Page 35 of Mountain Storm
A glimmer moves through his eyes, something like reverence, something like hunger, something like hope. He lifts my hand and presses his mouth to my palm. The kiss is not apology and not demand. It feels like a vow.
"I need you to hear something else," I tell him, voice small and brave at once. "I have questioned myself every hour since I got here. I have reviewed every moment and turned each one until the edges smoothed. I keep asking if you took what I didn't give. You touched me when I couldn't think and you pushed when I couldn't see past the heat. I fought you and I wanted you. I wanted you every time. Even in the bathroom when you bound my wrists and used my mouth. I wanted it. I wanted you. I'm not confused by that."
His eyes close for a breath. When they open again they are wet. "Say it again."
"I wanted you," I say. "I chose you."
The silence that follows is thick and aching. He bows his head to my knees. His shoulders shake once. When he lifts his face it looks like the first thaw after a brutal winter.
"Caryn," he says. My name sounds like a prayer. "I didn't have a word for this. I have it now."
"What word?"
"Love."
Everything in me goes still. The room narrows to him and the way he has braced himself for rejection. I touch his cheek. His beard rasps my palm and steadies me.
"I love you too," I tell him. "I have loved you since a stranger lifted me out of the snow and carried me through the dark. I tried to build a life that didn't include you. I failed."
He rises and pulls me into his chest. The embrace is careful, almost reverent. He presses his mouth to my hair and then to my forehead and then to my lips as if learning the map of a country he intends to defend.
"Say it again," he murmurs.
"I love you."
The words pass between us and settle like anchors. The room feels new, as if the storm somehow rearranged the furniture and left us a place to begin.
He draws back. "I need to tell you the rest," he says. "All of it."
I can see his look focus on the past. I know he's remembering the handler who sold his team for money and leverage. The op that went to hell by design. The order to leave him. The way Brenner had looked at him and chose survival over loyalty. The months after when the only voice he trusted was the one that said live and endure. How he bought this ridge because the world felt safer at a distance. How the Beast name grew around him until it fit like armor he couldn't take off.
"Silence was the only thing I could control," he says. "If I said nothing and felt nothing, I couldn't fail anyone again."
I reach for his hand and lace our fingers. "You didn't fail anyone. They failed you. You survived."
He studies our linked hands as if the shape they make is new. "And then you came back."
"Then I came back," I echo. "Looking for a ghost and finding a man."
Something in him eases. He pulls a chair to the hearth and gestures. I take it. He kneels and unlaces my boots, lifts my feet to the stool, and begins to rub heat into my arches with histhumbs. The care turns me liquid. When he finishes he stands and nods toward the bed.
"Rest," he says. "You haven't slept for more than an hour at a time since you crashed."
I shake my head. "Talk to me instead."
He moves to the bed and sits with his back against the post. I climb beside him and tuck myself into the curve of his shoulder. We breathe together until our lungs find the same pace.
"I have one more truth," he says. "It's not pretty."
"Tell me."
"I watched you after I left you at the hospital. I told myself it was protection, but it was also hunger. I don't apologize for that. I won't lie to you about what I am."
"You know," I say. "I saw the photos. The notes. It should have scared me. It did... at first. It also told me I wasn't insane for feeling watched. It told me I matter to you in a way that isn't simple, and I realize, I don't want simple."
His arm tightens around me. The fire hisses and settles. Snow slides from the eaves with a slow grind. Somewhere a branch sheds its burden and thuds to the ground.
"What happens now?" I ask.
