Jake pushes open the cabin door, and I step inside to find two men on a worn leather couch, beers in hand, watching a survival reality show.
They turn to face me with the casual interest of people who apparently have stranded women show up at their door regularly.
The space is masculine but comfortable: fishing gear by the entrance confirms Jake's story, warm lamplight softens exposed beams, and cedar mixes with the scent of cooking.
No warning signs.
"Found a stray," Jake announces, setting my suitcases down with a thud that makes me wince. "Her car went off the road about a mile out. She's staying until the storm passes."
The man on the left unfolds himself from the couch with fluid grace.
Honey-colored eyes catch the lamplight, warm brown skin glowing against a cream henley, and his smile suggests that it easily gets him out of speeding tickets.
"Well, well." He crosses toward me, stride unhurried. "Jake Sanders rescuing damsels in distress. Never thought I'd see the day." His handshake lingers a beat too long. "Oscar Grant. Welcome to our humble shithole."
"It's not a shithole," Jake mutters.
"It has exactly one bathroom and the water heater sounds like a dying whale. It's a shithole." Oscar's grin widens. "And you are?"
"Kelly Bird. Wrong place, wrong time." The lie slides out smooth again, and I wait for the guilt to hit. It doesn't.
Instead, there's a strange lightness in my chest—the relief of being no one, of shedding Kelly Goodwin like a skin that never fit right in the first place.
"Bird." Oscar tilts his head, and mischief sparks in those honey-colored eyes. "Pretty name for a pretty woman. You sure you didn't fly here?"
My lips twitch. It's a terrible line. Objectively awful. But there's something disarming about a man who delivers bad puns with zero shame.
"Did you actually just say that?" The voice comes from the couch—dry, faintly pained.
The other man hasn't moved. Dark eyes, sharp cheekbones that could cut glass, black hair pushed back from a face designed for Renaissance paintings.
He possesses the kind of stillness that makes me want to fidget.
"It's painful. Physically painful. I felt my brain cells dying."
A laugh escapes me, sharp and unexpected. Both men look at me. Oscar appears wounded. Konnor appears satisfied, like a cat who's knocked exactly the right glass off the counter.
"What? It's charming." Oscar turns back to Konnor, gesturing at me. "She laughed. That's a positive response."
"She laughed at you, not with you. Critical distinction."
"It's the verbal equivalent of a middle school Valentine." The man stands, movements precise and controlled. He approaches without extending a hand. "Konnor Ortiz. You said car accident?"
"She went off the road at Miller's Curve," Jake supplies. "Car's in a ditch."
"I'm fine," I add, because everyone is looking at me like I might shatter. "Just a little shaken."
Konnor's expression suggests he doesn't believe me. "Headache? Dizziness? Nausea?"
"No."
"You lost consciousness?"
Damn.
His eyes are the color of black coffee at midnight—the kind you drink when you've given up on sleep and decided to make reckless decisions instead.
They hold zero warmth and absolute focus, and I get the uncomfortable sensation that he's already cataloged three lies I haven't even told yet.
"For a few seconds," I admit, because lying to a man with eyes like that seems pointless. "Maybe a minute."
"Konnor's a surgeon," Oscar supplies. "Hearts, specifically. But he can't turn it off, so he diagnoses everyone. Last summer he told a bartender she had a thyroid condition."
"She did have a thyroid condition."
"That's not the point."
Konnor ignores him, stepping closer. "May I?"
I don't know what I'm agreeing to until his fingers are on my face—cool, steady, professional.
He tilts my chin toward the light, examining my pupils. His thumb brushes my cheekbone as he turns my head.
The touch is entirely clinical. My skin prickles anyway.
It's been weeks since anyone touched me with this much attention. That's all this is.
"Follow my finger." He moves it slowly—left, right, up, down. I obey, feeling vulnerable under his scrutiny. "Any blurred vision?"
"No."
"Ringing in your ears?"
"Just Oscar's pickup lines echoing in my skull."
Jake snorts. Oscar clutches his chest in mock offense. Konnor's mouth twitches—barely perceptible—but I catch it. A crack in the marble.
"Mild concussion at worst," he pronounces, stepping back. "You should be monitored tonight."
"I'm fine," I protest. "I don't need to be—"
"You lost consciousness after head trauma. You're being monitored." Konnor's tone leaves no room for negotiation. He returns to the couch, picks up his beer, and turns his attention to the television like the conversation is over.
Which, apparently, it is.
"She's taking my room," Jake says, already reaching for my suitcases.
"Absolutely not." I step forward, blocking his path. "I'm not kicking you out of your own bed. The couch is fine. I've slept on worse." A lie. The worst I've slept on is a four-star hotel during a conference when the Ritz was overbooked. "Really, I insist."
"You have a concussion, which means you need actual rest." Jake picks up my suitcases like the conversation is settled. "Bathroom's down the hall. Towels are in the cabinet. Don't lock the door in case you pass out."
"Romantic," I mutter.
Oscar grins. "He's charming like that. You should see him with the fish he catches—same energy. 'Don't flop around, you'll hurt yourself.'"
Jake ignores him entirely, which I'm beginning to suspect is a survival skill in this cabin.
Ten minutes later, the hot shower unknots shoulders I didn't realize I'd been holding at my ears.
I catch myself crying and don't know if it's relief or shock or the accumulated weight of the worst month of my life.
Get it together. You're not this person.
But apparently I am now.
I dress in my most casual option: a soft gray Stanford hoodie and black leggings.
Designer leggings, because even my "casual" costs more than most people's rent, but at least I don't look like I'm attending a board meeting.
Oscar spots my hoodie immediately. "Stanford, huh? Beauty and brains. Jake, you really know how to pick them off the side of the road."
"I didn't pick her," Jake says flatly. "She crashed."
"Semantics."
Oscar has made dinner—a surprisingly sophisticated pasta he dismisses as "whatever was in the fridge."
They offer beer; I decline, claiming I don't drink. The lie slides out easier than explaining the seven-week-old secret inside me.
My soul screams for wine, but I reach for water instead. Konnor notices and produces tea without being asked, setting it before me like he's been waiting for exactly this moment.
I don't know what to do with that kind of quiet attentiveness. Mason never noticed anything unless it benefited him.
The conversation flows—fishing plans, weather predictions, arguments about the reality show—and I let myself sink into the warmth, the unexpected ease of people who expect nothing from me.
Then Oscar turns, expression shifting to genuine curiosity, and asks the question I've been dreading.
"So, Kelly Bird, why exactly are you traveling alone in the middle of hurricane season?"
________________