Chapter 14: The Timber Town
The cabin sat on a steep rise of limestone and pine needles about six miles outside of a small mountain town called Winthrop, where the air smelled permanently of woodsmoke and rotting cedar. It wasn't much of a place—just three rooms with peeling white paint, a rusted iron stove in the center of the front room, and a front porch that listed three inches to the left toward a rushing creek that roared day and night like an oncoming train.
For the first three days, we didn't talk much. We worked. Jax spent hours with a hatchet and a pile of dry pine rounds out by the woodpile, splitting logs with rhythmic, heavy thuds that echoed up the canyon while I sat on the bottom step of the porch with the small folded paper and the faded photograph spread out on my knees. The sun up here was brighter than it was down in the valley, cutting through the high pine canopy in sharp golden shafts that warmed the weathered wood of the porch.
On the fourth morning, Jax came inside carrying an armload of split oak, dumping them into the metal box by the stove with a heavy crash. He wiped his hands on his jeans, looked down at me, and rubbed the back of his neck.
"School starts on Monday," Jax said out of nowhere, his voice rough from the mountain chill.
I looked up from the photograph, my fingers pausing over the corner where the paper had frayed. "School?"
"Down in town. The elementary school is about two miles down the ridge. Principal’s a woman named Mrs. Gable. I talked to her yesterday when I went in for kerosene." Jax pulled a small stack of enrollment papers out of his back pocket and tossed them onto the scarred wooden table. "Used your real name. Leo Thomas. Said you're eight, going on nine."
My chest felt tight, the way it always did when things changed too fast, but beneath the fear, something else started to uncoil—something warm and steady that felt a lot like relief. I had spent half my life hiding behind locked doors, listening to the floorboards creak above me, wondering if today was the day the landlord would put our boxes on the curb. The idea of a classroom with desks, a chalkboard, and a regular schedule didn't sound scary; it sounded permanent.
"Did you tell her about the club?" I asked softly.
Jax walked over to the small kitchen sink, turned the rusty handle, and splashed cold well water over his face. He shook his head, water droplets flying off his dark beard as he grabbed a frayed dishtowel to dry off.
"I told her we just moved up from the coast," Jax said, turning around to lean back against the counter, his massive arms crossed over his chest. "Told her I'm a freelance mechanic looking for steady work at the logging yard. Nobody down there knows the Road Kings, Leo. And if any of 'em come looking, they'll find out pretty quick that mountain roads go both ways."
He walked over, pulled out the wooden chair opposite mine, and sat down. For the first time since we had left the diner, he reached out and touched the faded photograph, his thick thumb tracing the edge of the young man's leather vest in the picture—the same vest that now hung empty on a nail by the front door.
"Your mom used to keep that picture under her flour tin," Jax said quietly, his eyes fixed on the small baby in his arms from twelve years ago. "I saw her put it there the night before I packed my bike and rode south. I thought I was doing her a favor. Thought a guy like me—with grease under his fingernails and a county jail record—was nothing but dead weight dragging her down."
"She didn't want you to leave," I whispered.
"I know that now," Jax said, his voice dropping an octave, losing all its hard biker edge until it sounded just like any father talking to his son. "It took me eight years and a twelve-year-old kid walking into a diner with a piece of paper to beat it through my thick skull. But I'm here now, Leo. I ain't getting back on that bike to ride away."
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That afternoon, we walked down to the creek together. The water was crystal clear, cold enough to numb your toes in three seconds, rushing over smooth gray river stones worn round by centuries of snowmelt. Jax showed me how to skip flat stones across the current, teaching me how to keep my wrist low and my fingers loose. I managed three skips on my fifth try, and when I looked up, Jax was grinning—a real, open grin that crinkled the skin around his hazel eyes and made him look less like an outlaw and more like just a dad standing in the sunlight.
As the sun dipped behind the jagged ridge of the mountains, painting the sky in shades of bruised purple and burning gold, we walked back up the dirt path toward the cabin. The smoke from our chimney was rising straight up into the still evening air, straight and true, marking our place in the vast, empty valley.
