Updated Apr 12, 2026 • ~10 min read
Chapter 5: Day Three
Quinn
Quinn wakes up on day three to the sound of wind still howling and the realization that her carefully controlled life has completely fallen apart.
No phone.
No laptop.
No access to her calendar or her color-coded schedule or her meditation app or the anxiety medication she keeps in her Seattle apartment because she definitely didn’t think to pack it for what was supposed to be a twenty-four-hour trip to serve legal papers.
She’s been managing fine—relatively fine—for two days, but this morning her chest feels tight in the way that means her anxiety is circling, waiting for an opening.
Cole’s already up, building the fire, moving through the cabin with the kind of easy competence that comes from growing up in a place where survival skills aren’t optional, and Quinn watches him from the bed trying to remember the breathing exercises her therapist taught her.
Four counts in.
Hold for seven.
Eight counts out.
Except she can’t remember if it’s four-seven-eight or five-seven-nine, and the not-remembering makes her chest tighter, and suddenly she’s spiraling into the thought pattern she knows is irrational but can’t stop: What if the storm lasts longer than a week? What if they run out of food? What if something happens and they need help and no one can reach them? What if she never gets back to Seattle? What if—
“Quinn?”
Cole’s voice cuts through the spiral, and she realizes she’s sitting up in bed, breathing too fast, hands clenched in the blankets.
“I’m fine,” she says automatically, the lie she’s been telling since she was sixteen and had her first panic attack before a debate tournament.
“You’re breathing like you just ran a marathon.” He crosses to the bed, crouches down so he’s at eye level, and his expression is concerned in a way that makes Quinn’s defenses crack. “Talk to me. What’s happening?”
“I don’t—I can’t—” Words aren’t working right. “My meds are in Seattle. I didn’t bring them because I wasn’t supposed to be here this long, and I know this is irrational, I know we’re safe, I know the storm will end, but my brain doesn’t care about logic right now and I can’t make it stop—”
“Okay.” Cole’s voice is calm, steady, the kind of voice that could talk someone off a ledge. “You’re having a panic attack.”
“I know what I’m having—”
“So you know it’ll pass. That you’re safe. That this feeling isn’t permanent even though it feels like it is.” He reaches out slowly, telegraphing the movement, and takes her hand. “Can you feel this? My hand?”
Quinn nods because she can—his hand is warm and solid and real.
“Good. Focus on that. Physical sensations. You’re in a cabin in Montana. The fire is warm. You can hear it crackling. You can smell woodsmoke and coffee. You can feel my hand holding yours.” He squeezes gently. “Name five things you can see.”
It’s a grounding technique—Quinn knows this, has used variations of it before—but having Cole walk her through it in that steady voice actually helps.
“Fire,” she manages. “Window. Snow outside. Your boots by the door. The bookshelf.”
“Four things you can touch.”
“Blanket. Your hand. The mattress. My hair.”
“Three things you can hear.”
“Wind. Fire. Your breathing.”
“Two things you can smell.”
“Woodsmoke. Coffee.”
“One thing you can taste.”
“Morning. Sleep. I don’t know—” But her breathing is slowing, the vise around her chest loosening.
“You’re doing great,” Cole says, still holding her hand. “Keep breathing. In through your nose, out through your mouth. Match my breathing if it helps.”
She does, watching his chest rise and fall, and gradually the panic recedes to something manageable—still there, lurking, but no longer consuming.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn says when she can finally speak normally. “That was—God, that was embarrassing.”
“Why would it be embarrassing?”
“Because I’m supposed to be a competent adult and I just had a breakdown about being stuck in a cabin—”
“You have anxiety. That’s not weakness, that’s chemistry.” He says it so matter-of-factly, like it’s obvious. “And you handled it. You recognized what was happening, you let me help, and you used the techniques that work. That’s actually pretty impressive.”
Quinn stares at him. “You’re not going to make fun of me? Tell me I’m overreacting? Suggest I just need to toughen up?”
Something dark flickers in Cole’s expression. “Who told you that?”
“My father. My ex-boyfriend. Most of the partners at my firm.” She pulls her hand back, suddenly self-conscious. “They’re not entirely wrong. Anxiety is—it’s inefficient. It’s not logical. It’s a weakness in high-stakes situations.”
“It’s a medical condition that you manage while still being successful enough to make partner track at a Seattle law firm and confident enough to walk into hostile territory to serve papers to someone who outweighs you by eighty pounds.” Cole stands, moves to pour coffee. “Sounds pretty tough to me.”
He hands her a mug, and Quinn takes it with hands that are still slightly shaky.
“My mom has anxiety,” Cole says, settling into the chair by the fire. “After my dad died. For years she couldn’t sleep through the night, couldn’t handle unexpected changes, had panic attacks if I was late coming home from a job site. She thought she was failing us—me and my sister—because she couldn’t just ‘get over it.'”
“What did you do?”
“Got her to a doctor. Made sure she had her medication. Learned what triggered episodes so we could avoid them when possible. Reminded her that having anxiety didn’t make her weak, it made her human.” He looks at Quinn over his coffee cup. “Same applies to you.”
Quinn feels something shift in her chest—not anxiety this time, something warmer and more dangerous.
“You’re not what I expected,” she admits.
“What did you expect?”
“I don’t know. Typical Montana rancher who thinks mental health is something people make up. Toxic masculinity and dismissiveness.”
“I’m absolutely guilty of toxic masculinity in other areas,” Cole says with a slight smile. “But my mom’s the strongest person I know and she has panic attacks. Hard to maintain that kind of ignorance when you’ve seen someone you love suffer.”
They drink coffee in comfortable silence, and Quinn realizes this is the first real conversation they’ve had that wasn’t about the lawsuit or survival logistics—this is actual connection, the kind she didn’t think was possible with someone she’s supposed to hate.
“Can I ask you something?” Cole says after a while.
“Sure.”
“Why environmental law? You could make three times the salary in corporate work with your credentials.”
Quinn traces the rim of her coffee cup, considering how much to share.
“My family’s rich,” she finally says. “Old Seattle money, the kind that comes from investments and real estate and things that happened generations ago that we just benefit from. And they use that money to bulldoze anything that gets in the way of more money.”
“So you became the opposition.”
“So I became someone who actually gives a shit about consequences.” She looks at him. “When I was twelve, my father’s development company destroyed this beautiful wetland outside Bellevue to build condos. I used to go there with my mom before she—before she got too sick. We’d watch the birds, and she’d tell me about ecosystems and interconnection and how everything matters.”
“What happened to your mom?”
“Cancer. When I was fourteen.” Quinn’s throat tightens. “And after she died, my father just kept building, kept destroying, and everyone acted like that was normal. Like profit justified anything. I decided I’d rather be the person stopping that than the person enabling it.”
“Even if it meant walking away from family money.”
“Especially then. I didn’t want to owe them anything. Didn’t want their approval to matter.” She meets his eyes. “I know you think I’m some privileged Seattle lawyer who doesn’t understand real life. And maybe you’re partly right. But I’m not doing this to feel good about myself. I’m doing it because someone has to actually care about what we’re destroying.”
Cole’s quiet for a long moment, studying her in a way that makes Quinn feel seen—actually seen, not just categorized.
“I think I’ve been underestimating you,” he says finally.
“I think we’ve been underestimating each other.”
“Truce still holding?”
“Truce is still holding.”
They spend the day in surprising companionship—Cole teaches Quinn how to properly maintain a fire, she reads aloud from Steinbeck while he makes lunch, they play cards and argue about whether Seattle or Montana has better coffee (they agree to disagree).
And Quinn finds herself laughing.
Actually laughing.
With Cole Hartford, who twenty-four hours ago she would have sworn was her enemy and who’s currently telling a story about a construction mishap involving a confused moose that has Quinn doubled over with laughter that feels like it’s unlocking something in her chest that’s been locked for months.
“You’re making that up,” she gasps.
“I swear on my grandfather’s grave, that moose stood in the middle of our foundation site for four hours and refused to move. Just stood there chewing and staring at us like we were the ones being unreasonable.”
“What did you do?”
“Eventually called Fish and Wildlife, who sent someone who also couldn’t get the moose to move, and we all just sat there waiting until the moose decided on its own that it was done and wandered off.”
“Montana is weird.”
“Montana is perfect. Seattle is weird.”
“Seattle has culture—”
“Seattle has traffic and overpriced coffee and people who wear Canada Goose jackets when it hits forty degrees.”
“That’s not—okay, that’s slightly accurate but still—”
They’re sitting close now, the space between them on the cabin’s worn couch somehow smaller than it was an hour ago, and Quinn’s hyperaware of the way Cole’s thigh is almost touching hers, the way he smells like woodsmoke and something piney that’s probably just Montana itself.
“Thank you,” she says quietly. “For this morning. For not making me feel like I was being ridiculous.”
“You weren’t being ridiculous. You were having a hard time and you let me help.” His voice has gone softer, lower. “That takes trust.”
“I don’t usually trust people this quickly.”
“I don’t usually like lawyers.”
“I don’t usually like contractors who destroy wetlands.”
“Allegedly destroy wetlands.”
“The environmental impact statement is very clear—”
“And we’re breaking the truce,” Cole says, but he’s smiling.
“We’re breaking the truce,” Quinn agrees.
They’re staring at each other now, and Quinn’s breath catches because she knows this feeling—this electric charge in the air, this magnetic pull, this moment right before everything changes.
Cole must feel it too because he shifts slightly away, breaking the spell, and Quinn tells herself she’s relieved.
Tells herself she didn’t want him to lean in.
Tells herself that the disappointment curling in her stomach is just residual anxiety and nothing to do with the way Cole Hartford looks at her like she’s a puzzle he’s trying to solve.
That night, the pillow wall goes back up.
But Quinn lies awake listening to Cole breathe on the other side, and she knows.
Knows this truce is temporary.
Knows these boundaries are already breaking.
Knows that her biggest problem isn’t the storm or the lawsuit or being trapped in a cabin.
It’s the fact that she’s starting to genuinely like the man who’s supposed to be her enemy.
And liking is just the beginning of something much more dangerous.
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