Next week?My gut tightens.
“An A-list director? Seriously? Wow. Okay.” She pauses, listening, her fingers tapping on the wooden railing. “Yes, the timing is sudden, but after everything here ... perhaps it’s what I need.” She means an excuse to leave. Figures. The words hit hard, stealing my breath. Confirmation. She’s ready to leave. This place, this experience, us—it was a detour, an unpleasant necessity before returning to her real life.
“Okay. Yes. Tell them yes,” she says, her voice firming with decision. “...Arrange the pickup? Hank the pilot? Tomorrow at the dock? Got it... Yes, I’ll be ready... Thanks, David. Talk soon.”
She lowers the phone, looking out at the mountains for a long moment, her shoulders slumped. Then she takes a deep breath, straightens, and turns. Her eyes widen when she seesme standing there at the corner of the deck, surprise quickly hidden behind that cool, guarded look she’d perfected. She knows I overheard.
Wordlessly, she walks toward me. She stops a few feet away, the space between us charged with everything unsaid. She reaches into her pocket and pulls out the small brass compass—my mother’s compass. She holds it out to me.
“Here,” she says, her voice flat, neutral. “Thanks for letting me use it.”
I look at the compass lying in her outstretched palm. The worn brass gleams in the late afternoon light. A guide. A promise. Entrusted to her. I want to tell her to keep it. Tell her to use it to find her way back. Back here. Back to me. But the words stick in my throat. What’s the point?Tell them yes. Pickup tomorrow. Next week. A-list director.Her words, her decision, played over in my head—an inevitable answer. The gap between her world and mine isn’t wide—it’s real. I made it that way. She’s Hollywood. I’m … this. I told Nash that. And now it sounds less like fact and more like a choice I made.
My hand is heavy as I reach for the compass. Our fingers brush—barely. One flicker of something real. Then it’s gone, buried under everything we didn’t say.
“Right,” I manage, my voice sounding rough, unfamiliar. I close my fist around it, the metal warm against my skin. “Glad it was useful.”
She nods once, eyes shifting past me to some distant point beyond my shoulder. The silence stretches, thick and suffocating. There’s nothing left to say. I ruined it. A woman like Lena never looks back.
She doesn’t say a word. Just turns and walks past me—back to her cabin, her packed bags, her real life waiting far from Crystal Creek.
I stay on the deck, the compass heavy in my hand, watching her go.
The mountains loom in the distance, dark against the dusk. The air’s cold, but not as cold as the hollow settling in my chest.
I did this. No one else.
I don’t know how long I stand there, the compass digging into my palm. The sun dips lower, turning the sky red over the peaks. The crew’s voices fade as they head toward the main lodge for the dinner Nash made. Eventually, the cold seeps too deep for me. Turning from the mountains, from the path Lena took, I walk back toward the lodge, feeling hollowed out.
Nash is in the great room, stoking the fire in the massive stone hearth. He raises his head as I enter, takes one look at my face, and his expression turns grim.
“Didn’t go well, huh?” he asks, his voice low.
I shake my head, sinking onto the worn leather couch near the fire. I open my hand, looking at the compass. “She’s leaving. Tomorrow. Flying out from the dock.”
Nash comes over, sits beside me. “What happened?”
I tell him. Everything. Overhearing the call. The job offer. The A-list director. Her saying yes. Her returning the compass. The finality of it all.
“So, you ... took it back?” Nash sounds incredulous. “You didn’t say anything? Didn’t fight?”
“What was there to fight, Nash?” I look at him, then away. “She came here to breathe life back into a career everyone had buried. She was blacklisted—written off. And somehow, freezing nights, natural disasters, and a camera crew in the middle of nowhere gave her what she needed. They recognize her now. The producers, the headlines. They understand what she’s capable of.” I drag a hand over my jaw. “She’s getting everything she came here for. A second chance. A fresh start. How could I ruin that for her by asking her to stay? She’s going back to her world. The world she wanted. I heard her excitement.”
“You heard part of a phone call, Finn,” Nash says, leaning forward. “You don’t know what she was thinking. You don’t know what that job means to her—or what this means, between you two.” He gestures vaguely. “Maybe she said yes because she thought she had no other choice.”
The thought is another twist of the knife. Could that be true?
“Doesn’t matter now,” I mutter. “She’s leaving.”
“Only if you let her.” Nash stands, pacing in front of the fireplace. “Dammit, Finn! Are you going to sit here feeling sorry for yourself while she flies away? Go talk to her! Tell her she’s wrong! Tell her you’re an idiot! Tell her whatever the hell’s in that stubborn heart of yours!”
“And say what? ‘Don’t go back to your million-dollar career—stay in the woods with a broke lodge owner who might lose everything?’” Bitterness coats every word.
“So what if that’s the truth?” Nash throws his hands up. “You think she doesn’t know that already? You think she doesn’t care about the guy who knows seventeen ways to cook tree bark and looks at her like she hung the damn moon? You won’t know unless you try!”
His words hang there. The fire crackles, spitting embers onto the hearth. Outside, the wind rises, rattling the lodge windows.Try.Simple word. Brutal ask. Especially after she handed back the compass. After she walked away.
“I need ... I need to think,” I mutter, pushing up from the couch. Pain lances through my ribs and shoulder.
