Page 13 of Naughty With The Mountain Man
“Does your back hurt?”
“No.”
“Liar.”
He exhales a half-laugh. “Go to sleep, Ellie.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
“I’m thinking about your past,” I admit. “About you in all those places. About how scary it must have been, even if you won’t say it. And how none of that scares me as much as the thought of going back to my apartment and feeling alone in it.”
Silence. Then, gently: “You won’t.”
“I won’t?”
“Not while this isn’t finished,” he says. “And after… we’ll figure it out.”
The sentence hangs in the dark like a star I could steer by.We’ll figure it out.No guarantees. No fairy tale stamped and sealed. Just an us-shaped promise I didn’t realize I was starving for.
“Okay,” I breathe, and mean it.
I try again to sleep, holding that line in my hands like it’s warm. When my thoughts start to spiral, I thinkprotein pancakesandno marshmallows, sadlyandhuman bunker makes floor nest.I listen to Micah’s breathing, the steady in-and-out that has already become the tempo my body matches without consulting me.
And sometime between counting his breaths and making a mental grocery list I absolutely do not need, the dark softens, my muscles ease, and I drift at last—safest I’ve felt in longer than I can remember, guarded by a ghost who refuses to let me be one.
6
Micah
My back screams when I sit up.
It’s nothing new—pain’s an old friend—but the floor’s got a special kind of bite that reminds me I’m not twenty anymore and haven’t been for a long damn time. Still, I’ve slept on worse. Concrete, gravel, the back of a transport while being shot at.
This? This is luxury.
I stretch, bones popping, and run a hand over my face as I glance toward the bed. She’s still out cold, tangled in the quilt, hair a halo on the pillow, face soft with sleep.
Ellie Bright sleeps like she trusts the world again. Like she’s safe.
That alone is worth the ache in my spine.
I push up off the floor and pad to the kitchen, keeping my movements quiet. I set a pan on the stove and pull eggs, bacon, and a leftover potato from the fridge, dicing the latter while the pan heats. Something about the repetition helps. The rhythm. Chop, stir, flip. It lets me stay ahead of the noise in my head.
Last night she asked about the war.
She didn’t push, not really. But even answering what I did was more than I usually give. I don’t talk about the missions. The days that ran together. The sounds. The smell of blood in heat. The feeling of landing and not knowing if you’d take off again.
I’ve spent years trying to forget that version of myself. Trying not to see him in the mirror when I look. But last night, her voice was soft. Her curiosity wasn’t morbid, or careless. She justwanted to know me.
And for a few minutes, I let her.
The phone buzzes on the counter and I grab it before it can ring. Nate.
“Yeah?”
“You up?”
