I pulled her in behind me and shut the door, then stood with my back against it for a beat while the hail bounced off the roof. She stood in the middle of the dirt floor with her braid coming undone and her cheeks red from the cold, clutching her pack against her chest like she was trying to keep it safe.
Our eyes met. The only light came through the one window that wasn't boarded over. The hail hammered the roof. In the corner, Biscuit had already curled up and closed his eyes, settling in for the long haul.
CHAPTER 6
SOLEIL
The cabin smelledlike cold stone and old smoke and a wool blanket that had been put away wet a long time ago. The hail landed on the roof, and Treyton stood with his back against the door, looking at me like he was waiting for me to fall apart.
I wasn't going to fall apart. I was going to be cold, and I was going to be wet, and I was going to have feelings about a columbine carved into the underside of a bench four miles up the ridge, but I was not going to fall apart in front of a man who had just held my hand the whole way down from the meadow.
I looked around. The cabin was maybe twelve feet square. There was a stone fireplace built into the far wall, blackened from use. A small pile of split wood stacked next to it. Under the window, a table for two held a folded blanket and a canvas tarp. He'd been here before. He'd stocked it.
“Take your jacket off,” Treyton said. “It's soaked through.” He'd already shrugged off his pack and crouched to unzip it.
I took my jacket off and hung it on a nail by the door that he had clearly hammered into the wall on purpose, at exactly the right height for hanging a jacket.
He moved to the fireplace and started building. I watched him work the way he'd worked in the shop with the spokeshave.His movements were careful and intentional, his whole body deciding what came next before he moved. He struck a match against the stone hearth, held it to the kindling, and waited.
The fire took on the second match. Treyton sat back on his heels and watched it for a moment, then stood and walked over to the table. He grabbed the tarp, shook it open, and spread it on the dirt floor in front of the fire. Then he set the blanket on top.
“There's only one blanket,” he said, stating the obvious.
“I see that.”
“I'm going to be fine. The tarp will keep the dirt off. Take the blanket.”
“Treyton.”
“Take the blanket, Soleil.”
It was useless to argue so I sat down on the tarp next to the fire and pulled the blanket around my shoulders. He sat about two feet away and the quiet settled between us, heavy and solid.
The hail had eased into rain that beat against the roof in a steady pattern. I kept my gaze trained on the orange flames, choosing not to look at his face because I didn't trust myself right now.
“How long do you think we’ll need to stay?” I asked.
“An hour, maybe two. It came in fast. Things that come in fast go out fast.”
“And then we walk down.”
“Yeah.”
I nodded, pulled the blanket tighter, and stared at the fire. I couldn’t get the carving out of my head.
I'd been thinking about it since the moment my thumb found it under the bench. The columbine. The five petals. The spur. He'd carved it because the wood asked for it.
He carved surprises into everything: the chair at the Switchback, the drawer in my cabin, the shelf in his workshop, the bench, the side table going to Aspen, and the soap boxesGibson’s sister ordered. He carved them and didn't show them to anyone, but he’d shared them with me.
I was sitting two feet from him on a tarp in a rundown miner's cabin, wrapped in his blanket with the fire warm on my face, twenty-eight years old, and I had never once been seen by anyone the way he had let me see him this afternoon. Tears threatened, but I wouldn’t give in.
“I'm scared of making something forgettable,” I said.
He didn't move.
“That's the thing I haven't been able to say to anyone. The last three books did exactly that. They were bright and loud and forgettable, and I'm tired of being the bright loud one.” I pulled the blanket tighter and stared harder at the fire. “I don't know how to make a quiet book. I don't know how to make a quiet anything. And I'm tired.”
He was silent for what felt like a long time. “Quiet things last longer.”
