Page 1 of Shelter Me, Sawyer

One

Sawyer

It'stoodamnquiet.

I like quiet. It's why I live up here on the mountain. No traffic grinding through my skull at dawn, no neighbors peering over fences with their small-town gossip, no god-awful small talk about weather and weekend plans. Just trees that know how to keep secrets, wind that carries nothing but the scent of pine, and my own damn thoughts for company.

But this kind of quiet? It's different. Charged like the air before lightning strikes. Like the mountain's holding its breath, waiting for something to happen.

A storm is coming. I can smell it rolling in from the west. Rain and pine needles and the coppery tang of lightning buildingin the clouds. The temperature's dropped ten degrees in the last hour, and the wind's picked up, sending leaves skittering across the porch like nervous animals. I've already secured the woodshed, checked the generator twice, and made sure the storm shutters are ready if things get ugly. I should be inside with a mug of something hot and a book I've already read three times, feet up by the fire, waiting it out like I always do.

Instead, I'm standing on the back porch, staring into the woods behind my cabin at something that doesn't belong.

A flash of yellow. Bright as a warning sign and as out of place as a sunflower in winter. It takes me a second to realize what it is.

A backpack.

Someone is on my property. Someone I didn’t invite.

I step off the porch, my body moving on autopilot, instincts taking over. Every muscle coiled, ready to defend myself and my property. By any means necessary.This guy is going to regret trespassing on my land.

And then the person steps into the clearing, and I’m thrown for a loop.

It’s a woman.

She's soaked to the bone, mud splashed up to her thighs, and her dark curls are plastered to her cheeks and neck. A backpack nearly as big as she is hangs off her shoulders, weighing her down, but she's still moving. Still fighting. Her breath comes in sharp puffs in the cooling air, like she's been hiking for miles.To end up here, she must have.

When her eyes land on me, they go wide as saucers. "Hi there," she says, like we're meeting at a damn coffee shop instead of in the middle of nowhere with a storm bearing down. "I think—I think I took a wrong turn somewhere."

My jaw tightens. No one takes a wrong turn and ends up on my land. The trails are clearly marked. The signs say "PrivateProperty" in letters big enough to read from space. Hell, I put up those signs specifically to keep people like her away.

But she's here anyway.

There's an old saying around here. One the locals whisper when they think no one's listening, passed down from the old-timers like a sacred truth.

The mountain has a code.

You stay alone… until the mountain sends you a woman.

I've always thought it was bullshit. Folklore. Something lonely men tell themselves to make the isolation feel like choice instead of circumstance.

Until now.

She blinks up at me, raindrops caught in her lashes like tiny diamonds, waiting for a response I don't have. Or maybe I do—I just don't want to give it. Because nothing about this feels normal. Nothing about her presence here makes sense.

She's all soft curves and wet clothes and a smile that doesn't have any business existing, not when she's clearly freezing and lost and probably scared out of her mind.

"You're on private land," I say, voice rougher than I intended. "This side of the mountain's not meant for hiking."

"I figured that out somewhere around mile six," she says, hugging herself tighter. Her teeth chatter despite her attempt to sound casual, but she tries to laugh anyway. The sound is breathless, a little desperate. "There was a rockslide about two miles back. I couldn't get back down the way I came."

My jaw tightens further. The damn rockslide must've taken out the ridge trail—the main artery that leads back down to the parking area and civilization. That explains how she ended up here, following the only path left that seemed to lead somewhere. But it doesn't explain why she was hiking solo in the first place, with weather like this moving in.

"You alone?" I ask, though I already know the answer. I'd have heard other voices by now. Seen other bright jackets moving through the trees.

She nods, and I see it—the flicker of fear in her eyes. Is she afraid of me? Or just the situation? The storm. The growing darkness. The fact that she's soaked to the skin with no way off this mountain until the rain passes and the trail's cleared.

"You got a name?" I ask, because standing here staring at each other isn't helping either of us.

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