W…rittten by
jaron summers © 2026
Donna met Paul the night a bear tried to tear open her tent.
They were staying at a paid campsite in a California national park—the kind with posted rules and spotty cell service, as if wilderness itself required a subscription and a waiver. Nature, but moderated.
The bear had been roaming the area all evening, testing coolers, nudging bags, learning how soft people really were. It caught Donna’s scent and decided to escalate.
When it lunged at her tent, the sound wasn’t a roar but fabric giving up. Nylon ripped and folded inward. The tent collapsed like a bad promise. Donna screamed—a short, shocked sound, stripped of dignity and hope.
Then an arrow came out of the dark and the bear dropped.
Paul stood about twenty feet away, holding a bow, breathing hard. He looked as stunned as Donna felt, as if he’d acted on instinct and was now waiting for the universe to tell him whether that had been a mistake.
They stared at each other. Something passed between them—relief, adrenaline, recognition. The kind of instant intimacy usually reserved for disasters and marriages that won’t last.
By morning, the forest had returned to normal. Sunlight. Birds. A ranger with a clipboard explained that the bear had “been a problem anyway,” which seemed to absolve everyone involved.
Paul was thanked. Donna was given a blanket. Once violence was properly labeled, it became acceptable—and even admirable.
They had breakfast at a diner with laminated menus and drank too much coffee. They laughed too easily, the way people do when something terrible ends without consequences. Every glance lingered a fraction too long. The attraction was immediate and impolite, the kind that doesn’t ask permission or promise good outcomes.
Donna mentioned that her girlfriend had dropped her off at the campground and was planning to drive up later to take her back to Los Angeles.
There was a pause—not awkward, just charged.
“No need,” Paul said. “I can take you.”
That night, beside a carefully stoked fire, they fucked—earnestly, repeatedly, as if effort alone could turn coincidence into fate.
It felt inevitable, which they both mistook for meaning.
Paul drove Donna back to Los Angeles. She watched the road slide by and asked careful questions—about his job, his apartment, how long he’d been single. Questions that sounded casual but were already laying out exits.
When he dropped her at her condo on Roscomare Road, they stayed in the car longer than necessary. The kiss that followed was not tender. It was efficient and alarming.
The building was older than it looked and quieter than it should have been. It had a killer view that made people stop talking. Somewhere inside, a fire alarm chirped—a low battery, easily ignored. Everyone ignored it. That was the culture.
A few days later, Paul met the elderly couple next door.
Martin and Ellen had lived there long enough to remember when the building still pretended to function. They were wealthy, courteous, and tired of stairs made crueler by an elevator that failed with professional consistency.
They liked Donna. They liked Paul more.
When they learned he was thinking of buying, they offered to help finance the purchase. They spoke of ease and assistance, but the transaction carried the quiet satisfaction of passing a weight to younger hands.
Paul accepted before he understood that relief and liability often arrive together.
The numbers clarified themselves quickly.
The upkeep alone—deferred maintenance stacked on emergency repairs—would bankrupt most of the residents. The building had been surviving on delay and optimism, neither of which counted as capital. There was no version of the future where everyone stayed.
There was, however, land.
The complex sat on a massive property, absurdly undervalued beneath the structure it endured. If the building disappeared, the ground beneath it would be worth close to a billion dollars. This was discussed obliquely, like weather no one controlled but everyone monitored.
No one said they wanted it to burn.
They only said lightning was capricious.
Donna told her friend Leigh that she was in love.
She said it while driving, one hand on the wheel, describing Paul’s steadiness, his competence, the calm he carried like a concealed tool. Leigh listened without interrupting.
A financial assessment arrived later that day from the property manager.
Deferred maintenance. Emergency repairs. Quiet references to earlier bankruptcies buried in old minutes like sealed testimony. Paul had an MBA and a strong income, which meant he recognized a bad deal. He wondered, briefly, if Donna should have warned him.
Her excuse was simple. She had assumed he had money.
Neither of them felt entirely guilty.
Donna was president of the condo association. She had been for years.
Other details surfaced. Contractors repaired private units and billed the association as common work. Everyone called it temporary. Precision felt unnecessary.
Paul decided to run for the board.
The election was ugly. Emails grew longer and less intelligible. Neighbors chose sides with the intensity of people defending modest assets and fragile pride.
Donna and Paul kept fucking—after meetings, near fire, sometimes angrily, sometimes as punctuation. The sex stayed good and became useful. Each reunion felt like a ceasefire both sides expected to break.
Neither of them said it aloud, but they both understood: the building itself was the problem.
It was underinsured. It always had been. The land, however, was worth a fortune.
Donna explained this to Leigh one evening, calmly, as if outlining a plan that assumed cooperation. Leigh listened. Later, Leigh would pull alarms and knock on doors and move people fast enough to matter.
In the days before it happened, there were dry winds. Static. Small sparks that meant nothing until they did. Someone mentioned lightning again.
Behind the building was a dry, overgrown ravine everyone called the Raven. It was ignored, convenient, and dangerous.
Donna went there late one night with matches.
Paul arrived separately, thinking the same thing. They were surprised—but not uncertain. Some meetings require no discussion.
They fucked once more, quickly and without care, while something nearby began to burn.
By the time the fire crews arrived, the residents were already outside, wrapped in blankets, watching the building erase itself. By morning, the land was priceless.
Donna and Paul were gone.
People argued for a while about accident and intent. Then they stopped. The story simplified.
The view remained.