Then again.
Trust.
No more leaning on instinct alone.No more trusting my read of a room over everything else.No more believing that preparation and force can solve every problem.
I’ve trusted my body and my training my whole life.Now both have limits—and I’m being asked to trust Someone else instead.
I say it out loud, voice rough in the quiet cabin.“Trust in the Lord with all your heart…”
The words don’t promise safety.They don’t tell me what happens next.They don’t map out the path.
They ask me to walk it anyway.
Including the waiting.
Including the possibility that trusting God means losing Adena.
My old life was built on precision, violence, and control.This one starts with surrender—and for the first time, that surrender isn’t theoretical.
It looks like a quiet cabin.
An open Bible.
And a new life, even if she’s not here to share it with me.
Adena
The Harley growls beneath me, engine rumbling deep and steady as the road curls through the mountains like a ribbon someone dropped in a hurry—narrow, cracked, climbing higher with every switchback.My hands grip the handlebars, leather gloves worn soft from years of rides like this—away from everything, toward nothing but silence and sky.
No cell towers.No traffic.No billboards promising casino buffets or twenty-dollar oil changes.Just endless ridgelines stretching blue-green into the distance, the wind sharp and clean against my face, and the throb of the engine cutting through the kind of quiet that swallows sound whole.
Green Bank.
The National Radio Quiet Zone.
A dead zone for every signal that could be traced, triangulated, scraped, or weaponized.Perfect for scientists searching the cosmos.Perfect for people whose lives just exploded across federal servers and cartel networks in the span of a week.
I throttle down as the grade steepens, the bike leaning into the curve.Cool mountain air rushes past, smelling like pine resin, wet earth, and cold stone.It's peaceful in a way that shouldn't feel real—not after everything.
The road levels out, and ahead, the cabin comes into view—dark wood weathered silver in places, wide porch sagging slightly on one side, chimney leaning like it's considering retirement.Remote but not abandoned.
I pull off the throttle and coast the last hundred yards, gravel crunching under the tires.The engine's rumble fades to a purr, then silence as I kill it.For a moment, I just sit there, helmet still on, hands resting on the bars, letting the quiet settle over me as I try to still my nerves.
I swing my leg over the bike and pull off my helmet, shaking out my hair.The wind catches it immediately, cool fingers combing through the tangles.
The porch steps creak beneath my boots.The railing is sun-warmed under my palm, wood smooth and solid.I rest my hand there and breathe deeply, letting the mountain air fill my lungs—pine, earth, stone, sky.
The path curves past a stack of cordwood taller than I am, neatly split and stacked against the cabin's north wall.And there, in a clearing ringed by stumps and sawdust, is my husband.
He's dressed like a lumberjack, hair chopped to above his chin, a beard covering half his face, plaid shirt hiding his ink.But it's his hands that stop me cold.They're shaking as he works a maul against another log, splitting it with methodical, almost violent precision.Split.Stack.Repeat.Like he's been doing this for hours without stopping.
His footprints are worn into the earth around the woodpile—a circular, anxious path.
When he finally sees me, he freezes.The maul hangs at his side.For a long moment, he just stares, and I watch him try to reconstruct whatever walls he's been tearing down all week.
There's no hesitation in his expression, no question.Just relief so raw it makes my throat tight—like seeing me here just answered something he's been asking himself since we were ripped apart in Vegas.
"You came," he says.His voice cracks slightly.He clears his throat, trying again."You came."
