#mapleseason

Spring in southern Ontario came in slowly, but the sugarbush always knew before anyone else did. The ground was soft underfoot, the maple trees bare and silver in the afternoon light, and the air carried that mix of damp earth, wood smoke, and something sweet boiling somewhere deeper in the bush. It was the kind of place that looked ordinary until the light hit it right.

This one belonged to Wells’ uncle.

He’d come out for a couple of days to help with the season just long enough to lend a hand, get out of the city and long enough to be away from Coach to give him some time and space to think about the job offer he was struggling to make a decision about. Wells came to do the kind of work that came around every spring whether anyone at his Uncle's farm felt ready for it or not. Carrying sap pails, checking lines, hauling split wood to the sugar shack, moving between the trees in worn jeans, muddy boots, and a flannel shirt hanging open over a fitted white tank that clung more by the hour. Wells looked very right in the middle of it.

That was the problem.

Something about Wells in a southern Ontario sugarbush made the whole thing more distracting than it had any right to be. Maybe it was the broad shoulders between the maples. Maybe it was the way the tank held close at the chest once the work got going, or how the mud on his boots and the dust on his jeans only made him look better instead of rougher. Maybe it was just the fact that Wells could make actual physical labor look far too good without even seeming to try.

By late afternoon, the sugar shack had become the center of everything: steam rolling out into the cool air, the windows glowing, the evaporator running hot, and Wells stepping in and out of it with his sleeves shoved up and the scent of smoke and maple all over him. His uncle might have been focused on the sap, the fire, and the timing of the boil, but Wells had become his own kind of problem — warm from the work, forearms tight from carrying full pails, and just smug enough to know the setting suited him.

And it really did.

Every time he stopped at the woodpile to catch his breath, every time he stood in the shack doorway with steam curling behind him and the last of the light catching on his face, he looked like he’d wandered into the most flattering version of rural Ontario imaginable. The whole sugarbush glowed by then, wet ground, bare branches, golden light slipping through the trees, and Wells stood right in the middle of it like spring had decided to build itself around him.

He said he was only there to help his uncle for a couple of days.

That was technically true.

But by the end of the afternoon, with the woods turning gold, the syrup still running, and smoke and sweetness clinging to his shirt, Wells had turned a simple visit to the family sugarbush into something a little harder to ignore.

The sweetest part of the property was supposed to be what was boiling inside the shack.

By sunset, that was at least debatable.