2. Wade

Chapter two

Wade

L ake Michigan cradled me like a lover I didn't deserve. I surrendered myself to her cold embrace in the early morning whenever I could, counting strokes until the burn scars stopped screaming. One-two-three-breathe. One-two-three-breathe.

The rhythm was as familiar to me as my heartbeat, and the water was dark and private in the pre-dawn light. I could read the lake's moods like a weather map. This morning, she was restless, small waves slapping against my shoulders with unusual force.

Bad weather was coming. I could taste it in the metallic tang of the air and feel it in the way the water seemed to pulse with gathered energy.

I'd chosen the hour carefully. Usually, I encountered few tourists with their chattering voices and pointing fingers. After Labor Day, they were almost entirely gone.

No locals walked their dogs so early. It was just the lake, the first rays of morning light, and the kind of solitude I'd spent three years cultivating since I left Chicago—since I'd traded in my firefighter's helmet for a ranger's badge and a need to disappear.

The spring-fed depths soothed places deep beneath my skin. Surrounded by inky water and wisps of mist, I could ditch the nightmares and remember why I chose a northern Wisconsin ranger position over running into burning buildings.

For a few minutes every morning, I forgot the screams that still echoed in my dreams and the choices that haunted me.

Almost.

Until I saw him.

He stood on my beach. That's how I'd come to think of the isolated stretch of shoreline. It was a sanctuary I'd carved out of the darkness.

He stood there with something hanging around his neck. It was a camera. My chest tightened as water streamed off my shoulders, each droplet sparkling in the pale morning light. My fight-or-flight instinct kicked in the way it always did when someone tried to see more than a glimpse of what the fire had left behind.

But it wasn't just anyone. It was him . It was the new guy I'd been not-quite-watching all summer, with his sunshine smile and those green eyes that seemed to find beauty in everything they landed on.

I'd seen him at the Little Blue Bean. He was a social media wizard working with Parker Williams, bringing a splash of color to our faded town with his complicated coffee orders. Twenty-five at most, he captured beauty while I documented decay. We occupied the same spaces but lived in different worlds entirely.

I'd seen him helping Mrs. Johnson with her groceries, noticed him walking with old Clark Harlow, and I caught myself tracking his movement through town like some stalking creep. Truthfully, I didn't mean it that way, but he was hard to forget.

The rising sun caught his profile, turning his sharp cheekbones to marble, highlighting a jawline—firm but with a softening touch—that belonged in an art gallery. Fitting the definition of youth, he was all fresh optimism and untested dreams.

He was far too young to look at me like I was something worth photographing or worth noticing at all. He was far too bright to be standing in the shadows that followed me.

Click.

The sound of the shutter cut through the morning silence like a blade. It was like the moment in my nightmares when everything changed, and peace shattered into chaos.

My toes sank into the damp sand as I waded forward. The kid's eyes went wide—green as lake glass. I noticed because, apparently, I was focusing on him now. A flush crept up his neck into his cheeks.

"Morning," I grunted, veering right to avoid getting too close, though not before his scent drifted over—there was something woodsy like he'd spent the night in front of burning logs—a fireplace, maybe. It had no business making my stomach flip. The smell reminded me of campfires and safety.

"H... hi." His voice cracked on the single syllable, and something in me wanted to smooth that nervousness away.

I kept walking, forcing myself not to look back or acknowledge how that stammered greeting had briefly softened something in my chest that had hardened over the past three years. My weathered truck waited in the parking lot to take me on a familiar escape route.

But I couldn't escape the image burned into my mind: those artist's hands cradling the camera, gentle as if he were holding something precious. That full bottom lip caught between his teeth and how he looked at me like I was something beautiful instead of broken. He gazed at the scars that mapped my skin like they were constellations instead of casualties.

The drive home was a blur of misty roads and unwanted memories, punctuated by glimpses of him I'd collected all summer long. I told myself I was just doing my job. It was important to keep tabs on newcomers. Any good ranger would do the same.

It was a valiant attempt to explain away my obsession, but I knew better. I knew I'd memorized his laugh and the way his eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled at Parker's jokes outside the Little Blue Bean. I couldn't forget the way he seemed to carry sunshine with him, even on cloudy days.

My cabin materialized out of the morning mist. It perched at the top of a steep bluff over a small bay. A hundred yards of dense pine forest separated me from my nearest neighbor. I'd jumped at the chance to have such a strong buffer when the park system offered me the place three years ago.

The cedar siding had weathered to the color of old pennies, darker where morning dew traced patterns down the walls. Wild grape vines climbed one corner, their leaves just starting to turn crimson at the edges. I'd let them stay because they reminded me of flames without the danger, beauty without the burn. It was a small rebellion against the fear that still lived in my bones.

I killed the engine, and silence settled around me. All the noise of the city was miles and miles away. No sirens sang their songs of tragedy. All I heard was the soft tap of pine needles on the metal roof and the distant cry of a loon out on the lake, calling for something—or someone—to share its morning.

The porch steps creaked their morning greeting as I climbed them, each wooden plank worn smooth by three years of my park ranger boots. I'd rebuilt the whole deck myself that first summer at Michigami State Park when I needed something to do with my hands besides remember. The railings still smelled faintly of sawdust and linseed oil when the air was damp.

Inside, everything waited precisely as I'd left it, as predictable as sunrise. The cabin was small but mine in every way that mattered, every repair and renovation a stamp of ownership more permanent than any deed. Exposed beams crossed the ceiling, dark with age and strong as iron, bearing the weight of decades.

The main room held what I needed and nothing more. I had a leather armchair worn butter-soft at the edges from long nights of insomnia. A stone fireplace I'd restored myself stone by careful stone dominated the north wall, the mantel holding only three things: my grandfather's brass compass, a piece of warped glass I'd pulled from my last fire in Chicago, and a carved loon decoy I'd found washed up on my beach.

Two floor-to-ceiling bookshelves flanked the fireplace, their pine shelves bowing slightly under the weight of field guides, paperback mysteries dog-eared at their satisfying endings, and a complete collection of Jack London that had somehow survived the life I'd left behind.

The morning light filtered through the windows I'd enlarged myself, letting in more sky than the original builder thought necessary. Gentle shadows played across the wide-plank pine floors.

In the compact kitchen, everything had its place. My coffee mug waited on the counter—thick ceramic glazed with the deep blue-green of lake water during storms. The French press stood ready next to it because some habits from my city life were worth keeping. I allowed myself a few small luxuries. There were no fancy espresso drinks at my place and no vanilla lattes with extra shots, just strong black coffee and silence.

My wet trunks hit the bathroom floor with a soggy slap. The mirror above the sink reflected more than I wanted to see— silvery scars that wrapped around my left side like lightning frozen in flesh, like a map of everywhere I'd been broken. Usually, I could ignore them. Usually, they were just part of the landscape of my body, like the crow's feet starting at the corners of my eyes or the silver threading through my temples at forty-three.

Regrettably, the kid's camera made me feel exposed in a way I hadn't in years, stripped bare in ways that had nothing to do with skin. It made me remember what it was like to have someone look at me—really stare, the way artists look at things—searching for beauty in broken places, finding worth in the weathered and worn.

The shower's spray hit my skin hot enough to scald, steam rising in clouds around me like the morning mist off the lake. Still, it couldn't wash away the memory of those green eyes, bright as spring leaves and full of something I didn't want to name. It couldn't erase the way he'd looked at me, like I was worth capturing, worth keeping, worth more than the sum of my scars.

I braced my hands against the shower wall, letting the water pound against my shoulders like summer rain. The cedar-scented body wash I used filled the small space with its forest smell, grounding me in the present. It was my sanctuary, my carefully constructed solitude. There was no room for smiles, cameras, youth, hope, or second chances.

The police scanner crackled to life as I pulled on my olive-drab uniform, a kind of armor I understood. "Storm system approaching from the northwest. High winds and possible waterspouts over the lake. All units be advised."

"Copy that," I responded, grateful for the distraction. I could handle the weather. It followed patterns and made sense. Unlike the way my hands wanted to shake when I thought about that camera lens catching the moment I emerged from the water, like some kind of...

My phone buzzed, interrupting the thought. It was a text from Sarah at the Little Blue Bean. She was the town gossip and an unrepentant matchmaker:

Your usual is ready when you want it. And hey, you'll never guess who's sitting in here looking at Polaroids with the most interesting expression...

I typed back:

Not today .

I knew she'd see right through my terseness, knowing she'd been watching me watch him all summer.

Three dots appeared, and then:

He ordered a vanilla latte with an extra shot—just saying. And he keeps touching one photo like it's made of gold .

I turned off my phone and did my best to ignore the images Sarah conjured. I imagined him sitting in his usual corner, his hands wrapped around a warm ceramic mug, worrying that bottom lip with his teeth as he studied his morning's work.

I didn't need to know what kind of coffee he drank, how he looked studying his snapshot, or whether he was thinking about our encounter the way I couldn't stop thinking about it.

A storm was coming. That's what mattered. Not green eyes or gentle smiles or the way my name might sound on his lips. Not the way he made me want things I'd given up on years ago when I traded in a burning building for a burned-out life.

Definitely not that.

As I climbed into my truck, I caught myself glancing toward town, where a certain photographer was probably warming his hands around a vanilla latte, looking at a Polaroid of a scarred man emerging from the lake like a damaged Poseidon. Looking at me the way no one had in years, like I was worth the light he'd captured.

Three photos a day, he'd said when I overheard him talking to Sarah last week. It was his ritual and promise. It was a way of finding beauty in a world that sometimes seemed determined to burn it all down.

The scanner crackled again, this time with another warning about the approaching storm. I turned up the volume, drowning out thoughts of artists and their cameras, green eyes and kind smiles, and the way the morning light had turned his skin to gold. I drowned out the voice in my head that whispered maybe, just maybe, he could see something in me worth saving.

I had a job to do. A purpose. A routine.

And there was no room in any of it for someone who could look at broken things and see beauty. No matter how much a part of me wished there was.