Page 2 of Working for the Mountain Man

"Right," I say. "Okay."

I go back to my car because there is nothing else to do. I get in, turn the heater up, and stare at the work crew through the windscreen while trying not to think about how much I want to cry.

It has nothing to do with the road. I’m exhausted and cold and my phone keeps buzzing. I’m sitting in a mountain town that I’ve never been to because the alternative was staying in my apartment watching my life get dissected in the comment sections on social media.

About twenty minutes later, there’s a knock on my window. I startle and raise a hand to my chest as I turn and see that it’s him standing at my driver's side with mud on his boots and snow starting to sit on the shoulders of his jacket. I roll the window down.

"We can get you through," he says. "Drive slow, stay left of center. Do not pull over near the bend, the shoulder is still softthere. And don't come back down this road after dark unless you have to."

"Okay."

"Do you have decent tires?"

I stare at him. "I have a bad attitude and Google Maps. Between the two of us, we've managed fine so far."

I watch in fascination as his lips twitch ever so slightly, I think that’s the closest thing to a smile I’ve seen from anyone in a week.

"Stay left," he says again. "And slow."

He walks ahead of the car without asking whether I am going to follow. I follow, because what else am I going to do? He guides me past the cones, past the machinery, and past the section where the road edge crumbles away into a steep drop that makes my stomach lurch when I see it properly.

I keep my eyes on him instead, at his hands, when he signals left or slow or stop for a second, which are enormous and scarred across the knuckles.

He stops beside the car when I am past the worst of it and taps twice on the roof. "You're clear," he says. "Keep going."

"Thank you." I mean it, I’m grateful that he was able to get me through quicker than expected. "I'm Elsie, by the way. Elsie Bell."

He looks at me for a moment. "Hugo Rhodes," he says and then he walks back to the job site.

That’s it, no questions about why I’m here or how long I’m staying or anything else. Just his name and then he’s gone.

Hugo Rhodes.

I drive the rest of the way to the cabin trying not to think about it.

The cabin is not awful. It’s also not the warm, lamp-lit sanctuary the listing photos suggested; because listing photos are fictional and I write fiction for a living and still fell for it, which says something embarrassing about my judgement. It’s small and cold when I open the door. The walls are plain wood, there’s a basic kitchen, a bed that looks far from deluxe, but does look comfortable, a wood burner I’m going to have to figure out how to use, and a Wi-Fi router with a light that is blinking rapidly, which I don’t think it should be doing.

The view through the back window is genuinely beautiful: Mountains, pines and the last of the grey afternoon light, and for a second, I just stand there looking at it.

Then the cold catches up with me and I haul my bags inside.

I set up the way I always do when I’m working somewhere new. Laptop on the table, a new notebook next to it, my charger plugged in, and my manuscript opened to the last scene I was working on, forty-three thousand words of a romance novel that currently has an ending problem and a hero problem and, if I am being fully honest with myself, a I-do-not-believe-in-this-anymore problem.

The hero is named Callum.

Callum is charming, articulate, emotionally available, and he says the right thing at the right moment, he’s the exact man I would have designed two years ago when I still thought that was what love looked like.

I read back the last scene I wrote and wince. God, it’s terrible.

Not the prose, the prose is fine. Callum is so smooth, so perfectly pitched, and the heroine is so charmed by him, thatnone of it feels true. It feels like I described a feeling I used to have rather than one I actually understand.

My phone buzzes and I pick it up this time without thinking.

It’s a message from Daniel

Daniel:Hey. Heard you left town. I hope you're doing okay.

I stare at it for a long time. He heard I left town.He heard. As if we’re still in the type of relationship where he gets to check in on me. He’s acting as though he didn’t spend forty minutes on a podcast telling someone else about my flaws in such detail people on the damn internet have made quotes from his words.