Page 29 of Grumpy Lumberjack’s Secret

Something broke open inside me. Not the sharp, violent breaking of something destroyed, but the slow, necessary breaking of something outgrown. A shell. A wall. A locked door that had been sealed for so long I’d forgotten there was anything behind it.

“And the guilt you carry,” she continued, her voice catching on the word but holding firm, “that guilt is a liar. It tells you that surviving is a sin. It tells you that living is a betrayal. But Jimmy wouldn’t want that for you. You know he wouldn’t. A man who talked too much, laughed too loud, and cried at movies, that man would want his brother to live. To really live. Not just exist in a cabin with the lights off.”

I couldn’t speak. The tears were coming faster now, and I couldn’t stop them, couldn’t dam them, couldn’t do anything but sit there and let this woman see every broken, ugly, grieving part of me that I’d hidden from the world for years.

“You are not alone anymore,” she whispered. “You carried this by yourself for so long, and you don’t have to anymore. I’m here. And I’m not going anywhere. Do you hear me? I’m not going anywhere.”

She leaned forward. Her lips pressed against my cheek, soft, catching the salt of my tears. Then the other cheek. Then the corner of my mouth, so gentle it barely counted as contact.

Then she kissed me.

Not hard. Not desperate. Not the kind of kiss that demands something. She pressed her lips to mine with a softness that felt like a promise. Like she was sealing every word she’d just said with something her mouth could say better than language. It lasted three seconds, maybe four, and when she pulled back, her blue eyes were bright with tears of her own and she was looking at me with so much tenderness that my chest physically ached.

“You’re safe with me,” she said. “Okay? You’re safe.”

I pulled her into my arms. Not gently, not carefully, not the hesitant half-touches I’d been allowing myself. I pulled her in like a drowning man grabbing a lifeline, my arms locked around her, my face buried in her hair, and I held on while the storm raged outside and something inside me, something that had been frozen for years, finally, finally began to thaw.

She held me back. Steady as the ground. Warm as the sun. Her hands moved in slow circles on my back, her breath warm against my neck, and she didn’t say anything else. She didn’t need to. Everything that mattered was already in the way she held on.

And for the first time since I’d buried my brother, I let someone carry part of the weight.

10

CHLOE

We stayed like that for a long time.

My arms around him, his face buried in my hair, the rain drumming on the roof in a rhythm that felt like the world’s heartbeat slowing down to match ours. I could feel the tension leaving his body in stages, like layers of armor being removed one piece at a time. First his shoulders loosened. Then his jaw. Then his hands, which had been gripping the back of my shirt like I might disappear, gradually relaxed until they were just resting against my spine, heavy and warm and trusting.

I didn’t let go. I held him the way you hold something precious that’s been through a storm, carefully, completely, with the understanding that the holding itself is the point.

Eventually he pulled back. Not far. Just enough to look at me. His eyes were red-rimmed and raw, the traces of tears still visible on his cheeks, but something in his expression had changed. The weight was still there. It would always be there. But it had shifted, redistributed, like a load that had been carried on one shoulder for years had finally been balanced across two.

“Are you feeling better?” I asked, my hands still on his shoulders.

He was quiet for a moment. Considering the question the way he considered everything, with the careful attention of a man who didn’t waste words.

“It feels lighter,” he said. His voice was rough. Raw from the crying and the talking and the years of silence that had finally been broken. “Like I can breathe.”

I smiled at him. Not the big smile, not the one I used on the world. The one that was just his. The one that existed only in the small, private space between us where I didn’t have to be sunshine for anyone.

“So can I kiss you again?” I said.

His eyes darkened. A muscle twitched in his jaw, and I watched the war play out across his face in real time, the part of him that wanted to pull back, to rebuild, to put the walls up again, fighting against the part that had spent the last hour tearing them down.

“You’ll do it even if I complain,” he said.

“No.” I shook my head, my hands sliding from his shoulders to his jaw, holding his face the way I’d held it when I wiped his tears. “I want you to be willing. I want you to want this. Not because I pushed. Not because the moment was heavy and we got swept up in it. I want you to look at me and choose this.”

He looked at me. The green of his eyes was deep and dark in the cabin’s low light, and I could see the exact moment the war ended. Not a surrender. A decision. He reached up, took my face in both hands, rough palms and calloused fingers against my cheeks, and kissed me.

This kiss was nothing like the soft, careful press of lips I’d given him minutes ago. This was a man who had just emptied himself of every secret he’d carried and found that what was left, underneath the grief and the guilt and the years of silence, was want. Raw and honest and terrifying want that he was done running from.

His mouth moved against mine with a hunger that stole my breath. His hands slid from my face into my hair, fingers tangling in the still-damp strands, tilting my head to deepen the angle. His tongue traced the seam of my lips and I opened for him immediately, a sound escaping my throat that was half sigh, half surrender. He tasted like black coffee, dark and warm and faintly bitter, and the contrast with the sweetness of his tenderness seconds ago sent heat flooding through my body so fast it made me dizzy.

I grabbed the front of his shirt and pulled him closer. He responded by lifting me off my knees and onto his lap in one smooth motion, and the sudden contact, my thighs straddling his, his hands gripping my waist, his chest solid and warm against mine through the thin flannel, made us both go still for one beat. Two.

Then we weren’t still at all.