Page 3

Only then did he admit that when he closed his eyes, he kept seeing a blue-white light moving between the pines, and Ava following it while calling out for him.

By fall, nobody on the ridge told the story like a joke anymore. Not after searchers said the dogs lost her scent where the ground became old and thick and strange.

Devon, who never touched another drop of alcohol around a campfire again, started telling younger kids the rules the same way his grandfather told them to him.

If you see a lantern moving where no person should be, you go the other way.

If something calls your name from the dark, you don’t answer.

And if the forest ever looks like it’s trying to show you something, remember that some things in the woods are old enough to know exactly what humans follow when they want to be led.

1

Lucas

Heartbreak can be a hell of a motivator.

Sure, it comes with depression, sadness, or overall morbidity, but it sure as shit makes up your mind for you.

A week ago, I was getting ready to go out with my fiancée to our wedding rehearsal dinner. A week ago, I made the mistake of going through her phone in search of a number I had lost, and a text popped up, shattering every future I had ever thought I was building with her. A week ago, I found out she’d been fucking my best friend for about six months leading up to the wedding.

So, yeah, heartbreak is a hell of a thing. It’s also the reason I’m currently driving through my hometown for the first time since I left ten years ago.

But I suppose it’s not all negative. I got the job I always wanted as a teen, and it might not be fancy, but it’s a dream come true.

The last stretch of road is still the same, which knocks the breath out of me more than it should. It curves through old pines and cedars, narrow enough that branches scrape the sides of the truck if I drift too far, and every bend gives me another piece of the place I spent half my life swearing I’d leave for good.

I used to know every turn on this road by muscle memory. I still do, apparently. My hands barely need me. They guide the wheel on instinct while heaviness settles under my ribs—not quite relief, not quite hurt. Maybe both.

I had a good job in the city. Better pay and better hours, if I’m being honest. A decent apartment, coffee that didn’t taste like burned dirt, and neighbors who minded their own business. Five states over, I built something that looked stable from the outside, even if my work wasn’t truly fulfilling.

Then this position opened up back home, and I put in for it half on impulse, half because some stubborn part of me never stopped wanting this place. When they called to say I got it, I actually laughed. I remember standing in my kitchen with my phone in my hand, grinning like an idiot, already picturing these woods, this cabin, and this job.

A week ago, that feeling still lived in me. Now, it feels like it belonged to somebody else.

The ranger cabin comes into view through the trees, and I slow without meaning to. It sits tucked back from the road with the porch facing the woods and the roofline half shadowed by branches. The place looks smaller than it did when I was younger, but that’s how memory works. It makes things bigger, brighter, easier to love.

The old place still has the same deep-green trim, the same patched steps, the same lean on one side that nobody ever really fixed. There’s a new truck parked out front from the department, and the sight of it brings back the reminder I’ve been trying not to sit with for the whole drive up here.

Mark Hasting, the last ranger, vanished. Not transferred or quit—vanished. His name was in the paperwork, and in the careful tone people used whenever they mentioned why the post had opened up unexpectedly.

Missing. Search ongoing. No conclusion.

I cut the engine and look up at the cabin that’s supposed to be my fresh start. All I can think is that somebody else was meant to be living here right up until he wasn’t.

“Okay, Lucas. You came this far; might as well go all the way,” I say, trying to psych myself up for the start of my solitary life. “Just get outta the truck and get this dang thing over with.”

The second my boots hit the gravel, old pine needles crunch under the soles, and the smell of the place moves around me fully. Pine. Old dirt. Clean air and the faint smell of smoke clinging to the cold cabin chimney. The start of fall always added a sweeter scent to the forest. This is it, the cabin I used to visit in my youth when I fell in love with the forest. Sixteen-year-old me would be so stoked.

The forest air slides under the collar of my shirt and across the back of my neck, cooler than it was on the highway. The sun is lowering behind the ridge, turning the treetops copper at the edges. It’s the hour where everything looks softened and beautiful.

“Hell of a fresh start,” I mutter with a scoff as I stand beside the open truck door with one hand on the roof.

I should feel grateful—I am grateful. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m heartbroken and standing in front of what is supposed to be my new home with my whole life packed into a truck bed.

With a sigh, I drag a hand through my hair and walk up the porch steps. I wish I had the opportunity to come home with excitement instead of this dragged-out ache in my chest and hope instead of suspicion. But I’m here, anyway, and I’m going to make the most out of it.

Heartbreak and all. Humiliation and all.