Updated Apr 11, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 10: The First Sign
Sloane
I don’t realize it’s happened until day eight, when I wake up to pale morning light filtering through the cabin window and my first thought isn’t about work.
It’s about whether Jackson will want coffee before or after he checks the traps.
That’s when it hits me: I haven’t thought about the law firm in days.
Haven’t obsessively calculated billable hours or mentally rehearsed arguments for cases I’m supposed to be working on. Haven’t worried about that partnership review or what the senior partners must be thinking about my unexplained absence. Haven’t checked my dead phone compulsively or felt that familiar anxiety about missing emails and meetings and deadlines.
I haven’t missed it.
Any of it.
Not my phone with its endless notifications. Not my apartment with its sterile white walls and expensive furniture that I never had time to enjoy. Not the city with its noise and crowds and constant, relentless pressure. Not even my career, the thing I’ve dedicated the last ten years of my life to building.
None of it seems real anymore, like it was all a dream I’ve finally woken up from.
This is what feels real: the warmth of the wood stove, the smell of coffee brewing, the sound of Jackson moving quietly around the cabin so as not to wake me (even though I’m already awake, watching him through half-closed eyes). This feels real in a way my New York life never did, and that realization is both terrifying and liberating.
I’ve spent eight days in this cabin—eight days of survival and simplicity and being stripped down to just the essentials—and it’s the most at peace I’ve felt in years.
Maybe ever.
I watch Jackson through my lashes as he tends the fire, his movements economical and practiced, and there’s something almost meditative about the way he works. He’s so competent, so completely comfortable in his own skin and in this environment, and there’s a quiet strength to him that I find myself drawn to in a way I didn’t expect.
He’s wearing his usual uniform—thermal shirt, flannel over it, worn jeans—and there’s something deeply, fundamentally masculine about the way he inhabits his body, about the way he moves through space like he owns it. Not in an aggressive or dominating way, but in a way that speaks of confidence earned through hard experience.
I watch him pull out his hunting knife and a whetstone, settling into his chair to sharpen the blade, and I’m suddenly hyperaware of every small detail: the way his large hands handle the knife with careful precision, the concentration on his face, the play of muscle in his forearms as he runs the blade across the stone in smooth, practiced strokes.
Oh no.
The thought hits me like a physical blow.
I’m attracted to him.
Not just abstractly attracted in the way you might appreciate a good-looking stranger on the street, but deeply, viscerally attracted in a way that makes my skin feel too tight and my breath come faster and a low heat start building in my core.
I’m very, very attracted to Jackson Torres.
To his gruff competence and his damaged nobility and the way he saved my life and then taught me how to save my own. To his quiet strength and his vulnerability and the way he looks at me sometimes like he’s seeing all the way through to the broken parts I try to hide. To the gentleness in his hands when he’s teaching me survival skills and the fierceness in his eyes when he’s protecting what’s his.
To the way he makes me feel safe and challenged and alive all at once.
When did this happen?
Was it the first night, when he carried me to safety despite clearly not wanting a houseguest? Was it when he patiently taught me to make fire despite my complete incompetence? Was it when I talked him down from his nightmare and he trusted me enough to be vulnerable? Was it last night, when he shared his grief and his guilt and let me see the real him?
Or was it all of those moments combined, building on each other until suddenly I looked up and realized I’d fallen?
I’m falling for him.
The admission makes my heart race and my stomach flip and my hands clench in the blankets.
I’m falling for a grumpy mountain man who lives off the grid in Montana, who has PTSD and trust issues and a wolf-dog hybrid, who has made it very clear that he values his solitude and his peace and has no interest in letting anyone into his carefully constructed world beyond the two weeks I’m temporarily trapped here.
I’m falling for someone I can’t have, someone who exists in a completely different world than mine, someone who—
“You’re awake.”
Jackson’s voice startles me out of my spiral, and I open my eyes fully to find him watching me with those dark, knowing eyes.
“Yeah,” I manage, my voice still rough with sleep. “How long have you known?”
“About five minutes. Your breathing changed.” He goes back to sharpening his knife. “Coffee’s ready if you want some.”
I sit up slowly, testing my ankle which is finally starting to feel almost normal again, and wrap one of the blankets around my shoulders before making my way to the kitchen area. The cabin is warm—Jackson must have been up for a while, keeping the fire stoked—and there’s something deeply comforting about the routine we’ve fallen into.
I pour myself coffee in the metal cup I’ve claimed as mine, and lean against the counter, watching him work.
“What are you sharpening it for?” I ask, just to break the silence, to distract myself from the way my body is responding to his presence.
“Skinning. Processing game requires a sharp blade or you waste meat.” He tests the edge with his thumb, apparently satisfied with the result. “Want to learn?”
“To sharpen a knife?”
“To process game. You know how to cook it now. Might as well learn the whole skill.”
Part of me wants to say no, to maintain some distance, to not get any more tangled up in this life that isn’t mine and can’t be mine. But a larger part—the part that’s been coming alive over the past eight days—wants to say yes to everything he’s offering.
Wants to learn everything he can teach me.
Wants to soak up every moment of this peace before I have to go back to the noise.
“Okay,” I say. “Teach me.”
He nods, standing and moving toward me, and when he holds out the knife handle-first, I take it carefully, aware of the weight and the sharpness and the trust inherent in the gesture.
Our fingers brush as I take the knife, and that simple contact sends electricity racing up my arm.
From the way his eyes darken, I think he feels it too.
“First thing you need to know,” he says, his voice rougher than usual, “is that a knife is a tool, not a weapon. You treat it with respect, keep it sharp, use it properly.”
“Okay.”
He moves behind me, and I can feel the heat of his body even though he’s not quite touching me, can smell the pine and woodsmoke scent that clings to his skin.
“You want to follow the muscle lines,” he says, and his hands come up to guide mine, showing me the angle and the pressure. “Like this. Let the blade do the work.”
I’m not processing anything he’s saying.
All I can focus on is the solid warmth of him behind me, the strength in his hands as they guide mine, the way his breath ghosts across my neck when he leans in to check my angle.
This is dangerous.
This whole thing is dangerous—not the knife, not the wilderness, but this growing connection between us that neither of us can afford to acknowledge.
“You’re not paying attention,” he murmurs, and there’s a hint of amusement in his voice that makes my stomach flip.
“Sorry. I’m distracted.”
“By what?”
You. By you and the way you make me feel and the way I don’t want to leave even though I know I have to.
But I don’t say that. Instead I say, “By how peaceful it is here. How quiet.”
It’s not a lie, but it’s not the full truth either.
He steps back, putting distance between us again, and I immediately miss his warmth.
“Yeah,” he says quietly. “That’s why I stay.”
We work in silence for a while, him teaching me the basics of field dressing and processing game, and I try to focus on the lesson instead of the man giving it. Try to memorize the skills instead of the way his hands move or the sound of his voice or the rare moments when he smiles at something I’ve done right.
But it’s a losing battle.
Because somewhere in the last eight days, Jackson Torres has become more than just my rescuer or my reluctant teacher or the grumpy mountain man who saved my life.
He’s become the person I want to wake up next to. The person whose approval makes my chest warm. The person whose rare smiles feel like gifts. The person who makes me want to be better, stronger, more capable.
The person I’m falling for, despite all the very good reasons why I shouldn’t.
And in a week—maybe less if the weather clears—I’m going to have to leave him.
Going to have to walk away from this peace and this simplicity and this man who’s shown me what it feels like to actually live instead of just survive.
The thought makes my chest ache.
“You okay?” Jackson asks, and I realize I’ve stopped working, my hands frozen around the knife.
“Yeah,” I lie. “Just… tired, I guess.”
He studies me for a long moment, and I wonder what he sees. Can he tell that I’m falling for him? Can he see the way my heart jumps every time he’s near? Can he sense that I’m already dreading the day I have to say goodbye?
“You should rest,” he says finally. “I’ll finish this.”
I nod, setting down the knife and moving back to my bed, but I don’t lie down. Instead I sit there, wrapped in my blanket, and watch him work.
Watch the competence in his movements, the strength in his hands, the concentration on his face.
Watch him and try to memorize every detail, every moment, because soon this will all be just a memory.
A beautiful, painful, impossible memory of the time I got lost in the wilderness and found something I didn’t even know I was looking for.
Found peace.
Found purpose.
Found him.
And then had to let it all go.
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