Corbin I’m not good with people. Never have been. Up here in the mountains, it’s quiet and predictable. Just me, my mom, my tools, and enough distance to keep the world where it out there. After prison, I didn’t come looking for peace. I came looking for safety from a society I didn’t trust. Then she showed up. Mint, with her dark chocolate eyes and a tortoise named Steve, stormed into my world like a sunrise through fog. She’s too young for me, too fearless, too curious. But she doesn’t flinch at my scars or my silence. She says she’s here to deliver a letter. To close a chapter in someone else’s life. But I think she’s opening something in mine. And if I can find the words she makes me forget how to say, maybe, just maybe, she’ll stay. Mint My grandma’s last wish was simple. Find the man who left her all those years ago and give him the letter she never had the courage to send. I didn’t expect that man to be living in a hidden mountain community. I didn’t expect to understand him, to want him to become a grandpa to me. And I sure as hell didn’t expect Corbin. He’s a mountain of a man, all rough edges and downcast eyes. But every time he speaks, it’s real. No games, no masks, no lies. He thinks he’s too broken to want anything more than solitude. But I see him. And somewhere between grief and healing, between Steve’s slow steps and Corbin’s slow smiles... I stopped chasing closure. I started chasing him.