Page 23 of Challenged By the Mountain Man

I close my eyes and try to sleep.

Hours later…

I wake up at 2 AM to the sound of something moving outside.

For a moment, I'm back in the bank. The alarm is going off, there's a man with a gun, and I'm crouched behind the counter with my heart racing so hard I can feel it in my throat. I can't breathe. Can't move. Can't—

*You're not there. You're in the cabin. You're safe.*

I force myself to breathe. In through the nose, out through the mouth. Counting. Grounding. All the techniques my therapist taught me.

The sound comes again, something rustling near the porch. Footsteps, maybe. Or…

The bear.

I slip out of bed as quietly as I can and move to the window, peering through the gap in the curtain. The moon is bright enough that I can see the clearing in front of the cabin, the trees beyond casting long shadows.

And there, at the edge of the clearing, is a deer.

Just a deer. A doe, actually, her head down as she nibbles at something on the ground. She's close enough that I can see her ears flick, alert for danger, the way her breath fogs in the cold air. I watch her for a long time, my heart rate slowly returning to normal. She's beautiful. Peaceful.

After a few minutes, she lifts her head, scans the clearing one more time, and disappears back into the trees.

I go back to bed, but I don't sleep right away. Instead, I lay there in the dark, listening to the wind, the crackle of the fire, and the sound of my own breathing.

I think about Griffin up the mountain in his cabin, probably already asleep. I wonder if he has nightmares. I wonder what put those scars on his body and that shadow in his eyes. I wonder if he's as alone as he seems or if he just prefers it that way.

I wonder if I'm going to make it through the next two weeks without completely losing my mind.

But for right now, in this moment, I'm okay. The cabin is warm. The fire is burning. There's a deer outside instead of a bear, and a mountain man half a mile up the road who gave me firewood and didn't ask for anything in return.

It's not much.

But it's enough.

I close my eyes and drift back to sleep, and this time, I don't dream about guns.

Chapter 6 - Griffin

I wake up at 0500 like I always do, body trained by years of military routine that civilian life hasn't managed to break. The cabin is dark except for the dying glow from the wood stove, and for a moment I just lie there, staring at the ceiling, listening to Bear snore from his spot at the foot of the bed.

I didn't dream last night. That's unusual. Most nights I get some variation of the same scenes: the convoy, the ambush, Daniels bleeding out while I try to stop it with hands that can't move fast enough. Garcia screaming. The radio crackling with static and voices I can't help. The sound of the IED that I somehow heard before it detonated, that split second of knowing what was about to happen and being completely powerless to stop it.

But last night, nothing. Just darkness and the vague sense of having slept deeper than usual.

I swing my legs out of bed and immediately regret it. The cabin is fucking freezing. I must have let the fire die more than I thought. Bear lifts his head, looks at me like I'm insane for moving, and puts it back down.

"Yeah, I know," I mutter.

I pull on yesterday's jeans and a thermal shirt, then add a flannel over it. My breath fogs in the air as I cross to the wood stove and start rebuilding the fire. Tinder, kindling, fuel. The same way I showed Hannah last night. The thought of her name makes me pause, hands full of kindling, staring at nothing.

I shouldn't have stayed for coffee. Shouldn't have sat at her table and listened to her talk about her father, the robbery and all the reasons she came up here. Shouldn't have told her I understood, because that opens a door I've spent eight years keeping locked.

But I did stay. And I did listen. And when she asked if I'd come back for coffee again, I said I'd think about it instead of giving her the flat "no" I should have. Fuck.

I light the fire and wait for it to catch, then stand and stretch. My back pops in three places—old injuries that never healed right, complaining about the cold. The scar tissue across my shoulder pulls tight, and I rotate my arm until it loosens up.

Bear finally drags himself out of bed and pads over to the door, whining.