1. Carrie

1

CARRIE

I t’s funny how excitement and nervousness feel exactly the same. Since I stepped onto the plane eight hours ago, I’ve yo-yo’d between the two. Never quite sure if my racing heart, turbulent stomach, and sweaty palms are because I’m excited to meet Cole for the first time or nervous as hell.

The rental car shudders as I take the windy corner of the remote mountain road. An eagle soars overhead then drops into the valley below. I slow to watch it dive, wondering how the wind feels breezing past its feathers. It must be freeing.

As freeing as getting on a plane for the first time. As freeing as leaving North Carolina for the first time in my twenty-four years of existence.

I bang the steering wheel in excitement and let out a whoop, which is carried out the open window and into the warm mountain air.

As freeing as picking up a rental car and driving to the ass end of nowhere to meet a man I’ve only ever communicated with via email and text message.

A thrill of nervousness etches up my spine as I think about meeting Cole for the first time. Cole. The axe-wielding single dad who swiped right on my profile pic and reached out three months ago. The widowed mountain man with a wicked sense of humor and a body as taut as my nerves are right now as I drive to meet him.

My rented Jeep Cherokee takes the mountain roads smoothly, and I’m glad I forked over the cash for the upgrade, because I know mountain roads.

I’m heading to the AirBnB Cole recommended run by Joyce, a seventy-something homebody who I also corresponded with at the insistence of my sister to make sure she was a real person and the AirBnB was real and this wasn’t some trap to lure me to a remote mountain location. Why not just lure a local girl was my argument to Suzie, always the overprotective big sister.

“Text me when you land,” Suzie instructed as she hugged me too tight at the airport. “And when you get there. And you can always come home if it doesn’t turn out how you want.”

Her anxious face made me smile more brightly than was necessary. “It will be fine. He’s legit, Suzie.”

If I say it often enough, I can convince myself. Because the closer I get to Sweetheart Falls and the man I’ve only ever communicated with via email and text, the more that excitement feels like anxiousness and I wonder if Suzie was right to be concerned about me, who has never left North Carolina, coming all the way to Montana to meet a man I don’t know.

My GPS tells me the turn off is coming up, and I follow a bumpy road down a trail that winds through towering Ponderosa pines.

The trees are different in Montana than on Wild Heart Mountain where I’ve come from. They’re further apart, as if they too are trying to fill the wide open spaces that I flew over on my way in.

But a mountain is a mountain, and there’s comfort in winding roads and sudden drops into tree-lined valleys as I drive towards Sunrise Cabin, the romantically named AirBnB.

A good headwind bought the flight in early, and I was too excited or too nervous to stop for lunch.

Which means I’m an hour earlier than the time I told Joyce I’d be here. But I hope that won’t be a problem. I’d rather get settled in and start the adventure then hang around killing time.

Another five minutes and I pull into a driveway marked by a rickety wooden fence that has colorful ribbons tied to the top rung that flap in the wind. A kid’s bike is overturned near the drive, one wheel sticking out into the gravel, and I have to drive around it so as not to run it over.

It’s a shared driveway and I pause a few feet in, deciding which place is Sunrise Cabin.

To the left is a large two story cabin with a wooden porch running around the outside. Wicker furniture and colorful bean bags give it a homely, permanently lived-in feel. A rusty trampoline sits to the side and kids toys are discarded on the lawn. There’s a fire pit with log seats around it, and a doll sits on one of the stumps as if waiting for her friends.

Definitely not Sunrise Cabin. I drive further onto the property, and to the right the driveway splits and heads down a small slope. Colorful gnomes line the driveway, heading down the slope toward a cabin just visible through the trees.

Straight in front of me is a smaller cabin, if you can call it that. It looks like one of those tiny homes that have become popular, but from the nineties. Wide windows are framed in pale wood. A porch runs around this one too, but there’s only a single chair and a wooden table outside and no scattered toys. No sign of the family life that must exist next door.

This must be the place.

There’s a parking spot on the right side of the cabin between the cabin wall and the trees, and I slide into the spot and kill the engine. My legs are stiff from sitting for most of the day, and without bothering to lock the car, I step out of the rental and stretch my arms above my head. Birdsong greets me along with the rustle of the trees. It’s peaceful here, as quiet as home.

I walk around to the front of the cabin and then try the door. It’s locked, which isn’t surprising considering how early I am .

I open the AirBnB app and send Joyce a quick message letting her know I’m here.

The rumble of a vehicle makes me look up from my phone.

Pulling into the driveway and going way too fast, kicking up dust in the gravel, is a large pickup truck. Its dust-coated sides indicate it belongs to a local.

The pickup slows when it gets to my cabin, and I catch a glimpse of the driver.

My stomach bottoms out and my heartbeat, already skittish, jumps up a notch. It’s Cole. Rough bearded, shaggy-haired, and looking just as hot in real life as his photo.

Joyce must have told him where I was staying and he’s come to meet me. My heart does a little flutter at the thought.

I’ve only seen two pictures of Cole, a blurry one of him cutting wood with his shirt off and the smiling one with his kids, their faces blurred out, which I understood. He didn’t want to send their images to a stranger, although that didn’t stop me from sending a rather intimate picture to him.

My cheeks flush when I think of the exchanges we’ve had. The emails, the texts, and one night after I’d had a glass of wine, I boldly sent him a picture of my boobs. He responded with a smiley face and asked when I was coming to visit.

I’ve never been the type of woman to send nudes, but I was feeling bold, and if you’re going to have an adventure you may as well jump straight in .

He’s seen my boobs, I’ve sent him cupcakes I baked, and we’ve had short email exchanges but never quite managed a phone call.

Now here I am, my heart fluttering like a wounded bird and my stomach doing flip flops.

Cole parks his pickup in front of the cabin and steps out of the car.

He’s even more striking in real life. The photos didn’t give a sense of Cole’s height or his broad shoulders. The man’s built as solidly as one of the huge Ponderosa pines that surround this property.

His dark hair is pulled back in a man bun, which seems oddly masculine on his bearded, rugged face.

He’s wearing bright orange overalls, which means he’s just come from work. He told me all about his job as a helicopter pilot for the local search and rescue team.

I smooth my hair back, hoping I don’t look as tired as I feel and that my clothes, my favorite high-waisted green skirt that accentuates my hips and hides my stomach rolls and a tucked in Guns n’ Roses t-shirt, aren’t too rumpled from my travels.

My palms are slick and I clasp them together nervously as Cole steps out of his pickup.

“Hi!” I don’t know whether to hug him or shake his hand or do what the daring part of me wants to do, which is kiss him.

I lurch forward, deciding a hug is appropriate for someone who’s come all this way. A heady scent of pinewood and diesel reaches my senses and I stumble, falling the last part of the way into his solid chest. Cole catches me awkwardly, and instead of pulling me into an embrace sets me back on my feet.

I step back awkwardly, jiggling from foot to foot and trying to compose my senses.

He frowns at me. And I beam back at him. But instead of smiling, his frown deepens.

He doesn’t look excited to see me or nervous. In fact, the way he’s looking at me is like I’m a stranger who he’s never met before and not a woman whose boobs he’s seen.

“Are you lost?” His voice is a deep rumble that makes my insides quiver, but what he says makes me stop cold.

“It’s me!” I say awkwardly. “Carrie.”

His dark eyebrows pull even further together, and he tilts his head to one side in confusion. He definitely doesn’t look like a man who’s meeting his potential lover for the first time. He looks like a man who’s trying to figure out why the woman in front of him is smiling at him like they’re old friends.

“Do I know you?”

My stomach drops. This isn’t the man I’ve been communicating with for the last three months. This man in front of me, Cole, if that’s even his name, has no idea who I am.