Page 5 of Rowan: His Exception

I tell myself it’s control, that this is what it looks like to be okay.

But some nights, I sit on the porch with a whiskey I don't taste and watch the tree line, feeling the old instincts itching to return. The need to dominate a space. The reflex to assess every person who enters my space as a threat or target.

The violence I keep tucked away, not because it's gone but because there's nowhere safe to point it.

I am not safe. I am not good. I have spent years convincing myself that my darkness is protection rather than damage, and I have almost believed it.

My phone dings in my pocket, interrupting my current thoughts. I pull it out without thinking, muscle memory from a different life, and there's a notification. New application. The last spot is filled.

Claire Calloway.

Thirty-three.

Recently divorced.

Charlotte, North Carolina.

I need to prove something to myself, she writes. I need to know I'm capable of more than the life I outgrew.

I read it once, rolling my eyes. Then twice. Pull up her photo-driver's license, passport, some government shit with her face on it. Brown eyes. Defiant even in bad lighting. I stare until the screen goes to sleep, and something in my chest does a thing I don't have a name for.

I tell myself it's indigestion. She's nothing. Another soft woman with something to prove, another tourist who'll quit by day two, cry in her car, write a bad review.

I don't believe it, though. Not even while I'm telling it. I stuff the phone back in my pocket and head straight for the whiskey. Then to my usual spot on the porch, to watch the dark gather between the pines, feeling the old violence wake up and stretch, and I know with a certainty that this woman is going to be a problem.

Not because she's weak.

Because for the first time in years, I want to break my own fucking rules.

Chapter Three

CLAIRE

I don't fucking belong here.

That's the first thing I think when I step out of the rental car. The summer sun doesn't ease you in; it cranks the heat until the air tastes like dust, and my lungs work twice as hard. The sign at the edge of town didn't help either.

WELCOME TO CEDAR RIDGE. HELP YOUR NEIGHBOR. DON'T ASK ABOUT THEIR PAST. NEVER LEAVE ANYONE STRANDED.

No population count. No cheery bullshit. Just rules carved into weathered wood that's probably been here longer than the town itself.

I slam the car door harder than I mean to, and the sound echoes off the empty street before the pines swallow it whole.

The mountains don't just sit in the background here. They crowd everything, the street, the buildings, the sky. I'm learning fast: you either make peace with them or you fucking don't.

I came to Cedar Ridge to prove something. At least that's the bullshit I fed my sister, my therapist, anyone who asked. Truth is, I typed "wilderness survival Montana" into Google at two in the morning, three-quarters through a box of Barefoot Moscato, "Someone Like You" on repeat because apparently I hate myself. Still wearing my wedding ring. Daniel's voice in my head, calling me too soft, too sensitive, too much. The whole pathetic scene: me, drunk and crying, scrolling through survival courses like that would fix whatever was broken in me. Adele wailing about never minding, and me sobbing into my wine like a fucking cliché. The worst part wasn't the divorce papers. It was all the years I actually started believing him. The friends who said “you're so strong” in that tone that really means “thank god it's you, not me.”

So here I am. Thirty-three. Newly single. Standing in the middle of fucking nowhere, Cedar Ridge, Montana, about to spend a week learning wilderness survival with some stranger who probably eats nails for breakfast. Which reminds me…

I need coffee.

As if on cue, the smell hits me before I even see the place. Coffee, bacon, something sweet. My stomach growls. I haven't eaten since North Carolina, and my stomach knows it.

I glance up and down the pretty much empty street, spotting a diner at the end of the block. The Last Stop.

The Last Stop? Who the hell names a diner that? Like this is some final destination before you die? Before you give up? Jesus, Claire. Dramatic much?

But the neon sign buzzes OPEN, and my stomach is eating itself, so I guess this will have to do.