Updated Apr 11, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 5: Useful
Jackson
On day three, I accept the inevitable: if Sloane Whitmore is going to survive the next two weeks without driving me completely insane, she needs to learn how to be useful.
The woman is helpless.
Not helpless in the damsel-in-distress way that some men might find appealing, but helpless in the way that comes from growing up in a world where every basic need is met by someone else, where survival skills mean knowing how to expense a business lunch and navigate office politics, where the biggest challenge is probably deciding between the premium gym membership and the luxury one.
She can’t chop wood. She can’t start a fire. She can’t cook anything that doesn’t come from a microwave or a takeout container.
She’s useless out here, and watching her try to help around the cabin while I’m out hunting is like watching a baby deer try to navigate a minefield—painful, awkward, and likely to end in disaster.
“Come on,” I say on the morning of day three, after watching her nearly set her sleeve on fire trying to add wood to the stove. “If you’re going to be here, you need to learn the basics.”
She looks up at me from where she’s sitting on the floor, her hair pulled back in a messy ponytail, her face smudged with soot, and there’s a wariness in her eyes that makes something uncomfortable twist in my gut.
“Learn what basics?” she asks, her voice cautious.
“Survival basics. Fire. Cooking. Wood chopping.” I gesture toward the door. “Can’t have you burning down my cabin because you don’t know how to manage a wood stove.”
“I wasn’t going to burn down your cabin,” she mutters, but she’s already getting to her feet, wincing as she puts weight on her injured ankle.
“How’s the ankle?” I ask, because I’m not a complete asshole, even if I’ve been acting like one.
“Better. Still hurts, but I can walk on it.” She tests it gingerly, and I can see the pain flash across her face even though she’s trying to hide it. “I’ll be fine.”
“Right.” I grab my jacket and toss her the spare one I keep for emergencies. “Put this on. We’re going outside.”
“Outside? It’s still snowing.”
“Yeah, and? Snow doesn’t stop just because you’re not used to it. Out here, you learn to function in all weather, or you don’t function at all.”
She stares at me for a long moment, and I can see the argument forming behind her eyes—the instinct to push back, to question, to negotiate. But then she takes a breath and pulls on the jacket without another word, and I feel that grudging respect starting to build despite myself.
At least she’s not stupid enough to argue when it matters.
***
Twenty minutes later, I’m watching Sloane try to chop wood, and I’m seriously reconsidering every decision that led me to this moment.
“You’re holding the axe wrong,” I say for the third time, trying to keep the frustration out of my voice and failing. “Hands further apart. Dominant hand near the base.”
“I am—” She swings, the axe connects with the log at completely the wrong angle, and bounces off harmlessly. “Dammit!”
“You’re too tense. You need to let the weight of the axe do the work.”
“I am letting it—”
“No, you’re trying to muscle it. That’s not going to work.” I step forward, and before I can think better of it, I’m standing behind her, my hands covering hers on the axe handle. “Like this. Loose grip on the top hand. Slide it down as you swing. Let gravity help.”
She’s frozen under my touch, and I’m suddenly very aware of how close we are, how her hair smells like the pine soap I keep by the basin, how small she feels in front of me despite the fact that she’s probably five-foot-seven or eight.
I step back quickly, putting distance between us.
“Try again,” I say, my voice rougher than it needs to be.
She does. The axe connects, and while it doesn’t split the log, it at least embeds itself properly in the wood instead of bouncing off.
“Better,” I grunt.
She turns to look at me, and there’s a flush on her cheeks that might be from exertion or might be from something else. “Really?”
“Don’t get cocky. You’ve got a long way to go before you can actually split wood, but it’s better.”
She tries again. And again. And again. And while she’s terrible at it—absolutely terrible—she’s also persistent, and she doesn’t complain, and she doesn’t give up even when I can see her arms shaking with exhaustion.
After thirty minutes, I call it.
“Enough. You’ll hurt yourself if you keep going.”
“I can do it—”
“No, you can’t. Not yet. Takes time to build the muscle and the technique.” I take the axe from her, and our fingers brush briefly before she lets go. “Come on. Next lesson.”
***
Teaching Sloane Whitmore to start a fire is somehow both easier and harder than teaching her to chop wood.
Easier because she’s clearly intelligent—she understands the concepts quickly, asks good questions, pays attention to the details. Harder because she’s so used to instant results that the slow, patient process of building a fire from scratch clearly drives her insane.
“It’s smoking,” she says, leaning over the small pile of tinder and kindling she’s arranged in the fire pit behind the cabin. “Why isn’t it catching?”
“Because smoke comes before fire. You need to be patient.”
“I am being patient—”
“You’ve been at it for two minutes. That’s not patient.”
She shoots me a glare that would probably wither a lesser man, but I just raise an eyebrow and wait.
She goes back to blowing gently on the smoking tinder, and I watch the concentration on her face, the way she’s biting her lower lip, the determination in every line of her body.
And then—finally—a small flame catches.
“I did it!” She looks up at me with such genuine joy and surprise that something in my chest does a weird flip. “I actually did it!”
“Don’t celebrate yet. You need to keep it going.”
She carefully feeds small pieces of kindling into the growing flame, and I talk her through it, telling her when to add more, when to give it air, when to just leave it alone and let it do its thing.
By the time the fire is burning steadily, she’s grinning like she just won a major case, and I can’t help the small smile that tugs at my own mouth.
“Good job, city girl.”
“I made fire!” She’s practically bouncing despite her injured ankle. “With my own hands! I made fire!”
“Yeah, you did.” I stand, brushing off my jeans. “Now let’s see if you can cook on it.”
Her face falls. “Oh god. Really?”
“Really. What good is a fire if you can’t use it?”
***
Teaching her to cook over an open flame is a disaster.
She burns the first attempt at cooking venison. Undercooks the second. Somehow manages to drop the third piece directly into the fire, where it’s instantly consumed.
“What CAN you do?” I ask finally, exasperated and hungry and trying not to think about the fact that we just wasted perfectly good meat.
“I’m a lawyer!” She throws her hands up, and there’s frustration and embarrassment in her voice. “I argue for a living! I read contracts and negotiate settlements and bill 80 hours a week! None of that is useful out here!”
“No,” I agree bluntly. “It’s not. Arguments won’t keep you warm. Contracts won’t feed you. Out here, the only thing that matters is whether you can survive.”
She stares at me, and for a moment I think she might cry, which would be uncomfortable for both of us. But then her jaw sets in that stubborn line I’m starting to recognize, and she picks up another piece of meat.
“Then teach me,” she says quietly. “Teach me how to survive.”
And despite everything—despite the inconvenience, despite the disruption to my carefully ordered life, despite the way she’s already gotten under my skin in the three days she’s been here—I find myself nodding.
“All right. But you have to listen, and you have to do exactly what I say.”
“Fine.”
“And you can’t give up.”
“I don’t give up.” There’s steel in her voice now. “I might be useless at wilderness survival, but I’m not a quitter.”
I believe her.
For the next two hours, I teach her the basics of cooking over a fire, and slowly—painfully slowly—she starts to get it. The meat stops being charcoal. The temperature regulation improves. By the time we’re done, she’s managed to cook a piece that’s actually edible, and the look of pride on her face makes that weird thing happen in my chest again.
“Not bad,” I say, taking a bite of the venison she cooked. “Needs salt, but not bad.”
“Really?” She takes a bite of her own piece, and her eyes widen. “Oh my god. I made this. I actually made this.”
“You did.”
We eat in silence, sitting by the fire as the snow continues to fall around us, and for the first time since she arrived, the silence doesn’t feel hostile. It feels… almost comfortable.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For teaching me. For being patient. I know I’m—I know I’m not good at this.”
“You’re learning,” I say, and it’s as close to a compliment as I’m capable of giving. “You’re stubborn, but you’re trying. That counts for something.”
She smiles at me, and it’s a real smile this time, not the polite professional smile I’ve seen her give but something genuine and warm, and I have to look away because that weird feeling in my chest is getting worse.
This is a problem.
She’s here for two weeks, maybe less if the weather clears. She’s going back to her life in New York, back to her law firm and her partnership review and her world that has nothing to do with mine.
I can’t afford to start feeling things for her.
I can’t afford to start caring.
But as I watch her finish her food, see the satisfaction on her face, watch her thank Bear when he comes over to beg for scraps, I’m starting to worry that it might already be too late.
I’m starting to worry that I’m already in trouble.
“Come on,” I say, standing abruptly. “Let’s get inside before we freeze.”
She follows me back to the cabin, limping slightly on her bad ankle, and when I hold the door open for her, she brushes past me close enough that I can feel the warmth of her body, smell that pine soap again.
Yeah.
I’m definitely in trouble.
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