Page 24 of Pack Down Bad

Knox is the first to finally ease away, his hands lingering at my waist as his face scrunches with the pain of letting go.

“I have to finish this,” he says hoarsely, gesturing to the canvas on his easel. “I need to... think. Process everything I’m thinking and feeling before I mess everything up for all of us.”

I search his eyes for a different answer. For him to ask me to continue to stay or to offer more than a brief stay at their cabin until the snow clears and my memory–hopefully–returns.

His eyes are stormy. His jaw is tight with restraint.

“I’ll give you some space,” I concede.

He brushes his thumb against my cheek so gently that my breath catches.

“Thank you, Belle.”

He turns back to his art, shoulders sunken from the weight of carrying all of the things still unsaid between us, and picks up a brush. I watch for a few moments longer as he sinks his focus back into his work.

Our conversation isn’t over; it’s just begun.

ChapterThirteen

Knox

The text across the screen makes me sick.

He has to be faking the art thing. Real artists are never this sexy IRL. He’s lying.

I don’t care about being slandered online by those who argue adamantly that I’m somehow using AI or an editing trick topretendI’m an artist. The skeptics are few and far between ever since I started hosting random live paint sessions on social media.

No, the part that’s under my skin is the last part of her comment.

He’s lying.

About my art? No. But to Belle? Yes. And that seems so much worse.

Now that I have my posts for the day scheduled, I hide my phone in the cabinet where I keep my paints stocked. Belle nearly caught me with my phone recording earlier, and if she looked closely, she might have seen the full bars of cell signal advertised at the top of my screen.

We get perfect signal out here, despite what the three of us guys are leading Belle to believe. She must be too rattled by her accident still to start questioning all of the high-tech stuff throughout the house. Sure, some people play video games and buy big screen TVs without internet, I guess...

Not us. I think we have every channel known to man in our TV package, and our internet is solid enough that we could use every device we own and still not have to worry about congesting our network.

“She’s going to ask eventually,” I muse out loud to myself. She’s not an idiot. “If she stays long enough.”

I think she wants to. She hasn’t asked about a ride home, even though the snow is obviously melting today under the clear, sunny sky.

There are still brushes I need to wash off. I carry them over to the sink and get to work until the door to my workshop is thrown open. I jerk my head up hopefully, but then I hear the telltale sound of Rhys’s jolly footsteps. He walks like he’s barely restraining the urge to tap-dance his way over to me. Happy fucking bastard.

“Why did you have to go and tell her we don’t even have internet?”

Rhys whistles under his breath. “Nice to see you too, asshole. How is your workshop colder than outside?”

I turn to find him hovering near the space heater that I bought to keep the workshop bearable when I’m painting half-dressed in the winter. My tolerance for cold is still a lot higher than his.

“Answer the question,” I demand. His heart is usually in the right place, but I swear he never considers the possible consequences of his actions.

“I told her what she needed to hear.”

My jaw tightens, and I throw the damp paintbrushes down in the sink so that I can stalk closer to Rhys. “You led her to believe that we’re totally cut off from the outside world. A far drive from town. No phone signal. No internet. No way out of here unless you’re personally escorting her. You thinkthatis what she needed to hear?”

“Knox, she has amnesia.” He leans against my paint-mixing workbench like we’re chatting casually over drinks, not arguing about his choice to lie. “She regained consciousness in a smashed car on an unfamiliar road with a strange alpha standing over her. If she thought she could be returned back to the life that’s familiar with a simple phone call, she might not have thought twice before making that choice.”

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