4
KENDALL
We’ve been hiking for almost three hours when I take the turn I wasn’t planning to take.
The spur trail is barely visible. A narrow gap in the scrub brush where the main path curves east along the ridge. Most people walk right past it. I’ve never shown anyone this route. It’s not on the map I gave him, and it’s not in any guidebook, because it doesn’t lead anywhere the forest service considers a destination.
“Where are we going?” Drew asks behind me.
“Somewhere most people don’t know about.”
The trail drops through a stand of aspens and then levels out along a shelf cut into the hillside. The trees thin and the stone changes—darker, older—and then the structure comes into view.
It’s a prospector’s cabin from the mining days. Not much left. Three stone walls and half a roof, timber beams that have somehow held for a hundred and forty years. The fourth wall collapsed a long time ago, leaving the whole thing open to the valley. Wildflowers grow in the gaps between the stones. The floor is packed earth and flat rock, dry and sheltered from the wind.
I found it my second summer in Copper Peak. I was nineteen, hiking alone on a day off, and I took a wrong turn that ended up being the right one. I’ve been coming back ever since. When the store gets to be too much, when corporate sends another email that makes me want to throw my phone off the ridge, when I need to remember why I’m here and not somewhere easier. This is the place.
I’ve never brought anyone here.
Drew steps through the gap where the fourth wall used to be and stops. He looks at the stone walls, the timber beams, the view of the valley spread wide and gold in the morning light. He doesn’t say anything for a long time.
“You don’t bring people here,” he says finally.
Not “this is cool” or “how’d you find this?” He says it like he understands what it means that I brought him here. Like he knows this isn’t part of the terrain consultation.
“Nobody comes up here,” I say. “The spur trail isn’t maintained. It’s not on any app.”
“Good.”
He’s standing close. The cabin is small enough that close is the only option, but he’s not crowding me. He’s just there. Big, solid, taking up space the way he takes up every space he walks into, except right now, it doesn’t feel like he’s filling the room. It feels like the room was built for exactly this.
The wind moves through the open wall and pushes loose strands of hair across my face. I reach up to tuck them back behind my ear, and his hand gets there first.
His fingers brush my temple. Rough, careful, slow. He tucks the strand behind my ear and then his hand stays. His palm is warm against the side of my face and his thumb rests just below my cheekbone, and I stop breathing.
“Kendall.”
The way he says my name undoes something I didn’t know I was holding together. Not the professional distance. That’s been slipping since he walked into my store. Something deeper. The part of me that decided a long time ago that wanting things for myself was a risk I couldn’t afford.
I look up at him. His eyes are steady, patient, certain. He’s been certain since the first day. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you,” he says. “Since the store. Since you told that guy he was wrong and didn’t blink. I walked out of there and I knew.”
“Knew what?”
“That I was coming back. And it wasn’t going to be for gear.”
My heart is pounding so hard I can feel it in my throat. I should say something smart. Something careful. Something that keeps this professional and manageable and within the lines I drew for myself.
“I know,” I say instead.
He exhales, and the last inch of distance between us disappears.
His mouth meets mine like something breaking loose—sudden, inevitable, and overwhelming. The first brush of his lips is soft, almost testing, but the heat behind it flares instantly.
I gasp into him and he takes the sound, deepening the kiss with a low rumble in his chest that vibrates through me. His hand slides from my cheek into my hair, gripping just tight enough to tilt my head as his tongue traces the seam of my lips. I open for him without thinking, and then there’s nothing careful left between us.
We kiss like we’ve been starving for it. Slow at first—long, drugging pulls where his tongue strokes mine in lazy, thorough sweeps that make my knees weak. Then hungrier.
