Page 54 of The Girl Who Cried Bigfoot

“You’re my protected habitat, Wren,” I say. I say it clearly, without the weight of an instinct I don’t understand. It’s a choice. “The whole mountain is just the yard. You’re the home.”

Wren stares at me. Her mouth opens slightly, then closes. A single tear tracks through the dust on her cheek, but she doesn’t sob. She just leans into my hand, her forehead resting against my chest. Her breath hitches once, a sharp, ragged sound that she immediately tries to smother.

“That’s the worst metaphor I’ve ever heard,” she mutters into my shirt. “I’m a habitat? Really? Do I get a federal grant?”

“You get me,” I say, my hand sliding up to cup the back of her head. “Which is significantly less funding and much more manual labor.”

“I’ll take it,” she says, pulling back just enough to look at me. Her face is a mess of exhaustion and relief, but her eyes are bright. “But if you think this means I’m going to start liking hiking, you’re sadly mistaken. I still hate the mud. I still hate the bugs. And I definitely still hate that North Ridge trail.”

“I can carry you,” I offer. “I’m told I have the reach for it.”

She laughs, a genuine, shaky sound that breaks the last of the silence. “Don’t start. You’re already a local legend. Let’s not add ‘man-sized Uber’ to the list.”

I pull her closer, wrapping my arms around her until she’s tucked securely against me. She fits perfectly, a small, fierce constant in a world that is always trying to change. I can feel her heart beating against my ribs, a fast, human rhythm that makes my own slow pulse feel steady.

The lodge isn’t rich, and the world still thinks we’re a joke, but as the sun dips below the tree line, casting long, golden shadows across the drying mud, I find I don’t care about the hoax. I don’t care about the cameras. I have spent my life guarding a forest, but I finally understand that the most important thing I’ve ever protected is the woman who was brave enough to make me disappear.

“Stay?” she asks, her voice muffled by my jacket.

“I’m not going anywhere,” I say. “I’ve already marked the territory.”

She huffs a laugh and grips the fabric of my shirt. We stand there by the water, two ghosts in a forest that doesn’t believe in them anymore, and for the first time in three hundred years, I am exactly where I want to be.

She stays against me for a long time, the tension slowly draining out of her frame until she’s a heavy, warm weight in my arms. The creek continues its mindless chatter, and a crow calls out from a high cedar branch, sounding like a hinge that needs oiling. I think about the lodge--the peeling paint on the back porch, the stacks of records in the basement, the smell of the grease in Marge’s kitchen. I think about how small it is compared to the sweep of the valley, and how much it cost her to keep those walls standing.

“Sarah’s going to come back,” Wren says into the space between us, her voice sounding clearer now, though she doesn’t pull away. “Not with a buyout. But with a camera. She’ll want to see the hoax in person. She’ll want to see you, even if she thinks you’re a guy named Rowan Smith. She’s going to look for the strings.”

“Let her look,” I say. I rest my chin on the top of her head, the texture of her hair soft against my skin. “I’ve spent centuries being looked for. The trick isn’t being invisible, Wren. It’s being uninteresting. Now that you’ve told them how the magic is done, they’ll stop looking for the miracle. They’ll just see a tall man who doesn’t like to talk much. I can play that part. I’ve been playing it since before your town had a name.”

Wren pulls back then, her hands still resting on my forearms. She looks up at me, her eyes tracing the lines of my face. “The buyout was a lot of money, Rowan. I could have paid off everything. I could have given Marge and Walt a retirement that didn’t involve patching a roof with tarps and making budget soups. I failed them.”

“You saved them,” I correct her. “If you had taken that money, you would have sold the ground out from under their feet. This place wouldn’t have been theirs anymore. It would have been a set. A stage. They would have lived in a museum of a hoax until the internet got bored and moved on to something else. Now? It’s still theirs. It’s still yours.”

She swallows hard, her throat working. “It’s just going to be so hard. The hotline is basically a joke now. The ‘expert’ hikers will leave. We’re back to zero, but at least the debt will be paid off and we’ll have a slightly better reputation for marketing.”

“We aren’t at zero,” I say. “You have the honey. You have the forest. And you have the one person who knows every trail better than any map ever drawn. We’ll find a way to make the lodge work that doesn’t involve lying to people about monsters. We’ll give them the real mountain. That’s enough for some people.”

Wren gives me the small, lopsided smile that usually precedes a sharp remark. “You’re surprisingly optimistic for a guy who spent three days brooding in a damp shelter.”

“I wasn’t brooding,” I lie. “I was observing. There’s a difference.”

“Sure there is.” She lets out a long breath and steps back, though she keeps one hand hooked in the crook of my elbow. “Come back to the lodge with me? Marge is probably already trying to figure out how to make a five-course meal out of a bag of lentils and a single potato. She’ll want to know you’re okay.”

“I should check the hives first,” I say, though I don’t move to leave. “The storm was rough on the lower ridge. They’ll be agitated.”

“Stay calm or the bees will know?” she asks, throwing my own words back at me with a flicker of the old spark in her eyes.

“Exactly. They don’t care about hoaxes or media deals. They only care about the nectar.” I reach down and take her hand, my larger fingers closing over hers. Her skin is cold now, the dampness of the creek-side air finally sinking in. “I’ll check the bees. Then I’ll come to the kitchen door. I’ll even wipe my boots.”

Wren laughs, and this time there’s no shakiness in it. It’s the sound of a woman who has finally set down a burden she wasn’t meant to carry alone. She leans in and kisses me—not a grand gesture, not a cinematic climax, but a slow, grounded choice. It tastes like the tea Marge makes and the cold, clean air of the mountain. It feels like a promise kept.

“I’m going to hold you to the boot-wiping,” she says against my lips. “Marge just waxed the floor. If you track mud in, I can’t protect you from her.”

“Understood,” I say.

I watch her walk back up the trail toward the lodge, her gait steady despite the mud and the oversized boots. She doesn’t look back, not because she’s afraid I’ll be gone, but because she doesn’t have to. The choice has been made. The habitat is marked. I turn toward the deeper woods, toward the hives and the hidden places that are mine to keep, knowing that for the first time in my long, long life, the shadows aren’t just a place to hide. They’re the way home.

EPILOGUE