Lauralie pointed.
“It’s fine,” I heard myself say.
Both of them looked at me.
“I mean…if he knows the trails, I could actually use the help. I’ve been working off the official festival map, and it’s clearly not up to date.”
Lauralie looked from me to Evan and back again, then let out a sigh that suggested she’d seen this movie before. “I’ll bring you a second coffee,” she said to him and walked away.
Evan slid into the booth across from me like he’d been waiting for permission and just needed the thinnest possible excuse. He picked up my scavenger hunt checklist and scanned it, his eyebrows climbing as he went.
“You’ve already checked off seven of these,” he said.
“Eight. I got the bloodroot colony near the falls yesterday afternoon.”
I pulled the checklist back and folded it against my chest, suddenly self-conscious about how much of my strategy was visible. My route plans. My GPS notes. My color-coded priority list. Laid out like this, it probably looked obsessive.
Itwasobsessive. But I had my reasons, and they weren’t any of his business. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
He seemed to read my shift in body language because he leaned back and held up his hands. “I’m not competition. I don’t even qualify—employees of participating businesses are excluded from competing. I’m just impressed. Most people who sign up for Bobbi’s scavenger hunt treat it like a casual thing. Take some pictures on the easy trails, enjoy the scenery. You’re going after the hard ones.”
I uncrossed my arms and set the checklist back on the table. He wasn’t wrong, and there was no point pretending otherwise.
“The hard ones are worth more points.”
“They’re also in places that can get dangerous for hikers who don’t know the terrain. Some of those ridgeline species—the pink lady’s slippers, the flame azalea up in the higher drainages—those aren’t casual day-hike locations.”
“I’m not a casual day hiker.”
“I can see that.”
His eyes held mine, and there was something in his expression I couldn’t quite name. Respect, maybe. Or curiosity. Something that made my pulse misfire before I could stop it.
“I’m running a group tour in the morning,” he continued. “Leaves from the trailhead at eight o’clock. If you signed up for one of the guided wildflower hikes, that’s me.”
I had signed up. I’d done it online two days ago, specifically because I figured a guided tour would let me scout trail conditions and identify where certain species were concentrated without burning a full day on trial and error. I just hadn’t expected the guide to be sitting across from me in a pancake house, looking at me like I was the most interesting thing he’d seen all week.
“I’ll be there,” I said.
He nodded, and something shifted in his face—a softening I didn’t think he meant to show. Then he grabbed the coffee Lauralie had set at the edge of the table and stood.
“For the record,” he said, looking down at me with that almost-grin again, “the creek crossing on Blackrock has a bypass. It’s not on any map. I can show you after the group tour, if you want.”
The offer lingered between us for half a second longer than necessary.
He headed for the counter before I could answer, settling onto a stool and pulling out his phone like the last five minutes hadn’t happened. Like he hadn’t rearranged my entire plan with two sentences and a fingertip on my map.
Lauralie passed behind him and caught my eye from across the restaurant, one eyebrow slightly raised in a way that communicated volumes.
I looked back down at my maps. My highlighted route on Blackrock Ridge—the one I would have wasted half a day on. The checklist with its color-coded priorities and GPS coordinates.The whole reason I was in this town, sitting in this booth, studying these trails at seven in the morning instead of sleeping in like my friends Hartley and Brooklyn, who were probably still passed out at the Inn.
Fifty thousand dollars.
That was the grand prize. Fifty thousand dollars that would wipe out the medical debt that had been crushing my mom since her cancer treatment two years ago. She’d beaten it—the cancer was gone, she was healthy, she was back to work. But the bills had piled up during treatment, and they just kept compounding.
Every month, another statement. Every month, my mom pretending she wasn’t crying over the kitchen table after she thought I’d gone to bed. Every month, acting like it was manageable when it wasn’t.
I hadn’t told Hartley or Brooklyn why I’d really organized this trip. They thought it was a fun spring girls’ getaway—wildflowers and mountain air and a break from real life. And I let them believe it because the alternative was admitting that I’d spent three weeks researching this festival, memorizing the scavenger hunt rules, studying trail maps, and planning every move like a military operation.
