Page 59 of Beneath the Mountain Sky
Even before he finishes saying the words, I’m vehemently shaking my head. “No. I don’t think that’s what I’m doing.”
It makes sense what he’s saying.
My brain is still trying to process the emotional and physical trauma of whatever I went through, and to do that, it could be grasping at the tiny pieces of evidence Killian has found and using them to create a story that might not be real.
But deep down in my gut, I know it is a memory.
He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear, letting his fingers linger at my temple. “How can you be so sure?”
I place my right hand over my chest again, clutching at something that isn’t there—a gaping hole where something should be. “Because I can feel it here.”
“Feel what?”
“The weight of whatever I was carrying.” My voice breaks as I try to figure out a way to explain this to him when I can’t even understand it myself. “I can feel it as if it were really there when I was running…and now…it’s not.”
All that remains is the empty, hollow feeling that matches the dark abyss my memories have disappeared into.
Killian’s gaze softens, the last of his anger washing away on a wave of some tender emotion I recognize but am too afraid to act on. “I’m so sorry, Honeybee.”
He tugs me up against him, burying his face in my hair, and I let myself relax into his hold, like I did last night. Just like I did for so many nights through so many years.
It feels like home.
Like where I’m supposed to be.
I’m safe.
It doesn’t make any sense.
Why would I leave McBride Mountain?
Why would I leave this?
Him?
I brush my hand over his chest, feel his heart thudding under my palm and centering me, pushing my own heartbeat back to a normal rhythm. Slowly, the panic brought on by the memory dissipates until the warmth permeating my palm replaces the knowledge that I no longer have whatever I was carrying.
My fingers brush across the neckline of his T-shirt, tracing the tattoos on the bare skin there. The ridgeline I know so well—an exact depiction of McBride Mountain with the central peak right at his throat.
His breath hitches, and he stills, his hands tightening around me gently.
Being here like this with him, back in his arms, feels so right.
This energy between us still so powerful.
So real.
And I know it’s going to shatter the moment to tell him what I decided while he was away today. But I have to do it, no matter how bad the backlash might be. Especially after the fear and panic of that memory, I have to go through with it.
I keep my gaze trained on his ink, tracing the peaks and valleys of the place that has always been home—the mountain and him. “Raven’s going to do an article about me coming back.”
“What?”
There it is.
The incredulity in his tone.
That vibrating anger tied to his dislike of Raven and anything associated with her.
