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I’m here with the woods outside my door, the job I’ve always wanted, and a cabin that smells of familiar mornings and of coming out here to bother Tom Jackson when he was still living here. The forest doesn’t care that my left hand feels too light for the weight it would have carried. The cabin doesn’t care that the last man who lived in it drove out one day and vanished in a place he was meant to protect.

What I have in my hand now is a set of keys, a badge, a set of trails that need walking, fires that need watching, and people who need someone who knows which rocks are loose and which rivers flood faster than they look.

2

Lucas

On my first official day as Sweet Rivers’ Park Ranger, I’m up before the alarm with the first thrums of excitement coursing through me. I’ll be seeing people I haven’t seen in a long time, including my momma and sister. I feel bad that I didn’t get to see them yesterday, but I was honestly too tired to visit anyone after unpacking and getting the cabin ready.

Not too tired, apparently, to lace up my boots and take one short hike before dark, because common sense has never stood much of a chance against this forest when it starts calling my name. I told myself it was just to stretch my legs after all that driving, but by the time I made it back to the cabin with pine needles stuck to my socks and my lungs full of cold mountain air, I knew I’d been lying.

The air has that pre-dawn chill that sneaks under blankets, one I’ve missed no matter how many ‘camping’ trips I took in the city. Nothing beats a small town surrounded by miles and miles of forest.

I lie there for a while just listening to the quiet, letting the sounds sort themselves out in my head the way they used to when I was seventeen. Back then, my biggest problem was whether the fishing wardens would catch me skipping class to sit by the river.

Wind in the pines, a low hush, and push through the needles. Somewhere to my left, a mourning dove calls, and there’s a squirrel chittering in the eaves. Underneath it all, I know with absolute certainty that three deer are moving behind the cabin because that soft, uneven crunch of hooves on dry needles is as familiar as my own heartbeat.

“Time to get this day started, Dawson,” I say and push myself out of bed.

When I step onto the porch in my socks and a coffee mug in hand, the world smells right again for the first time in months. I crouch down near the corner of the porch where dirt meets the stone foundation.

A set of small, delicate hoofprints crosses the packed earth, dew darkening the edges. They aren’t fresh enough for the deer to still be close, but they’re from this morning. That small fact settles something that’s been rattling in me ever since I threw my boxes into my truck bed and left the city.

I missed this—the ease of reading the ground, the way a bent blade of grass or a smudge of mud tells a whole story if you bother to look closely.

When I straighten, my chest tightens for a different reason—the reminder of why I’m here hitting the same way it has every morning since.

I take a long drink of coffee and breathe through it, but the hurt sits there anyway, heavy and stupid. Part of me knows you can’t just turn off three years of emotion from building a future with someone, even if the foundation was rotten the entire time.

“Alright, enough,” I say, rolling my shoulders back until they crack. “New day, new life, and all that.”

The words fix nothing, but they give me something to step over. I just need to take it one day at a time.

I go back inside to shower, trim my beard, and pull on my uniform. Afterward, I run a hand through my unruly red hair until it settles into something manageable, then clip my badge to my chest.

The fabric is stiff because it’s still new, but my heart soars a little at the patch on my chest.

Sweet Rivers State Park

Ranger Dawson

When I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I don’t see the guy who got cheated on. I see the kid who used to follow Tom’s truck through these same trees, memorizing every trail.

Driving into town takes less time than I remember. The road snakes along the river, that familiar stretch of water glinting silver through the gaps in the trees. It widens as it approaches the first gas station, the faded welcome sign with SWEET RIVERS in chipped paint beside a hand-painted pine tree with one too many branches.

I take a left on Brabant Street and smile when I see the Ranger’s Station looking exactly the same as it did when I was in high school. Brown brick and clear glass, and the big wooden sign out front that says PARK OFFICE in letters so big they cast shadows on the lawn.

Tom’s old truck is already in the lot, along with two other vehicles I don’t recognize. I pull into a space, kill the engine, and sit there for a second, hand resting on the gearshift. My heartbeat bumps up no matter how much I tell myself these are people I grew up with, and they won’t judge me for running back home with my tail between my legs.

I get out and walk toward the door, hearing voices and the squeak of a rolling chair before I even cross the threshold. Inside, the air smells like coffee, printer toner, and the faint tang of wet fur that always seems to cling near a park. The front desk is exactly the way I remember it from high school: a scratched laminate counter, the same little dish of free stickers for kids, and a jar of ballpoint pens that never seem to work the first time.

Behind it, Sarah Knox looks up from her computer, her hair shorter than it was when I left so long ago, but still the same dark blonde, albeit shot through with silver streaks. She’d probably smack me for pointing that out.

“Well, I’ll be damned if it isn’t Lucas Dawson,” she says in that drawl of hers, standing up with a grin that makes her eyes crinkle. “I thought you disappeared forever into some national park out west and forgot your roots.”

I grin back despite myself and lean on the counter. “They tried to keep me, but I got homesick for your coffee and Tom’s nagging,” I say. “Good to see you, Sarah.”

She comes around to hug me; the embrace is firm and familiar. When she steps back, her gaze flicks over my uniform, and her smile softens. “Look at you, all official. Tom’s in the back. He hasn’t shut up about you coming home since the email.”