Page 24 of Theirs for the Holidays

I can picture how she would look, if we were in the position to make the things I said true. Warm and inviting, smiling the way she smiles when she talks about baking.

It would be too easy to go down that rabbit hole, so I clear my throat and shake myself out of those thoughts, taking off my coat and hanging it up.

Violet wanders into the living room, and we follow after her. “Is that a working fireplace?” Lennox asks, nodding to the wall. The TV is mounted above a fireplace laid out in brick.

“Yeah, it is,” she says. “It’s one of the perks of this place. It’s really small, but the fireplace is so nice in the winter.” She tilts her head, her plush lips pulling to one side. “I don’t have any wood ready for it though. I haven’t had a chance to deal with the logs from last summer when I had a tree cut down, so they’re too big.”

“I’ll take care of it,” I tell her. “Are they under cover?”

“Lumberjack Rhett to the rescue.” Sawyer snorts. “He’s got tons of practice living in the middle of nowhere all alone for the past couple of years.”

“It’s not the middle of nowhere,” I grunt. Sure, my cabin is deep in the woods, miles away from any neighbors, but it’s only about an hour’s drive from Sweetwater Lake. I just usually never choose to come into town.

I shoot a questioning look at Violet, getting back to the task at hand.

“Come on, I’ll show you,” she says.

It turns out there’s a little shed in the backyard, just large enough to store some tools and a stack of wood under a tarp.

“I remembered that it needs to be dry to burn,” she says. “So I had them stack the logs in here.”

“That’s right,” I tell her. “You did good.” Her cheeks flush, and I jerk my head back at the house. “Go back to where it’s warm. I’ll take care of this.”

She hustles back inside, looking over her shoulder once or twice while I start carting logs out of the shed. The stump from the tree she had cut down is still there, and I use it for my purposes, setting up one of the logs on it and testing out the axe I found in the shed.

There’s always been something Zen-like about chopping wood. The repetitive movements, the burn of my muscles, the satisfying give of the wood as the heft of the axe blade hews through it.

It’s easy to lose myself in it, chopping log after log into neatly split sections.

As much as I hate to admit it, Sawyer wasn’t wrong. This is something I do often at my cabin, splitting wood regularly so I never have to worry about my supply dwindling.

It’s definitely different from the way things used to be when I was working with my brothers. The three of us were together more often than not, and life was much less rough and tumble back then.

I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness when I think about everything I lost since then. Sawyer rags on me for being a hermit, living all alone in the middle of nowhere, but what’s the alternative, when the only people I wanted to be around weren’t there anymore?

Nothing good comes from going down that path, so I shake myself out of those thoughts. The stack of wood keeps growing, and I let the swing andthunkof the axe clear my head again.

Eventually, my muscles are burning, and there’s a sheen of sweat on my skin, rapidly going cold in the frigid air. There’s enough wood for tonight and probably the rest of the week, so I start stacking the cut logs neatly in the shed and hang everything back up where I found it. I gather a pile of wood and shoulder my way back into the house, slipping my boots off before walking into the living room.

Violet has disappeared, leaving Sawyer and Lennox alone in the room, sitting on opposite sides. There’s a weak tension in the air, and they’re not talking, but they’re not arguing either. Lennox is scrolling through something on his phone, and Sawyer has the TV on, flipping through channels.

I drop the wood near the fireplace with a clatter, beginning the familiar work of building a fire.

It’s weird, being in silence when my brothers are right there. There was a time when we couldn’t be in the same room without laughing, bantering back and forth with each other. One of them would have an idea, and that would spark a whole conversation about hashing out logistics and refining it until it was something usable.

Now the best we can hope for is not biting each other’s head off.

I shake my head and add kindling to my wooden pile, striking a match and lighting the newspaper crumpled at the bottom. It catches immediately, fire flaring to life with a rush of heat.

“Where’s Violet?” I ask after a while, adjusting the wood with the fireplace tongs.

“Cooking dinner,” Sawyer says absently.

I twist around to glare at him. “What?”

“I said she’s cooking dinner,” he replies. “Are you deaf?”

“I fucking heard you, but what the fuck? You didn’t offer to help?”