Chapter 9
Sullivan
The cabin is a worse mess in daylight than in the dark.
The pine that took out the back wall was a forty-foot widow-maker that should have been dropped a year ago.
Half the branches are still attached, the trunk a foot in diameter where it punched through the kitchen and into what used to be Tess’s mudroom.
The kitchen is open to the sky. Miraculously, the stand mixer is on the floor, three feet from where it was last night, with a dent in the side and the bowl rolled into a corner, but otherwise intact.
Tess laughs when she sees it, the laugh of a woman who’s been carrying tension for twelve hours and somebody finally cracked the lid.
“My stand mixer,” she says, her hand over her mouth.
“I see it.”
“Sullivan, my stand mixer survived a tree.”
I look at the tree. “We’re going to need a chainsaw.”
“I have one.”
“Of course you do.”
“It’s in the truck.”
She wipes her face. Her cheeks are pink with cold, and her glasses have slid down her nose. She’s wearing my flannel under her coat, and all I want to do is stand here and look at her.
I drag my gaze away and grab the chainsaw from the truck.
We work together; me cutting the tree off the cabin in chunks, and Tess stacking them in piles.
Tess calls June Vega, and twenty minutes later, a tow truck and a flatbed arrive, along with two men.
Mason introduces himself as the volunteer fire chief, and Eli tells us he’s with mountain rescue.
Within an hour, Tess’s wreck of a cabin has been competently rendered into a wreck of a cabin under tarps.
The worst of the tree has been pulled clear, and she has a list of every contractor in town who can be at her cabin on Tuesday morning.
Mae shows up at noon with sandwiches. She doesn’t say a word about the fact that Tess is wearing my flannel. She does not have to. Her eyes send an entire telegram, and I get it loud and clear.
“Sweetheart,” Mae says to Tess, taking her face in her hands. “Cabin’s a cabin. People are people. You have all your fingers?”
“All my fingers.”
“All your toes?”
“Yep.”
“All your dignity?”
Tess grins. “Most of it.”
“Good enough.” Mae kisses her forehead. “You’re staying with Sullivan?”
“For a few days.”
“For a few days,” Mae repeats, as if she already knows it will be much longer than that.
She turns and looks at me. Mae Whitlock is a foot shorter than I am, and I would walk three blocks out of my way to avoid her gaze.
“Sullivan.”
“Mae.”
“I expect to see you at the café soon.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You can bring her with you, or you can come alone, but I expect to see you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Eat the sandwiches.”
I nod.
She drives off. June follows behind her, hand out the window in salute.
“We’ll be on standby for the next storm, Mercer. Keep your radio on, brother,” Mason says as he leaves.
Eli is the last to leave. He leans out of his window and says, “You’re one of Henry Sutton’s, aren’t you?”
I look at him. “Yeah.”
He nods. “Thought so when you said you mentioned Havenridge. Heard about the great work they’re doing with the veteran’s program there. Anything I can do, I’m in town. Don’t be a stranger.”
He pulls out.
Tess and I stand in the wrecked doorway of her cabin with a list of contractors, a paper bag of sandwiches, and the specific, small-town silence of people who looked at us, made a decision, and walked away to give us space.
“Sullivan.”
“Yeah.”
“Are you all right?”
I look down at her. She looks so small in my flannel, her eyes careful as she studies me, seeing way more than anyone else ever has.
“Yeah,” I say. “I’m all right.” My voice cracks. I clear it. “I forgot.”
“Forgot what?”
“How fast people show up. When you let them.”
She doesn’t say anything to that. She steps in close and puts her cheek against my chest and stands there for a long moment.
I cradle the back of her head, and we breathe.
The trouble starts two days later.
Tess wants to drive into town to pick up a few things: plywood I ordered at the lumberyard for the second roof patch, a drum of kerosene, and more tea because my houseguest—who’s now informed me that she’s my woman—tells me that stale Lipton is not tea, it's an apology.
We take her box truck, which rumbles down the switchbacks.
She drives because she’s more careful on the turns than I would be.
I ride shotgun and try not to think about how she moaned my name an hour ago, my mouth between her thighs, her hands fisted in my hair.
The drive is forty minutes long. It is going to be a very long forty minutes.
Granger’s. The lumberyard. The hardware store. We are loading the truck behind the lumberyard when a man in a black wool peacoat and Italian shoes that are utterly wrong for this town comes around the corner of the building and stops short at the sight of Tess.
He looks at her.
He looks at her the way a man looks at a piece of property he thinks he’s owed.
“Tess,” he says, clipped and smooth. “I thought it was you.”
Tess goes still.
She goes still in a way I have only seen her do once, when the casement let in the cold draft and I asked her if she felt it.
“Marcus.” Her voice is flat. “What are you doing in Hollow Peak?”
“Following up on a property.” His eyes flick to me dismissively, then back to her. “There was a misunderstanding two months ago about an offer my associate left with your aunt’s executor. A generous offer. You haven’t returned my calls.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Tess.” He laughs softly. The laugh is wrong. “You’re being unreasonable. The market for distressed properties in this corner of the San Juans is very specific, and the window will not be open forever. We are prepared to be more flexible than the original offer.”
He takes a step toward her.
He puts a hand on her arm.
I don’t remember moving.
I don’t remember the distance between where I was standing and where I am now. I’m between the man in the peacoat and Tess, his wrist in my hand. While crossing the seven feet separating us, I decided that this wouldn’t end well.
“Take your hand off her.”
He looks up at me and recalibrates quickly. “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Take. Your hand. Off her.”
He takes his hand off her, but I don’t let go of his wrist.
“Sullivan.” Tess’s hand is on my forearm, her voice is low and calm. “Sullivan.”
“In a second.”
“Sullivan, look at me.”
I look at her. She’s not afraid. She’s angry and tired but steady. She squeezes my forearm, not to stop me, but to anchor me.
“Let his wrist go,” she says evenly. “I want to talk to him.”
I let him go.
The man steps back and shakes his hand like he’s getting feeling back into it. His face has turned an unflattering color.
“Marcus,” Tess says politely. “I’m going to say this exactly one time.
The cabin is not for sale. Not at the original offer, not at the new offer, not at any offer.
You’re going to leave Hollow Peak today.
You’re not going to call me. You’re not going to send anyone in your stead.
If I see you anywhere near my property line, I’ll call Sheriff Granger, and I’ll tell him you put your hand on me without permission in front of a witness. Are we clear?”
“Tess, be reasonable.”
“Are we clear, Marcus?”
A pause. “Crystal.”
He looks at me briefly, then turns on his Italian heels and walks back the way he came.
The lumberyard is silent.
As my system comes back online, I’m aware of three other men at the loading dock, leaning on a forklift, watching.
One of them is the kid who rang me up this morning.
The second is a guy with a long gray ponytail.
The third is a guy whose face I’ve seen at the Switchback Café and whose name I can’t remember.
“We didn’t see anything,” the guy with the ponytail says.
“Marcus who?” the kid adds.
Long-gray-ponytail nods. “Tess, you all right?”
“I’m fine, Reggie.”
“Good. Sullivan, brother, you got that plywood?”
“I got it.”
“Holler if you need help loading.”
That’s all. Three men speaking on behalf of the entire town.
We finish loading and get into the truck. Tess’s hands are shaking slightly on the wheel. She notices that I notice and takes a deep breath.
“Talk to me,” I say.
“I will. In a minute.”
“Take your time.”
“Marcus is an associate of my mother’s. He’s been calling me about the cabin since Aunt Rosa died. He doesn’t actually want the land. He wants me to fail. To go home. He wants me to be the cautionary tale my mother warned me I would be.”
Her hands tighten on the wheel. “I’ve been ignoring his calls for two months. I didn’t think he would come here.”
“Tess.”
She turns to look at me. “Yeah?”
“He won’t again.”
She presses her lips together and nods.
My throat is tight. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I moved that fast. I should’ve asked.”
“Sullivan.” Her eyes are bright. “If you’d asked me whether to step between me and that man, I would’ve said yes. I’m not upset that you didn’t have time to ask me.” She pauses. “I do, however, need you to understand something.”
My chest constricts. This is the part where she leaves. Where I’m too much for her to take on.
“You are not going to spend the next forty-eight hours walking around your cabin telling yourself you’re bad luck. Are we clear?”
I open my mouth. Close it. “Tess.”
“I see you, Sullivan Mercer. I see exactly what’s about to happen in your head. Do. Not.”
I look at her.
She holds my gaze unflinchingly.
Then she puts the truck in gear, and we drive home up the switchbacks in a silence that’s not awkward, just full.
I watch her hands on the wheel. She’s been holding it too tightly since we left the lumberyard. Working through something. Not the part about Marcus. I know that look. I’ve had that look. It’s the face of a person adding up whether a thing is safe.
Tess parks the truck and kills the engine. Neither of us moves for a moment. Then she gets out and I get out and we unload in the last of the light without talking. She goes in and puts her kettle on, and I find reasons to stay outside a little longer.
That night, I do exactly what she predicted I would do.
I lie on my back next to her and look at the ceiling of my cabin, counting all the ways my proximity to a person is dangerous.
I count the man on the dock and the way I held his wrist. I count the way I lost time on the porch that day.
I count the way she anchored me when she was the one that asshole touched.
And I count the way that, given five more seconds and no Tess, I would’ve done far more than grab his wrist.
At some point near three a.m., I get up quietly so I don’t disturb her.
I sit at my kitchen table in the dark with a glass of water. I look at the door I keep in my line of sight and do the math the way I did it for two years before I went to Henry’s ranch in Montana.
I count the ways. The wrist I nearly broke at the lumberyard. Seven feet. That’s how far I moved without deciding to move. The speed of it. The certainty. If she hadn’t said my name, I would have put that man on the ground and kept going.
I see the future as clear as day. Tess on a sidewalk, six months from now. A stranger bumps her shoulder. I’m across the street before my brain catches up. Wrong target. Wrong context. And her face when she truly sees who I am, who I’ve become.
Bones went down because I made the wrong call. Wire lost three years because of my mistake. I’m a man whose decisions cost people things they can never get back.
I stand up from the table without deciding to stand. Walk to the sink. Run cold water over my wrists the way I learned in the hospital, and wait for my hands to stop trembling.
And the math says the same thing it’s always said.
Bad luck.
Stay alone.