Page 40 of Axel Martin

No urge. No thrill. Just a hollow ache where that wild part of me used to live.

I closed the app and tossed the phone on the couch.

Maybe this was the comedown. The stillness after the adrenaline fades. I’d nearly died, again. Only this time, someone had been there to pull me back—someone who wasn’t just a rescue. He was the reason I wanted to stay.

I walked to the back door and opened it wide. The air smelled like pine needles and the promise of rain. I stepped outside, barefoot, the wood cold against my skin.

And for the first time since the accident, I let myself feel it—everything. The fear. The grief. The overwhelming, suffocatingabsenceof a man who’d just promised to come back.

I didn’t cry.

Not really.

But my breath shook, and my eyes blurred, and I let myself sit right there on the step with my knees pulled to my chest, because there was no one to see me except the mountains.

That was the hardest part of loving someone like Axel Martin.

Knowing you’d have to let him go.

And wait.

And hope.

I stayed there until the wind picked up, brushing through the trees like a whisper.

And somewhere inside, a new thought surfaced:

Maybe I’m done chasing storms.

Perhaps now I need to learn how to weather the stillness.

37

Lark

Ididn’t mean to drive to Grandma Shirley’s. After two weeks of not hearing from Axel, I was getting nervous. I met her when I first arrived at the mountain, and I promised myself I would keep her as my friend.

I told myself I was just going for a ride, that I needed air and motion—something to keep the thoughts from spinning like old storm systems in my brain. But somehow, I found myself on the winding road toward town, gravel crunching beneath the tires as if the mountain was whispering for me to go visit Grandma Shirley for a minute.

Grandma Shirley’s house sat at the edge of a steep hill, her garden defying all rules of nature with its chaotic abundance of sunflowers, snapdragons, and vegetables she never actually harvested. The screen door creaked as I stepped onto the porch, and before I could knock, the door flew open.

“Well, look what the wind dragged in.” Her eyes narrowed as she took me in. “You look like a girl who’s been kissed too good and left behind too fast.”

I blinked. “How do you—?”

She waved me inside. “Please. You think we don’t all know when one of those SEAL boys leaves town? It’s like someone put a lid on the mountain’s noise.”

The kitchen smelled like cinnamon and sass. Willa was there too, barefoot and comfortably curled up in a window seat, sipping tea like she hadn’t just survived her own emotional roller coaster.

“Hey,” she said gently.

“Hey.”

Grandma pushed a mug of tea into my hands before I could sit. “Drink. You look like someone who hasn’t slept or eaten since last Tuesday.”

I sat. “I just… I didn’t know where else to go.”

“You went to the right place,” Willa said, her voice soft.

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