Page 10 of Pucked Up

He thinks I owe him an answer. About the hit. About why I'm here. About why he felt compelled to follow.

If I spoke it aloud and let myself admit the truth, it would be out in the open. He would know it wasn't just rage that drove me into him that night. Somewhere, beneath the fury and the calculated violence of a job I'd perfected, there had been hunger.

I wanted him.

And I didn't know if I wanted to kiss him or destroy him. Maybe both. I wasn't sure I'd ever learned the difference between desire and damage.

I reached for the bottle but stopped, my hand hovering in the empty air. The cabin creaked, wind howling, as if it knew my thoughts. As if it were laughing at me.

Noah slept on, unaware of the storm inside me.

Or maybe he knew what he'd awakened by coming here. Maybe that's why he came.

Chapter four

Noah

The quiet woke me. After a night of wind screaming against the cabin walls, the sudden stillness sounded like a held breath.

I'd made my way back to the guest room and lay there, sheets twisted around my legs, listening to the absence of the storm. My body ached in places I'd forgotten about from the stiffness of sleeping in a strange bed.

Micah moved into the other room. Cupboards opening, closing. The clink of mugs. His footsteps were deliberate, each placed with the care of a man trying not to wake someone.

Should I leave? The question surfaced like a stone breaking the surface of water. I'd come here for—what? Answers? Closure? The line between the two blurred more with each passing hour.

Still, something stubborn in me refused to retreat. I'd driven hours through endless forests to find this man. I wouldn't walk away simply because being near him felt like standing too close to a flame.

When I finally emerged from the bedroom, Micah stood at the kitchen counter. Coffee dripped into a pot, its rich scent filling the small space, earthy and inviting in a way Micah himself was not.

He didn't turn. Merely dipped his chin in the barest acknowledgment of my existence—except his hand stilled for half a second on his mug, knuckles whitening like he was holding something in check. I would have missed it if I hadn't been studying the curve of his neck and the set of his shoulders.

His spine was a warning—rigid, unyielding. Each vertebra was a reminder to keep my distance.Don't come closer. I hovered in the doorway, sleep-warm and uncertain, caught between retreat and advance.

"Coffee?" His voice was rough.

"Yeah." I crossed the threshold into his space. "Thanks."

He still didn't look at me, reaching into the cupboard, grabbing a second mug, and pouring without asking how I took it. Black. Harsh. No gesture of hospitality—only caffeine in a cup.

He slid it toward me across the counter.

"Sleep okay?" I asked, even though I knew the answer.

His jaw flexed. "Didn't sleep."

"Because of me? Sorry about wandering out into the living room. I needed to be further away from the windows."

A long silence. Then, without turning: "Because of me."

That was it. Three words that cracked something under the surface. He wasn't offering comfort, but he wasn't deflecting either. It was the most honest thing I'd heard in weeks.

The raw admission triggered a memory—me at eleven, huddled against the wall outside my parents' bedroom. Dad's voice booming through the door: "Because of me, alright? Happy now?"

Mom was silent afterward. I'd learned then that admitting fault was rare. Most people would rather burn than confess.

I'd dozed off waiting for more words that never came, waking with carpet patterns pressed into my cheek and the knowledge that silence could be louder than the noise of any fight.

I stood near a window, mug warming my palms. The world outside had transformed overnight—pristine white draped over jagged branches, smoothing the landscape into something deceptively gentle.

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