Page 30 of No Axe to Grind (Ashwood Falls #1)

Gage

I don’t carve into living trees. That’s been a rule since I was a cocky teenager with more knives than sense. Deadfall only. Storm-tips. Windthrow. You take what the mountain gives you and you give it back. Always.

But this morning I’m ten paces off the porch with a pocketknife and a young cedar that smells like pencils and rain, and I’m breaking my own rule on purpose. Not for revenge. For the future. For our future.

The bark is cool and damp under my palm.

The screen door squeals behind me—the squeak I keep saying I’ll fix and then don’t because Tessa calls it “our house’s tiny violin.

” Inside, the kettle ticks toward a boil; outside, the air tastes like last night’s drizzle and sun-warmed sap.

Rocco grumbles on the porch as if supervising and telling me I'm doing it wrong; Toby sniffs a dandelion and then eats it.

I press the blade in at a friendly angle and pull slow. The cedar gives with a papery rasp, curls of bark ticking down my boots. I carve a small and neat heart, then a G. A plus. A T. Shallow cuts. Whisper-deep, not a wound to the tree, but more like a note.

“Are you out there defacing municipal property?” Tessa calls through the door, voice honeyed with coffee.

“This is all private property,” I say.

She steps onto the porch barefoot, hair in a messy knot, sweater hanging off one shoulder.

She’s holding her raccoon mug—TRASH BUT MAKE IT FASHION—in both hands, which is how you hold holy things according to her.

When she spots the heart, she goes very still.

I can feel the yard getting quiet around us as the trees lean in for the good part.

“Oh,” she says, soft as the moss at the cedar’s base.

“I thought you'd want a better memory of our mountain,” I tell her. “Just us.”

Her eyes shine. She crosses the grass in bare feet because she lives to disrespect footwear, and lays her fingers beside the letters like she’s blessing them. “I love it,” she whispers. Then, with the same reverence: “I love you.”

“Same,” I say, which is too small for what I mean and exactly right, anyway.

Rocco chooses this moment to slink out with contraband—with two slices of bread—clenched in his jaw.

He freezes when Tessa turns her head, then resigns himself with a dramatic sigh and drops the evidence into her outstretched palm.

Toby sits beside him, eyes wide with exaggerated innocence, like he’s auditioning for a commercial.

He clearly hoped Rocco would succeed so he could stage his own bread heist later, but that plan just crumbled.

“My criminals,” she says, kissing Rocco’s head.They accept their sentence and trot inside empty-pawed.

We stand next to the cedar tree, the crisp morning and the small heart. It looks like something a teenager would carve. I slide the knife away and wrap an arm around Tessa’s waist. She smells of cinnamon and wonderful decisions.

If the tree out front says future, the cabin says present—loudly.

Tessa’s moved in, and you can tell because my tidy little hermit habitat has evolved into a thriving ecosystem.

There are throw blankets that feel illegally soft.

A handmade checkerboard lives under the coffee table like a shrine to the day she beat me three times in a row and did a victory dance on her butt on the couch.

The oven mitts are raccoons. The plant known as Linda presides over the window like a school principal.

A watercolor of a raccoon in a crooked crown watches my flannels like a benevolent pickpocket king.

Do I mind? Not even a little. The place feels awake. The laughter echoes differently. The air’s got more light in it, and I swear the floorboards creak friendlier.

By late afternoon, I’m doing what I promised: dinner.

Moose chili, the way my hands remember even when my head is elsewhere.

I start with chopped onion sliding into bacon fat, the sizzle like applause.

Garlic goes in late—burned garlic is a sin I won’t commit.

The cabin fills with a savory hum that reels the dogs to the kitchen threshold, where they perform synchronized tail wags.

I brown the moose, then bloom cumin and ancho in the hot fat until the air goes smoky.

Tomato paste gets a minute to caramelize.

Crushed tomatoes follow with a happy glug.

A whisper of cocoa. Salt like I mean it. Lid on. Simmer.

“Rude,” Tessa says, wandering in wearing my flannel like she mugged me for it. “You can’t look like that and also cook like that. Pick a struggle.”

“Stirring is my struggle,” I say, scraping up the fond. “Witness me.”

She hops onto the counter, legs swinging, and watches with bright, greedy eyes. “You’re my favorite thirst-trap chef,” she announces. “Ten out of ten. I would subscribe.”

“Please don’t call me a thirst trap while I’m wielding heat,” I say, and she grins at me.

She makes cornbread muffins because she has decided muffins are her brand. When she pulls the tray, steam billows like a magic trick. She splits one, jams a heroic amount of honey butter in there, and holds it up to my mouth. I bite, grunt, and nearly propose.

“Fluffy enough?” She asks, eyes big.

“Spiritual,” I say. She preens like a baker peacock.

We haul everything outside to the picnic table because the day is showing off—blue sky, spruce tops combed by a light wind, air that smells clean. Bowls, spoons, a pile of shredded cheddar, chopped onion, cilantro, and a mountain of sour cream Tessa claims is “a necessity.”

She builds her bowl like an architect. Cheese first, onion confetti, sour cream peak, cilantro crown. “Structural integrity is key,” she explains, dead serious, then takes a bite and makes a noise that has the dogs filing a formal request to share.

“You know what this means, right?” she says around a second bite. “We’re a dinner-on-the-porch couple now. Like, people are going to drive by and think, wow, I bet those two own at least one tasteful lantern.”

“We do own a lantern,” I remind her. "Several, in fact."

“Exactly,” she says, triumphant.

We eat until the bowls shine and the bees eye the cornbread crumbs. The light leans toward evening, and the shadows stretch. I wash the pot with the hose because clean cast iron is how I roll. Tessa leans against a porch post and stares like washing a pot is a spectator sport.

“Okay,” she says, clapping her hands once. “What’s this after-dark scheme you've got planned? Do I need a snack? Should I text Patrice and let her know where we're going?”

“No snacks,” I say, opening the shed where the ATV is stored. “Yes to helmets, blankets, thermos, and warm layers.”

She narrows her eyes, both amused and suspicious. “Is this some kind of campfire exam? Because full disclosure—I’d cheat.”

“Not a test,” I say, laughing. “A surprise.”

She groans. “I’m bad at surprises.”

“You are,” I agree. “But you’re going to like this one.”

Ten minutes later we’re climbing the mountain on the ATV, her arms cinched around my waist, her cheek pressed between my shoulder blades.

The ATV rattles happily over roots and gravel.

The air gets thinner, cleaner; spruce breath drifts past in cool waves.

Below us, the valley unfolds. The river looks like a dark ribbon, and the town lights start their slow, shy blink.

I stop at a clearing I found years ago that I've told no one about it. It's where I go when I need headroom. A rock ledge and a big sky. Spruces holding their arms out like ushers. I spread the blanket; Tessa hops off and immediately wobbles. I catch her just before she tumbles.

“Gage,” she says, hands on hips, raccoon beanie tugged low like a serious hat. “If you brought me up here to watch the International Space Station?—”

“You love to watch the ISS fly overhead,” I say.

“I do,” she admits. “But you’re making a face like you’re about to hand me a baby goat and a deed to the moon.”

“Better,” I say, pouring coffee from the thermos. The steam curls into the cooling air. We sit on the blanket-covered rock. The horizon to the north is a faint pale band, easy to miss unless you’ve been waiting for it all day.

She lasts sixty seconds. “What am I… wait.” She points. The band lifts, a breath of green silk rising from the edge of the world. “No way.”

“Way,” I say, smiling at her.

The first ribbon strengthens, fattens, ripples.

Another unspools behind it, then another.

Greens deepen to electric lime; edges bruise violet and ice-blue.

The sky moves, slowly and fast at once, like it has a pulse.

A long sheet flips overhead in perfect silence, and Tessa clutches my hand so hard my fingers pop.

“Is this real?” she whispers, which is exactly what I said my first time.

“Yeah,” I say, but I’m not looking at the sky anymore. I’m looking at the green light in her eyes, the way the colors rim her lashes, the little laugh that breaks out of her like something too big for her chest. “It’s real.”

She keeps watching, rapt. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful.”

“Me neither,” I say, and I mean her. I always mean her.

She turns and catches me not looking up. “You sap,” she says, smiling so hard it hurts my ribs. “Kiss me.”

I do, under a sky that looks like it took a deep breath and exhaled light. She tastes like coffee and sugar and it changes your bones. The aurora flows overhead, silent and wild. The mountain holds still for us. The cold nips at us but we don’t notice.

When we stop, she keeps her forehead to mine. “You’re not proposing, right? I mean, not that I’d say no, I’d say yes so fast we’d get whiplash, but I’m wearing raccoon ears and there’s a nonzero chance I have sour cream on my sweater.”

“Not tonight,” I say, and feel her relax against me like a door swinging open on quiet hinges. “But someday soon.”

“Good,” she whispers, happy and sure. She lies back and tugs me down with her so we can watch the sky dance for us.

As we lie there for hours, we come up with business names. Trash Panda & Timber wins by unanimous vote. We make small plans—workshops, checkers brackets, a donation jar that says RACCOONS DON’T NEED YOUR FRENCH FRIES, THEY NEED YOUR RESPECT—and big ones that don’t need words.

The lights thin toward midnight, folding themselves away like careful ribbon. Stars rush in to fill the dark. We ride home with cold ears and warm hands. On the path to the porch, we pass the cedar. Sap glistens in the shallow cuts of the heart, catching moonlight like glass.

“We’ll balm it tomorrow,” Tessa murmurs, fingers brushing the letters. “So it heals cleanly.”

“Already in the shop,” I say, and she laughs into my shoulder because of course I planned for that.

Inside, the cabin smells like chili and pine and us. The raccoon watercolor presides. Linda judges in the window. The dogs collapse in happy heaps. Tessa turns in the doorway, cups my face, and says, “Thank you. For the tree. For dinner. For the sky. For letting me belong here.”

“This is your home,” I tell her, and it clicks into place like a well-cut joint: true, tight, permanent.

Later, with her breath timed to mine and the aurora still ghosting the backs of my eyes, I think about the rules I've broken and the new ones I've made. I don’t carve living trees—unless it’s for a promise that grows. I don’t look for solitude anymore. I look for my future.

Ours is right outside the door in a small heart, shallow cut, steady as a vow. And if you ask me what the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen is, I’ll still say Tessa watching the northern lights.

Ready for the next laugh out loud story in Ashwood Falls? Click here to preorder Pregnant in Plaid.