"Smokejumper." There's no pride in his voice, just fact. "Eight years."
My eyebrows shoot up. Smokejumpers are the elite—the ones who parachute into remote wildfires too dangerous for anyone else. The connection clicks.
"That explains a lot," I say. "The first aid knowledge, the survival skills, the..." I gesture vaguely at all of him, "...physical capacity."
Is that a hint of color on his cheeks? Surely not.
"Just training," he mutters, standing to take his empty bowl to the sink. "I'm going to check your ankle."
The abrupt subject change is obvious, but I let it slide. He kneels in front of me, and I try not to think about how intimate this position feels as he carefully examines my ankle. His hands are rough with calluses but impossibly gentle as they support my heel.
"Swelling's down a little," he reports. "Still need to stay off it. I'll make you a crutch."
"A crutch? Like, from a tree branch?"
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. "Something like that."
He disappears into a back room I hadn't noticed before and returns with a first aid kit more comprehensive than anything I've seen outside a hospital. With quick, efficient movements, he wraps my ankle in a support bandage.
"That should help," he says, sitting back on his heels.
"Thanks. Did they teach you this in smokejumper school, or are you secretly a doctor too?"
"You learn fast in the field. Injuries happen." There's something darker in his voice now, a shadow I don't understand yet.
He stands, gathering his jacket. "Need to check my lines and radio the ranger station. Will you be okay here for a couple hours?"
"I think I can manage not to burn your cabin down," I say lightly. "Go do your mountain man things."
That almost-smile again, gone so quickly I might have imagined it. "Ruby stays with you. She'll let me know if there's trouble."
The dog perks up at her name, looking between us with intelligent eyes.
"Guard duty, girl," Caleb tells her. "Keep an eye on the city slicker."
"Hey!" I protest, but there's no heat in it.
He pauses at the door, awkward suddenly. "There are books. If you get bored."
It's such a small, thoughtful thing to offer that it catches me off guard. "Thank you. I'll find something to read."
He nods once, and then he's gone, the door closing firmly behind him. The cabin feels different without his presence—quieter, but somehow emptier too.
"Just you and me, huh?" I say to Ruby, who watches me with skeptical eyes from her spot by the fire. "Don't worry, I'm not trying to take your man. Just borrowing him until my ankle heals."
I hop over to the bookshelves, curious what kind of reading material a hermit smokejumper keeps on hand. There's a surprising variety—wilderness survival guides and plant identification books, sure, but also classics. Hemingway, London, McCarthy. Dog-eared paperbacks of Thoreau and Muir. Philosophy texts that look well-read.
This is not the library of a simple man. This is the collection of someone who thinks deeply, who wrestles with big questions in his solitude.
I select a Jack London novel and make my way back to the couch, settling in with a blanket. Ruby eventually relaxes, stretching out near my feet, one eye still watching me suspiciously.
The cabin is peaceful in a way I've never experienced. No traffic noise, no notifications, no endless to-do list. Just the crackling fire, the occasional sound of wind in the trees outside, and the weight of a good book in my hands.
I think about my apartment in New York—sleek, modern, always slightly sterile no matter how many decorative pillows I add. I think about the life I left behind, the one I'm supposedly "finding myself" away from.
Peter's voice echoes in my head.You're too high-maintenance for camping, Lila. Too soft for anything real.
I push the memory away. Peter was wrong about a lot of things. Maybe he was wrong about that too.
