Page 12 of Naughty With The Mountain Man
We sit with it. The dog lets out another novella-length sigh and rolls over with his back to us, as if to say,I will protect the hearth. You two figure out the rest.
“Do you miss it?” I ask after a while. “The work. The… ghosting.”
He considers. “Sometimes I miss the clarity. The part where the mission is sharp and simple. Go here. Do this. Don’t die. Back home, everything is fuzzier. People talk around what they need. Threats come wrapped in ribbons.”
“Hi,” I say, lifting a hand. “Threat wrapped in ribbon here.”
His eyes soften. “You’re not a threat.”
“I was to your couch.”
“That’s different.”
I lean back against the headboard and let my shoulder brush the wood, the tiny scrape grounding. “So… former Delta, tracker, ghost. What else should I know? Favorite cereal? The historical significance of your knife collection?”
“Knives predate cereal,” he says, like we’re on a nature special, and I laugh, bright and too loud in the late quiet. He doesn’t scold me for it. He just lets it sit there, a warm spot on a cold night.
“What about your family?” I ask, dialing it back to soft. “Are they… around?”
“Brother somewhere I can’t reach,” he says. “Parents gone. A few of us from different units stuck, found each other. We make do.”
Found family. My favorite kind.
“That must have been scary, too,” I say. “Losing the ones who taught you what steady felt like.”
He nods once. “You learn to be your own steady. Or you break.”
“You don’t look broken,” I say.
He makes a noncommittal sound. “Sometimes you don’t get to see the cracks until it rains.”
I want to smooth a hand over the top of his head and say something wildly unhelpful likeI have an excellent umbrella.Instead, I tuck my hands under the quilt so I don’t compromise our pact by accident. No kissing. No touching. No distractions. We made a rule. I will not be the one to break it within twenty-four hours. (Probably.)
“Try to sleep,” he says after a while, voice drifting. “I’ll keep watch. We’ll talk more in the morning.”
“Is ‘we’ll talk more in the morning’ your version ofthere will be breakfast?”
“Yes.”
“Pancakes?” I try, because hope springs eternal.
“Protein,” he counters. “Maybe pancakes if you stop trying to put marshmallows in everything.”
I gasp. “Blasphemy.”
He slides down onto the nest he made, one arm folded under his head, the other draped across his chest. He’s a silhouette in the low light—long lines, clean edges, the kind of shape that makes the room feel safer just by existing in it.
“Goodnight, Micah,” I whisper.
“Night, Ellie.”
I close my eyes and attempt sleep. It does not comply. My brain is a pinball machine: mysterious packages, broken ornaments, Nate’s worried face, Micah’s mouth on mine, Micah’s mouth not on mine, the pact, his hands making a bed on the floor without a second thought. The picture of him as a shadow in deserts and jungles, moving through darkness for people he didn’t know and causes he wasn’t allowed to question. The idea of him grabbing my shoulders and sayingyou’re not alonelike it’s a fact carved into the world.
I roll over. The mattress sighs. The dog makes a smallboofand goes silent. I hear the subtle shift of Micah’s breathing, the kind of slow metronome that says he’s resting with one eye open.
“Are you awake?” I ask the dark, because I can’t sleep.
“Yeah,” he says, not annoyed. Just there.
