corners of the room. She’s the only woman I’ve ever wanted like this. If I lose her now, I won’t come back from it.
I turn toward Granitehart Ridge’s main road, praying she hasn’t already left town. I hope I find her before she disappears into a version of her life that doesn’t have room for me.
Because she was never just passing through. I’m not going to let her think she was.
The town looks different now.
Lights drip from the eaves of every shop like icicles spun from liquid silver.
Music floats above the crowd, familiar carols softened by snowfall and laughter.
There are sleigh bells somewhere, maybe real, or maybe piped in through speakers.
The scent of roasted chestnuts weaves through the cold like smoke.
I park half on the curb outside the Ridge Taproom and cut the engine.
The warmth I’ve been carrying inside me all morning fades the second I step into the wind.
I scan the square, eyes tracing the pockets of color where people move in thick coats and woolen scarves, where children tug on mittens and vendors pass out paper cups of steaming cider.
Then I see her.
She’s alone, standing near a wooden stall strung with glass ornaments, her phone in her hand but pointed at the ground. She’s not taking pictures. She’s not smiling. She’s just standing there in the middle of everything festive, looking like she’s trying to disappear.
Her breath fogs the air in front of her. Her eyes are red. The sight of her undoes me. My chest pulls so tight it hurts to breathe. Every instinct in me says go to her. Hold her. Don’t let her slip away again.
I'm halfway across the square when someone calls my name over the Christmas music.
"Jax!"
I turn to see the guides I work with at Granitehart Ridge Retreat.
Cade’s approaching with Micah and Jake flanking him.
Dex brings up the rear, looking amused by whatever brought them all to town together without their wives.
They move with the easy confidence of men who know these mountains as well as I do.
"Thought that was you," Cade says, clapping me on the shoulder. "What brings you down from your mountain fortress? Usually takes a natural disaster to get you into town during off-season."
The irony isn't lost on me. The snowstorm was a kind of natural disaster, a thing that brought Claire to me, before the misunderstanding that drove her away.
"Looking for someone."
Micah raises an eyebrow, exchanging glances with Jake. "Someone? As in a woman someone?"
"The mountain hermit has been domesticated," Jake grins. There's genuine curiosity beneath the ribbing. "Didn't think anyone could crack that fortress you've built."
"Shut up." But there's no heat in it. They're not wrong. Three days ago, I would have sworn I preferred solitude. Now the thought of going back to that empty cabin without her makes my chest feel hollow.
"Is she here somewhere?" Dex asks, more serious than the others. He gets the need to find your person when they've slipped away.