Chapter 1My stepfather was my greatest enemy. I swore he'd never replace my dad.
Until I accidentally walked in on him fresh out of the shower.
Bare chest, low towel, and THAT outline.
I swore I swallowed.
So when he said he was heading up to a lake cabin for the weekend?
I did something I'd never done before.
Smiled at him and said:
"Can I come with you, Daddy?"
...
I hated him from the second I laid eyes on him.
That's just the truth of it.
No sugarcoating, no apologies.
The moment my mom introduced Nate as her "special friend," I made up my mind that I was going to make his life as miserable as humanly possible.
In my head, he was some intruder trying to slide into my dad's spot, and there was absolutely zero chance I was going to let that happen.
I told my mom constantly.
"Get rid of him."
"I don't want him here."
"I hate him."
Said it so many times I practically had it on repeat.
Didn't matter.
Fourteen months later, she married the guy anyway.
So I kept at it.
Cold shoulders, eye rolls, smart mouth—the whole teenage stepdaughter package.
I was relentless.
Here's the thing that really got under my skin though: it didn't work.
No matter how awful I was to him, Nate just... didn't bite.
He never got in my face about it.
Never pull some "I'm the man of this house" routine on me.
He'd just let it roll off him like it was nothing.
And never forced me into anything, never tried to be my dad.
There were a handful of times he raised his voice at me.
Like, maybe three or four over the years.
And okay—fine—looking back, every single one of those times I'd earned it.
The point is:
As much as I'd wanted to hate him—really, genuinely hate him—the honest truth was that Nate was a decent guy.
Annoyingly, frustratingly decent.
And then one afternoon everything flipped upside down...
I was looking for my mom and figured she was in their bedroom, so I pushed the door open without knocking.
Bad timing.
Or maybe—depending on how you look at it—the best timing of my entire life.
Nate had just stepped out of the shower.
He didn't see me.
I froze in the doorway for a second, and then another second, and then way too many seconds after that.
Because holy shit.
I don't know how I'd spent years living under the same roof as this man without ever actually looking at him.
His body was insane.
Built like someone who took the gym very, very seriously.
Lean muscle everywhere, the kind that looked carved rather than bulky.
He looked like something off the cover of a fitness magazine.
And then my eyes went lower.
I'm not proud of how long I stood there.
But I'm also not going to pretend I looked away immediately, because I didn't.
What I saw was—I mean—God.
Whoever said size doesn't matter has clearly never seen anything like what I was looking at.
And he wasn't even...
I backed out of the doorway slowly, pulling the door shut without a sound.
My heart was going absolutely crazy.
My face felt like it was on fire and there was this warm, buzzing sensation spreading low in my stomach, creeping further south with every second.
I pressed my back against the hallway wall and just stood there, trying to pull myself together.
I'd hooked up with a few guys from the football team.
Thought I had a pretty decent frame of reference.
I had no frame of reference for this.
I know how that sounds.
I know exactly how it sounds.
But I'm telling you—something shifted in me that day and there was no shifting it back.
I stopped looking at Nate like he was the villain in my personal story.
Stopped looking at him like the guy who'd crashed into my family and broken everything.
Started looking at him like...
A man.
An actual, real, extremely hot man.
The man I suddenly could not stop thinking about no matter how hard I tried.
It was inconvenient as hell.
Chapter 2
About a week later I was sprawled out on the couch watching TV—
When I heard Nate talking to my mom in the kitchen.
He had this idea:
A camping trip up in the mountains, a cabin by a lake, something about wanting to be out in the woods for the first snowfall of the season.
He'd mentioned it before, how much he loved that.
Called it one of his favorite things in the world.
He'd already booked the place.
My mom walked into the living room with that look on her face—the one that meant she was about to shut something down.
"I already made plans with the girls," she said, not even breaking stride.
"A full spa weekend."
"We paid the deposits months ago."
"I'm not canceling that."
Nate came in right behind her, keeping his voice calm and easy.
"No, yeah, totally. I get it."
"Did you already pay for the cabin?"
She asked, dropping onto the armchair across from me.
"Yeah."
"It gets booked out fast even off-season, so I had to jump on it."
She sighed.
"Can you at least get some of it back?"
"It's this weekend. Their cancellation window already closed."
He shrugged, no drama about it.
"It's fine. I'll head up solo, enjoy a couple days in the mountains."
My mom made a face.
"I mean—okay, but what about Jenny?"
She waved a hand in my direction.
"We can't just leave her here by herself all weekend."
My mom had this habit of treating me like I was twelve.
I was eighteen—legally an adult—but somehow that never quite registered with her.
I always figured it was less about my safety and more about keeping tabs on me.
Like if she couldn't see exactly what I was doing, I was automatically up to something terrible.
"I know what!"
My mom said, perking up like she'd just solved world hunger.
"Why don't you take Jenny with you?"
My heart nearly came out of my chest.
A whole weekend?
Alone?
With Nate?!
"Jenny probably doesn't—" Nate started.
"I'd love to go."
It came out way too fast and way too enthusiastic.
And I knew it the second the words left my mouth.
Both of them turned to look at me like I'd just announced I was joining the circus.
"A weekend in the mountains sounds... nice."
I added, trying to dial it back to something resembling casual.
Nate blinked.
"You actually want to go?"
"We're talking about you here, right?"
My mom said, pointing at me like she needed to confirm I was the same person who'd lived in her house for eighteen years.
"You want to voluntarily spend a weekend outdoors? With Nate?"
Okay, fair.
I couldn't exactly blame them for the confusion.
I had a well-documented history of complaining about anything that took me more than twenty feet from a WiFi signal.
So outdoors trips were never my thing.
The one exception was that family trip to the coast a couple summers back.
I'd actually been excited for that one.
But the only reason was because of Eric, this gorgeous beach local who'd been very happy to spend time with me under the pier.
Same principle applied here, honestly.
But the only thing filling up my head right now?
Nate.
Like, constantly, I'd fully accepted him as a crush.
My stepfather.
The man I'd spent years despising.
Turns out all it takes is one accidental hallway moment to completely rewire your brain.
"Of course," I said, giving them both a smile.
"I've been cooped up in this house forever."
"A lake sounds good."
Nate looked at my mom.
My mom looked at Nate.
Some kind of silent, bewildered communication passed between them.
"Alright then," Nate said slowly, like he was still waiting for the catch.
"If you're sure you want to come, I'm happy to have you along."
On the outside: relaxed, breezy, totally chill.
On the inside: absolutely losing my mind.
Chapter 3
We loaded up the car early the next morning while it was still dark out.
I hadn't been up before sunrise voluntarily in years.
But I'd barely slept anyway—too busy lying in bed thinking about what this weekend might turn into.
The drive was a few hours.
I drifted off somewhere along the way, head against the window.
Whatever I was dreaming about...
I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with mountain air and pine trees.
I came back to consciousness with a warm hand on my shoulder, giving me a gentle shake.
"Hey. We're here."
I stretched, yawning, and looked out the window.
We were parked in front of a small cabin tucked between the trees.
A gray-blue lake just visible through the branches.
I stepped out of the car.
The air hit me, sharp and cold.
I immediately pulled my jacket tighter.
Honestly had no idea why anyone voluntarily chose to be outside in November.
But then Nate came around the back of the car and smiled at whatever face I was making, and I remembered very clearly why I was here.
The heat that moved through me had nothing to do with the weather.
I'd been hoping we'd get settled in and spend some time inside the cabin—something cozy, close quarters, lots of opportunity.
But Nate had other plans.
We dropped our bags off and he hustled me right back out the door toward some outdoor festival happening nearby.
The parking lot was full of pickup trucks and flannel.
"It's a lumberjack festival."
Nate announced, looking like a kid on Christmas morning.
"I've been wanting to hit one of these for years."
I looked around.
Big bearded men everywhere, axes in hand.
This was genuinely the LAST place on earth I would have chosen to spend a Saturday.
But I kept that to myself.
And mentally filed it under things I'm doing for a reason.
Because somewhere in the middle of all this, I'd get my chance.
"Come on, let me show you around," Nate said.
I had to admit, as much as it pained me—
Some of these guys were actually kind of impressive to watch.
There were axe-throwing competitions, log-splitting contests, a guy with a chainsaw carving something out of a massive tree stump that was slowly starting to look like a bear.
Nate was lit up.
Grinning at everything, stopping to watch, getting genuinely excited in a way I'd never picked up on before.
Or maybe I just never bothered to notice.
It was kind of nice, seeing him like that.
Then he pulled me over toward a crowd gathered around one of the chainsaw carvers.
The guy was younger than most of the others.
He moved the blade through the wood with this easy confidence that had the whole crowd locked in.
When he finished his pass he looked up, eyes sweeping the group.
"Alright—who wants a shot at it?"
Laughter from the crowd.
A lot of head-shaking.
"Come on, it's not as scary as it looks!"
His eyes landed on me and he pointed.
"What about you? You look brave enough!"
I glanced at Nate, then back at the guy.
"Sure," I said. "Why not."
Nate definitely hadn't seen that coming.
Neither had I, honestly.
But the way I figured it:
Anything Nate was into, I was willing to try.
If it kept me in his good graces and kept him looking at me.
The carver came over and positioned my hands on the chainsaw.
Talked me through it before he fired it up.
The second it kicked on I felt it in my whole body.
This raw vibrating power that I had absolutely zero control over.
He kept his hands over mine, steadying everything, guiding the blade along a pattern he'd already traced in the wood.
It was loud and wild.
The resistance when the chain hit solid wood was way more intense than I expected.
But I held on.
When we shut it off and he stepped back, there was an actual shape starting to emerge from the stump.
"You're a natural," he said, giving me a wink.
I smiled politely and went straight back to Nate.
He was grinning at me.
Big, warm, genuinely impressed.
"Okay, I did not see that coming from you."
"There's a lot you don't know about me," I said.
"Clearly." He laughed.
"I will say—you've got a real feel for it. Really know your way around wood."
The smirk hit my face before I could stop it.
"Oh," I said, holding eye contact, "you have NO idea."
