Page 12 of Claimed on the Ridge

He's telling a story about a fishing trip that went wrong in a way that involves a bear, a canoe, and a series of decisions he acknowledges were poor even as he was making them.

"So at this point," Dash says, "the bear is in the canoe. Which is a problem, because my gear is also in the canoe, and the bear has found the trail mix."

"The bear is not in the canoe," Bryan says from the leather chair by the fire, not looking up from whatever he's reading.

"The bear is absolutely in the canoe."

"The canoe was twelve feet long. The bear would have capsized it."

"Bryan. The bear was in the canoe."

"You've told this story four times. The canoe gets longer every time."

I'm leaning against the kitchen doorframe with a dish towel in my hands, and the laugh comes out of me before I have a chance to hold it back.

It isn't the polite almost-laugh I've been managing since I got here. It's a real sound, sudden and full, pulled from somewhere underneath the careful composure I've been wearing like a coat two sizes too small.

It rings through the main room and surprises everyone, including me.

My eyes sting. The sensation is so unexpected that I press the dish towel against my face as if I'm wiping something off, andthe fabric absorbs whatever is happening there before anyone can see it.

Months. It has been months since a sound like that came out of my body. Months since anything was funny enough to override the constant low-grade hum of fear that has been my background frequency since the night I locked myself in the bathroom.

Gary explained through the door, in his reasonable voice, that he was disappointed in me. I sat on the tile with my knees up and listened to every word.

Dash grins at me from the couch. The charm is fully operational, but there's no weapon behind it. "See? She gets it. The bear was in the canoe."

"The bear was probably near the canoe," Cameron says from the sink, and the diplomatic precision of it makes me almost laugh again.

Bryan turns a page. His silence on the matter is louder than anyone else's commentary.

The laugh fades but the feeling doesn't. It lodges behind my sternum like a bruise in reverse, healing instead of hurting, and I don't trust it.

I don't trust anything that feels this easy, because easy has always been the prelude to a cost I can't afford.

The morning passes in close quarters. The lodge is big enough to create the illusion of space but small enough that avoiding someone takes effort, and avoiding Alex takes more effort than I have.

He moves through the lodge like the building was designed around him. Doorways frame him without crowding. The bar stool where he sits to check his inventory might as well have his name carved into it.

When he crosses a room, the room adjusts. Cameron shifts. Dash straightens slightly. Bryan registers the trajectory withoutlooking up. They move around each other without thinking, the kind of coordination that takes a long time to build.

I notice this because noticing is what I do. Four years of reading Gary's moods made me fluent in the language of men who take up space, and Alex speaks it differently than Gary did. Gary filled rooms by pushing. His presence was a displacement, a pressure that made everything else smaller by comparison.

Alex fills rooms by anchoring. He's the fixed point, and everything else orients toward him.

Including me. Which is a problem, because I've spent the better part of this morning failing not to notice his forearms. He rolled his sleeves up after breakfast, and the roped muscle and tendon under sun-darkened skin is wrecking my concentration.

His hands are broad, calloused, and they move with a certainty that makes me think about what else they'd be certain about. That thought is a door I'm not opening.

By midmorning the wind drops. Not stops. The shift is subtle, an easing from a roar to a moan, and through the main room windows the white wall softens enough that I can make out shapes beyond the glass. Trees. A slope. The suggestion of a ridgeline.

I find my boots by the mudroom door and pull them on before I've made the conscious decision to go outside. The coat I borrowed from a hook by the door is too big, men's sizing, and it smells like cedar and cold metal.

The porch is buried under snow. The steps have been shoveled, someone's early morning work, but the railing wears a thick cap of white. The boards creak under my weight.

The cold hits my face like a slap and my lungs seize on the first breath.

Then my eyes adjust, and I see it.