Page 11 of Ensnared By the Mountain Man

Two mugs. A stack of plain white plates. A box of peppermint tea, which makes me smile because I remember the tea from that first night. The mug in my shaking hands, the honey he stirred into it without asking if I wanted any.

I open the next one. Rice. Pasta. Salt. Pepper. A can of black beans and a jar of peanut butter.

“Elias?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you eat?”

He almost smiles. Almost. The corner of his mouth twitches, and he looks away like he’s trying to hide it.

“I eat at the station mostly,” he says. “Or in town.”

“This is…” I open the third cabinet. A bottle of olive oil and a container of cocoa powder that looks like it’s been here since the place was built. “This is sad. This kitchen is a cry for help.”

The sound he makes might be a laugh. I’m not sure because I’ve never heard Elias Riggs laugh, but it’s low and short and it does something to my pulse that I try to ignore.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” he says.

“You invited me.”

“Wasn’t expecting that either.”

I look back at him. He’s leaning against the doorframe now, his shoulders filling the space, arms still crossed. The late sunlight catches the side of his face, and I can see the shadow of stubble along his jaw and the way his eyes track me as I move through his kitchen. For a second, I forget what I was doing.

Right. The cocoa powder.

I grab it off the shelf and check the expiration date. Still good, which is a small miracle given the state of everything else in here. The fridge has exactly four things in it—milk, eggs, butter, and a half-empty bottle of hot sauce. I don’t even know where to start with that combination.

“I’m making you hot chocolate,” I say.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“I know I don’t have to.” I pull a small pot from the lower cabinet and set it on the stove. “I want to. There’s a difference.”

The words come out before I’ve fully thought about what they mean, but as soon as I say them, I realize it’s true. I’m not doing this because he needs me to. I’m not doing it because he asked or because I’m being polite or because saying yes is my default setting. I’m standing in this man’s kitchen because I want to be here, making something warm with my hands because that’s how I show people who I am, and for once the giving feels right.

I heat the milk slowly. A little sugar from a bag I find shoved in the back of a drawer. The cocoa powder whisked in gradually so it doesn’t clump. I don’t have vanilla extract or cinnamon or any of the things I’d use at the bakery to make this perfect, but something about making it here, in this sparse kitchen with nothing but the basics, feels more honest than anything I’ve made in months.

I can feel him watching me. He hasn’t moved from the doorway, and his eyes haven’t left me, and the weight of his attention is something I feel along my skin, warm and steady.

He’s not staring the way men sometimes stare, like they’re waiting for something. He’s watching me the way he watches the mountain from his lookout point, like he can’t quite believe it’s real and he’s afraid to blink in case it disappears.

“You know your way around a kitchen,” he says.

“I’ve been baking since I was twelve. My mom worked nights, so I taught myself from a cookbook she kept on top of the fridge.” I stir the milk and watch the cocoa dissolve into it, the color deepening from white to pale brown to something rich and dark. “I’d have dinner ready when she got home at eleven. She’d sit at the table and eat whatever I made and tell me it was the best thing she’d ever tasted, even when it wasn’t.”

I don’t know why I told him that. I don’t talk about my mom with people. I don’t talk about Colorado Springs or the apartment with the cookbook on the fridge or the way it felt to be twelve years old and responsible for someone else’s comfort. But Elias told me about Chaz Monroe on a rock above the valley, and something about this cabin makes me feel like the normal rules don’t apply.

“Is she still in Colorado Springs?” he asks.

“She passed. Almost two years ago. Right before I moved here.”

The silence that follows isn’t awkward. It’s the same kind he gave me on the lookout when I didn’t try to fix his pain. He’s returning the favor. Just being here, not filling the space with words that don’t help, letting me have the feeling without trying to make it smaller.

“That’s why you came to Wildwood,” he says.

The same thing I said to him on the ridge, turned around and handed back to me. Not a question.