Updated Apr 11, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 18: Sleepless
Sloane
I don’t sleep.
I lie in the bed that feels foreign now after so many nights in Jackson’s arms, and I stare at the ceiling and think about my life in New York City—the life I’m supposed to want to get back to, the life that’s waiting for me when the rescue helicopter comes.
My apartment. Sterile white walls, expensive furniture I never had time to enjoy, a view of other buildings full of other people living their separate, isolated lives. I used to think it was sophisticated, enviable. Now all I can see is how empty it is. How there’s no warmth, no personality, no life.
My job. Eighty-hour weeks, billable hours measured in six-minute increments, arguing cases that usually just make rich people richer. I used to think I was making a difference, that being a lawyer mattered. But when was the last time I actually helped someone who needed help instead of just shuffling money around for corporate clients?
My friends. Surface-level relationships built on shared misery and expensive wine, people who would probably notice I was missing only when I didn’t show up for the monthly complaint session disguised as happy hour. When was the last time any of them asked me how I actually was? When was the last time I told them the truth if they did?
That’s my life. That’s what I’ve spent ten years building, sacrificing everything for, climbing toward like it was the only path that mattered.
And it’s all empty.
Every single part of it.
But here—in this rustic cabin with no running water, in the wilderness that almost killed me, with a damaged mountain man who’s currently pushing me away because he’s too scared to believe we could work—here I’ve found something real.
Purpose. Learning skills that matter, that keep me alive, that connect me to the earth and the seasons and the natural world.
Peace. The kind that comes from knowing exactly who you are and what you’re capable of, from existing without the constant pressure to perform or produce or prove yourself.
And Jackson. Grumpy, broken, beautiful Jackson, who taught me how to survive and then taught me how to live, who sees me—really sees me—in a way no one else ever has.
I don’t want to go back.
The realization hits me with crystal clarity, lying there in the darkness listening to him not sleeping across the cabin. I don’t want to go back to New York, back to my empty apartment and my soulless job and my surface friendships. I don’t want to spend the next ten years killing myself for a partnership that won’t actually make me happy.
I want this.
I want him.
Even if it’s hard. Even if it means giving up everything I’ve worked for. Even if it terrifies me.
In the morning, after a night of not sleeping while pretending to sleep, I make my decision.
“I don’t want to go back,” I say, and my voice cuts through the careful silence we’ve been maintaining while going through the motions of breakfast.
Jackson freezes, the coffee pot still in his hand. “What?”
“To New York. To my life there. I don’t want to go back.” I set down my cup with deliberate care. “I’ve been lying here all night thinking about it, and I’m sure. I don’t want that life anymore.”
“Sloane—” He sets down the pot, and I can see the war happening in his eyes—hope battling with fear, want battling with self-protection. “You have a career—”
“I have a job.” I cut him off. “Not a life. A job that pays well and looks impressive on paper but doesn’t actually mean anything to me. I have a job, Jackson. This—” I gesture around the cabin, at the life he’s built “—this is living.”
“You’re romanticizing it because you’re still here, still in the bubble.” His voice is carefully controlled, but I can hear the desperation underneath. “Wait until you’ve been back in civilization for a few weeks. Wait until you’ve slept in a real bed and taken a hot shower and had coffee that doesn’t come from a French press. Wait until you remember what it’s like to have choices and options and modern conveniences. You’ll change your mind.”
“Stop telling me what I’ll feel!” The words come out louder than I intend, and I have to take a breath to calm down. “Stop deciding for me what I want and need. Stop projecting your fears onto me and pretending it’s logic.”
“I’m being realistic—”
“You’re being a coward.” I stand, moving toward him even though he takes a step back. “You’re so convinced this can’t work that you won’t even let me try. You’d rather push me away now than risk the possibility that I might actually stay.”
“Because you won’t!” The words explode out of him. “You think you will, you want to believe you will, but the reality of this life—the isolation, the difficulty, the sheer relentlessness of surviving in the wilderness—it will wear you down. And I can’t—” His voice breaks. “I can’t watch that happen. Can’t watch you slowly start to hate this place, hate this life, hate me.”
“I could never hate you.”
“You say that now. My ex said that too. She loved me, wanted to make it work, swore she could handle the isolation. Six months, Sloane. That’s how long it took before she was crying herself to sleep every night, before she started looking at me with resentment instead of love, before she finally admitted she couldn’t do it anymore.”
“I’m not her.” I reach for him, and for a moment I think he’s going to pull away, but he lets me take his hands. “I’m not her, Jackson. I’m not someone who loved city life and tried to adapt to the wilderness. I’m someone who hated city life and found the wilderness. There’s a difference.”
“You hated your job,” he corrects quietly. “Not the city itself. And there are other jobs, Sloane. Better firms, better cases, work that actually helps people. You don’t have to throw away ten years of education and experience just because your current position sucks.”
“You’re right. I don’t have to.” I squeeze his hands. “But I want to. I want to try something different, something that matters to me. And maybe that’s environmental law for a Montana firm, or maybe it’s park ranger work, or maybe it’s something I haven’t even thought of yet. But I know—I know with absolute certainty—that I don’t want to go back to New York. Not now, maybe not ever.”
“And what about us?” His voice is barely a whisper. “What are you proposing? That you move to Montana and we… what? Date? Live together? I can barely function in town for more than a few hours, Sloane. I can’t be the partner you deserve, can’t take you to dinner or movies or do any of the normal relationship things—”
“I don’t want normal.” I cup his face in my hands, forcing him to look at me. “I want you. Exactly as you are. Damaged and grumpy and living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere. I want mornings chopping wood and nights by the fire. I want to learn more survival skills and read poetry aloud and fall asleep in your arms. I want this life, Jackson. With you.”
“You’ll change your mind—”
“Stop saying that!” I’m crying now, frustrated tears streaming down my face. “Stop telling me what I will or won’t feel! I’m an adult. I’m capable of making my own decisions about my own life. And I’m telling you—I’m begging you—please just trust me when I say I know what I want.”
“What if you’re wrong?” The vulnerability in his voice breaks my heart. “What if you try this and it doesn’t work and you end up hating me for it?”
“What if I’m right?” I counter. “What if this could actually work and you threw it away because you were too afraid to try? Which regret do you think you could live with better?”
He stares at me, and I can see the war happening inside him—the battle between hope and fear, between want and self-protection, between the possibility of happiness and the certainty of pain.
“I don’t know how to do this,” he admits finally. “Don’t know how to trust that good things can last. Everything I’ve ever loved has been taken from me—my unit, my career, my ability to function in normal society. I don’t know how to believe that you won’t be taken too.”
“You can’t protect yourself from loss by refusing to love,” I say gently. “You’re just guaranteeing the loss happens now instead of maybe happening later. And I can’t promise you I’ll never leave. I can’t promise this will work perfectly or that we won’t struggle. But I can promise you that I want to try. That right now, in this moment, I would choose you and this life over everything I left behind.”
“Right now,” he echoes. “But what about in a month? Six months? A year?”
“I don’t know.” It’s the most honest answer I can give. “I don’t know what the future holds. But I know I want to find out. Don’t you?”
He’s quiet for a long moment, his dark eyes searching mine, and I can see the exact moment his fear starts to give way to hope.
“Yeah,” he whispers. “God help me, yeah. I want to find out.”
I kiss him then, soft and sweet and full of promise, and he kisses me back with a desperation that speaks to how scared he’s been, how much he’s been fighting his own heart.
When we break apart, we’re both crying, both shaking, both terrified and hopeful and uncertain.
But we’re together.
And that’s a start.
“When the rescue helicopter comes,” I say quietly, “I’m going to go back to New York. Not because I want to stay there, but because I need to do this right. I need to quit my job properly, end my lease, pack up my life. And while I’m doing that, you’re going to think about what you really want. Not what you think is realistic or safe or logical. What you actually want.”
“I already know what I want,” he says roughly. “I want you. I’ve wanted you since the moment you reorganized my entire cabin and didn’t apologize for it.”
I laugh through my tears. “Then we’ll figure out the rest. Together. One step at a time.”
“Together,” he repeats, like he’s testing the word. “I don’t know how to do together.”
“Neither do I.” I press my forehead against his. “But I think we can learn.”
And for the first time since he pushed me away last night, I see him smile—real and genuine and hopeful.
“Yeah,” he says. “Maybe we can.”
Reader Reactions