“The runoff is bad this year,” Treyton said. “There's a creek a hundred yards above us that wasn't there last week. You would have walked into it before you saw it. The current's fast enough this time of year to take you down two switchbacks before you have a chance at getting your hands on anything. Do you understand what I'm telling you?”
I did. I understood completely. I also understood that he was angrier than the situation called for, and the reason he was angrier than the situation called for had something to do withme being on his ridge in the first place, and possibly something to do with the dog, and possibly — I wouldn't let myself look at this directly — something to do with the way he was not looking at the smear of dirt on my hands from kneeling in the trail.
“I'll go back,” I said.
“I'll walk you.”
“You don't have to.”
“I know.”
He turned around without waiting for me to agree. Just stepped past me on the narrow part of the trail, closer than the trail required, and started down. He didn't look back to see if I was following.
I followed.
The trail was narrow enough that the only thing I could see the whole way down was his broad back and the way his thermal henley stretched tight across his shoulders. He took up more of the path than seemed fair, and I had to keep adjusting my pace because every other step meant a sideways step around a rock that he'd cleared without seeming to plan for it. He moved like he'd built the trail himself. Maybe he had.
He didn't say a word for the entire walk down.
I filled the silence because I couldn't help it. I told him about Piper the forget-me-not. I told him about the cinnamon roll. I told him Mae had called him a decent pain in the ass. He made a sound at that one, not quite a laugh but close enough to count.
When we got to the cabin, he stopped at the porch step and turned around.
The sun had gone over the ridge. The light was that thin gold that didn't last in the mountains. He was a head taller than me, and he was standing on the lower step, so we were almost at eye level. Close. Almost too close.
“Thanks, Treyton.”
“Stay on your side of the markers.”
“I'll do my best.”
His jaw did the thing again.
He turned around and walked back up the trail. Dusk was coming on fast. He didn't look back. I watched him until he was just a shape moving up the ridge and then a shape that was harder to see and then nothing.
I went inside, picked up my sketchbook, and turned to a fresh page. At the top, I wrotethe stubborn flower.Then I drew him scowling.
CHAPTER 3
TREYTON
It had been three days,and she'd already broken me of two routines. The first was coffee at the Switchback at six. I'd gone in Friday and she'd been at the counter talking to Mae about wildflowers in a way that made Mae look like she was enjoying herself, which Mae didn’t do at six in the morning, ever. I'd turned around and gone home and made coffee on my own stove.
The second was checking the fence on the west pasture before the sun came up. I'd gone out Monday morning, and Soleil had been in the meadow with her sketchbook before I made it past the first post. She'd waved at me like we’d been neighbors for decades, and I'd turned around and gone back to the shop.
I wasn’t avoiding her. I was adjusting my schedule. There was a difference. The fact that I couldn't have explained the difference to anyone, including myself, didn’t matter.
What mattered was that Biscuit had stopped sleeping at the foot of my bed.
He still came home at night. But he slept in the kitchen now. By the door. Facing the door. The dog had been mine for fouryears, and he'd never once slept anywhere except the foot of my bed. Now he was sleeping by the door like he was on call.
I knew what he was on call for. I wasn't going to talk to him about it either. He knew what he'd done.
Thursday morning I was on my screened-in porch with my own coffee when I heard her SUV come up the drive. The door opened, then closed. Footsteps crunched on the gravel. Then she came up the steps to my back porch.
“Treyton?”
I didn't get up. I looked at the screen door instead. She was holding a paper bag from the Switchback, and I could smell the cinnamon from ten feet away.
