Page 42 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

I stand so fast the chair legs scrape, then I turn my back on her and move to the sink like the dishes are an emergency and not an excuse.

Plates. Mugs. Knife.

I stack them with too much force, the clink too sharp in the quiet cabin.

Because if I stay at that table—if I look at her too long in my robe with her hair still damp and her cheeks still flushed from the storm—I’m going to do something I can’t take back.

And it’s been less than an hour since I found her on my road, screaming in designer heels like the mountain was personally insulting her.

Now she’s in my kitchen.

Invading my space.

Infiltrating my solitude.

And she’s making me want things.

Impossible things.

Fuck. It pisses me off.

Not at her—well, yes at her, a little—but mostly at myself.

I shouldn’t want anyone.

Wanting is a door.

Wanting is letting someone step over the threshold and start leaving fingerprints on the life I fought to build.

I don’t want to know what she’s about to say.

I don’t want to hear whatever she has to say about my art.

About my willow trees. About my sunsets.

About the stupid, traitorous part of me that still believes beauty can be something pure and that maybe I can change a life with my art.

I sure as fuck don’t want to hear about why she’s really here.

Because I know. I know.

She wants to meet the artist. Wants to out me to the public.

Goddammit.

I know her name now.

Clara Belle.

She writes a blog about life in the city.

Her articles have even been picked up by the New Yorker and the Times.

And she found me.

Which means the world has found me.

Fuck.