1
MIA
Iknew his name before I knew anything else about him.
That was how Hollow Peak worked. A stranger couldn't so much as think about ordering a cup of coffee without the whole town knowing his name, his business, and probably what kind of boots he wore.
News didn't travel fast here—it seeped, soaked in, worked its way through conversations and glances and the way people leaned a little closer over their mugs when the bell over the door chimed.
Mae Whitlock had told me about him the morning he first came in. New guide, she'd said, not even pretending she wasn't watching him through the front window like she had a right to catalog every newcomer who crossed into Hollow Peak. Military background. Something happened. She could tell by the way he held himself.
Mae could always tell.
I'd followed her gaze, drying my hands on a towel that didn't need drying, and watched him walk to his truck. Even from that distance, there was something about him that made you pay attention whether you meant to or not. I thought she wasprobably right, though I couldn't have said exactly why—not in any way that would've held up under questioning.
He moved like someone who'd learned not to waste anything—not steps, not words, not even the effort it cost to be in a room full of people who all wanted to know his business. Every motion had purpose, stripped down to only what was necessary. No extra weight. No hesitation. The kind of efficiency you didn't just pick up—you earned it, one hard lesson at a time.
He hadn't looked back at the café once.
Not at the window. Not at the people inside who were already talking about him. Not at me, even though I'd been standing right there, watching like I didn't have better things to do.
Mae had filled in the rest over the following days the way she always did—the way information moved through Hollow Peak. Not all at once, never clean or complete. In pieces. Over coffee refills. Between customers. In the quiet seconds when the door didn't open and the world outside felt far away.
His name was Hale Nichols.
He was staying up at Ridgeview Lodge.
Rowan Pike had brought him on as a guide at PeakBound Adventures.
Black coffee, no food. Fair tip. Gone before anyone could pull him into a conversation long enough to ask the questions they were all already forming.
I told myself I wasn't interested. I was just noticing. There was a difference. Or at least there was supposed to be.
But I'd been thinking about him for three weeks.
Every morning, like clockwork, he came in, ordered the same thing, and left just as fast. Like Hollow Peak was just a pit stop—not the kind of place that stuck with you whether you wanted it to or not. I started recognizing his truck before I even saw it—the low rumble cutting through the early morning quiet like a warning I pretended not to hear.
I'd refilled his coffee once without asking.
It had felt like crossing some invisible line I couldn't quite define. He'd looked up at me then, those eyes settling on mine with a steadiness that made it feel like I was the one being assessed.
Like I'd done something that required evaluation.
Like he was deciding whether I mattered.
Then he'd given a single nod—brief, deliberate—and gone right back to looking out the window, like that was all I was going to get.
It should have been enough.
It should have been nothing.
I'd thought about that nod more than I should have. More than made any kind of sense for a man who didn't talk, didn't linger, didn't so much as glance around the room like he cared who might be watching him walk in or out of it.
Which, of course, made him exactly the kind of man people in Hollow Peak couldn't stop watching. Apparently, I wasn't any better than the rest of them.
I knew this river better than most people in Hollow Peak. I grew up on it—learned its moods before I learned my multiplication tables. My mom used to fish it like it was something sacred. Not just something you took from, but something you listened to. Respected.
After she was gone, my dad brought me out every Saturday morning, like clockwork. Like keeping that one thing the same might keep everything else from falling apart.
