Page 34 of Mountain Storm
“If you ever left,” I rasp, voice wrecked, “I’d tear this mountain to the ground.”
Her answer lands against my ear, soft and deadly. “Then don't give me a reason to.” The words settle like a fuse that has already been lit.
The wind leans into the walls. I set the rifle within reach and keep my hand there. If the night comes for us, it’ll find me ready.
15
CARYN
The storm breaks with a sound like the mountain exhaling after holding its breath for too long. When I open my eyes, the light is pale, filtered through curtains of snow that still fall in slow, drifting sheets. The cabin creaks as if it has survived a battle. My body is warm, tangled in blankets that still hold the echo of him. For a heartbeat, I think Zeb is there, a shadow by the fire. But the chair is empty. The rifle is gone. So is he.
A hollow pain opens in my chest, wide and merciless. I push myself upright and the blanket slides to my waist. The silence of the room closes in like an accusation. He has vanished before. Left without warning, swallowed by the wilderness as if he never existed. I tell myself not to believe it this time, but the echo of abandonment burns too deep. Maybe I was nothing but the story after all. Maybe he fed on me like the storm and then let the wind take me apart.
The door moans in its frame. I flinch, heart thundering. Snow swirls around him as Zeb steps inside, broad shoulders dusted in white, a heavy pack slung over one, a rifle over the other. Another pack dangles from his hand. He looks at methe way the mountain looks at the trees it shelters. Fierce. Unyielding. Unwilling to let them go.
"If you still want your story," he says, voice low, "you are going to have to write it from up here."
He drops the packs to the floor. Two survival kits. One for him. One for me. Relief hits with dizzy force, so fierce it makes my eyes sting. He isn't leaving. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
"You came back," I whisper.
"I told you I would." His gaze holds mine, storm gray, steady, but crinkling at the corners. "Maybe you weren't as awake as I thought."
The certainty in his tone threads through the cracked places in me and pulls them closer together.
He strips off his gloves and sets the rifle aside. Frost turns to droplets along the barrel and falls to the floor in a slow, steady rhythm. He moves to the table, opens one pack, and lays out supplies in neat rows. Fire starters. Water tabs. A field dressing kit. A satellite phone. He glances at me and then back to the gear.
"They had trackers," he says. "Hidden on the sled and under the cowling. I smashed one and sent the other into the river. The signal still went out."
Fear lashes up my spine. "So they know."
"They know the cave. They can draw a line from there to us." He keeps his voice level. "I will handle it if they try again. But the sat phone buzzed before I left—the sweep started as soon as I handed Brenner over. They're pulling every path between here and the cave. No one's making it up the mountain for a while."
A moment ago I believed he had left me. Now I face the truth that others may come. Danger has not blown past with the storm. It has only paused to take a breath.
"I should go..."
"Not a chance. Sit," he says, softer now. "You look pale."
I lower myself to the chair. He kneels, wraps a blanket around my shoulders, and tucks it close like he is trying to put heat back into bone. His hands linger. The calluses that punished have learned to soothe. He looks up at me and the hunger I have come to know still burns there, but it is tempered by something rawer. Worry. Devotion he does not know how to name.
"You don't have to stay," I tell him. "If I am the reason they come, I will go down when the road opens." The words taste like ice. I hate them as soon as I speak them.
His jaw tightens. "You're not the reason. You were the excuse. I am the reason."
"Zeb."
He rests his forearms on my knees and holds my gaze. "Listen to me. I built a life that made me untouchable. Then I watched you walk back into it. I told myself I could keep you safe by keeping you close. I told myself distance would kill us anyway. I did not plan what came next. You broke the shroud I had wrapped around myself and you ripped it off."
I know this already in the way he touches me. Hearing it strips the last of my defenses. My voice shakes in my throat. "I didn't come just for the story."
He goes very still.
"I told myself it was research," I say. "I told myself it was a question that needed an answer. It was more. You saved me once and I tried to make peace with not knowing who you were. I couldn't. I kept seeing your eyes in the dark. I kept hearing your voice in the wind. I chased a ghost because I wanted it to be real. I only now realized I couldn't live in that world. Somehow I must have always known I belong with you."
His breath leaves on a rough sound that is not quite relief. Not quite pain. "And now?"
"It's chaos," I admit. "I don't know what to do with what you are. I don't know what to do with myself around you. I thought finding you would quiet the noise in my head. It didn't. It made everything louder. I am afraid of what we are, but I'm even more afraid of walking away."
