“Good. How’s the lodge?”
“Busy.”
“Remote?”
“Somewhat.”
He waited. “And the team?”
I rubbed my palm over my jaw. “There is no team. It is me. And… someone else.”
“A co-guide?”
“Yes.”
“Okay. And?”
“And it’s… complicated.”
My brother laughed, loud and disbelieving. “Carson, do you hear yourself? You’re being vague. Weirdly vague. Which means either you’re injured, the place is a cult, or there’s a woman involved.”
I didn’t answer.
He cackled. “It’s a woman.”
“It is not,” I said, which was exactly what someone who knew it absolutely was would say.
“Right. So tell me about her.”
“There is nothing to tell.”
“She pretty?”
I closed my eyes.
Big mistake.
Pretty was too small a word. Beautiful didn’t quite fit either. Sienna was… alive.
Vibrant.
She was the kind of person who made a room feel brighter just by existing inside it. I had worked with numerous guides in my life, countless hikers, limitless strong, capable people who made the outdoors their home.
But she was something different.
And that difference pressed at my ribs in a way I didn’t want.
My brother let out a slow whistle. “Wow. That’s a silence if I ever heard one.”
I gripped the phone harder. “There is nothing happening.”
“But something is trying,” he said.
“No,” I replied sharply.
“Why not?”
Because I couldn’t. Because I didn’t do that anymore. Because feelings had a way of turning into disasters that I no longer had the energy to clean up. Because I had learned the hard way that the people you let in could take things with them when they left.
