REID'S POV
The mountains of Oregon were a jagged, emerald-green contrast to the steel of Manhattan.
The air didn't taste like ozone here. It tasted like pine needles, wet bark, and the promise of rain that hadn't yet decided to fall.
I stood on the deck of the cabin I'd built with my own two hands.
It wasn't a masterpiece of modern engineering—no glass walls, no steel ambition. Just cedar, stone, and stubbornness. The kind of place that didn't try to impress anyone, only to endure. The windows were small, the hearth was wide enough to swallow an entire winter.
My left arm still ached when the weather turned cold—a dull, familiar protest from the night I almost died in the mud outside Astoria. Some injuries don't heal; they just learn your habits and wait for the weather to remind you.
