Sean Dunn is twenty-four, slim, pretty, and good with a saw. The private Cascades property needs its understory trails cleared before fire season, and the landowner pays cash under the table. Owen McTavish is forty-three, thick through the chest and shoulders, ginger going to sand, blue-eyed, dry humor that lands like a hand on the back of the neck. He does not look away when Sean works shirtless in the heat.

The days blur into sweat, dirt, and the low sound of Owen's voice telling him how to cut, where to stack, when to stop. At night Sean lies in the cabin and listens to the forest, hard and restless. Then one afternoon, deep off the marked path where the canopy closes and the light goes green, Owen stops pretending this is only about the trails.

What happens in the understory is filthy, deliberate, and loud enough that anyone on the easement trail could hear. Owen is bigger. Sean takes it. Claiming words, size, spit, the risk of being seen — none of it makes Sean pack his bag. When the job ends he stays. He chooses the older man, the private land, the way Owen looks at him like he already owns the next season.