Page 63 of The Lumberjack and the City Slicker

Burned into the wood like prayer.

Willow.

His muse.

His love, maybe?

The reason he carves and etches willows into everything.

The reason he pushed me away this morning.

Because, of course, he did.

Because, of course, I would sleep with a man who’s secretly in love with his best friend’s pregnant wife.

That would be exactly my luck.

Chapter 11

Greyson

Tires over gravel cut through the woods like a whisper I don’t deserve to hear.

It’s faint—barely there beneath the steady hush of the mountain—but my brain catches it anyway, hooks it, holds on like it’s been waiting for the sound all morning.

I close my eyes.

Exhale.

And I pull my mask over my head, preparing myself, like it’s fucking armor.

Not the kind that stops bullets.

The kind that stops feelings.

Because if I don’t do something with my hands right now, I’m going to do something stupid—like run down the drive and tell her to stay.

Like admit that last night wasn’t just heat.

That it woke something up in me I thought I’d buried for good.

I’m in my workshop, where the air smells like cedar and scorched wood and the faint metallic tang of tools.

The stove in the corner throws out steady heat.

My table is covered in clamps and measuring squares and sandpaper.

Controlled chaos.

My kind of chaos.

Creation is the only thing that’s ever made sense.

I flip the face shield down properly, then lift the wood-burning razor—heavy, familiar—bringing the heated tip to the enormous slab of maple laid across the workbench.

I use a variety of cutting implements and pyrography pens for my art when I’m working with wood.

This piece is a table I’ve been working on for weeks.