Total pages in book: 15
Estimated words: 13933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 70(@200wpm)___ 56(@250wpm)___ 46(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 13933 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 70(@200wpm)___ 56(@250wpm)___ 46(@300wpm)
“Sure,” I say, and offer her my hand. “Let me help—”
“I can manage,” she snaps.
Stubborn, through and through.
She makes her slow, limping climb up the rocks. I watch, quiet, as she finally reaches me—panting, flushed, and glaring.
Her gaze sweeps the ridge. Her brows furrow. “Where’d the trail go? I was just on it before… Did I come up the wrong side or something?”
She looks around like the forest might rearrange itself for her.
Her voice trembles.
For all her fire, she’s shaken.
“I’ll walk you to my cabin,” I offer again. “I’ve got clothes.”
She whips around. “Is this your plan? Steal my stuff, leave me stranded, then drag me to your place like I don’t have a choice?”
I dip my head, voice low. “Ma’am, the first time I saw you was the first time you saw me.”
She pauses, clearly weighing her options. Not many.
“I’m not falling for it,” she mutters. “I’ll wait here until someone else comes by—”
A low rumble of thunder cuts her off. She spins toward it, eyes wide.
Storm’s coming. Fast.
Half the reason I checked my traps early.
“Fine,” she says, crossing her arms. “Let’s go. I need to call someone.”
I don’t ask who. Or what a “call” means. I just slide my rifle to my back and start walking.
She follows, her footsteps crunching behind mine.
It’s been a long time since I walked this trail with anyone else.
Let alone a woman.
Let alone a woman like her.
But I keep my eyes forward.
Because right now, the only thing that matters is getting her inside before the storm hits.
And maybe—just maybe—figuring out what the hell she’s doing out here.
CHAPTER 3
June
The fire crackles low in the hearth as Elias steps out of the other room, holding out a bundle of fabric.
“Here. It’s the only dress I have. Should fit you.”
“Thanks,” I mutter, snatching it from his hands and brushing past him into the room for privacy.
Not that he hasn’t already seen it all.
He did catch me naked in the river…
And honestly? I still wouldn’t put it past him to have something to do with my missing clothes.
Sure, he threw me his coat and played the reluctant gentleman—but something about this whole setup feels off. The jacket, the way he talks, this weirdly authentic frontier cabin?
I’m not falling for it.
Not yet.
The room is simple. Sparse.
A basin under the window. A single bed with a leather-bound book on the half-folded blankets. Rain patters against the glass, thunder rumbling deep enough to rattle my teeth.
I shrug off the coat and slip the dress over my head. The pale green fabric is surprisingly soft, but as I reach back for a zipper—
Nothing.
Just buttons. All the way down.
Of course. Period-authentic and inconvenient.
Just like everything else around here.
Why the hell would a man living alone have a woman’s dress that fits me?
I glance at the book. His confusion about phones and online maps wasn’t fake. It couldn’t have been. And when I surfaced from that river…
The air tasted different.
I shoot a look at the door, then snatch the book and flip it open.
The pages are yellowed, covered in slanted scrawl. Dated entries. The kind that don’t feel like props. I scan to the top of the latest one.
November 27th… 1853.
My breath catches.
No.
No way.
I must be reading it wrong.
I flip to other pages—same handwriting. Same dates. All of them decades before the turn of the last century.
I run a trembling finger over the page, half expecting it to flicker and vanish like some hallucination. But it doesn’t.
It’s real.
The ink.
The book.
The date.
Whatever delusion I’ve been clinging to—whatever hope that I just wandered into a LARP camp or some immersive experience—that illusion shatters.
I’m not in 2025 anymore.
I don’t know how I got here.
And I sure as hell don’t know how to get back.
My palms are sweating. My heartbeat won’t slow. I carefully replace the book on the bed and try to breathe through the lightning flash outside.
Think, June.
You’ve survived worse. Mom dying. Leaving everything. Living in a van alone. You built a life from nothing. This is just a new kind of nothing. A scary, batshit time-travel kind of nothing.
You’ll figure it out.
Maybe I’ll even write about it—if I ever get back.
A knock hits the door.
“I’m coming!” I call, voice a little too high. I smooth the skirt and paste on a calm I definitely don’t feel.
Fake it, babe.
He’s standing by the fire, ladling something steaming into two wooden bowls.
He holds one out.
“What’s that?”
“Stew. You looked like you could use something warm.”
I hesitate, but take it. I have to act like I belong here. He sets his bowl down at a small table and sits in a creaky wooden chair.
It smells… good.
Better than it looks.
I sip. It’s hearty. Rich. Real.
“So you live out here alone?” I ask, casually.
He nods. “Yes, I do.”
“In the middle of nowhere?”
“There’s good trappin’ in these parts,” he says.
I wrinkle my nose. “Trapping?”