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Just like this baby. It’s coming whether or not I like it.
I press a hand against my stomach and just as quickly pull it back. Hot tears sting the backs of my eyes.
Though I fell into an easy sleep last night—sleeping in the big empty lodge never felt more freeing—I woke up at three a.m. My internal clock is always on bakery hours. Finally, when the sun rose, I put my insomnia to use by putting together a plan to feel not so adrift.
I’m determined to get my life back.
Even if all I want to do is lie in bed all day and wallow.
I sigh and change into a sweater and jeans. After towel drying my hair, I add powder to cover my bruise, flinching when I come to the cut on my swollen lip. I straighten up, gauging my weary reflection in the mirror. Does Davis see me as anything other than a woman in distress?
It doesn’t matter how he sees me. He’s moved on with Keena. Even as jealousy zings through me at his cavalier mention lastnight, I have no right to be jealous. It’s been six years. We were never anything, anyway.
I came back to Resurrection because Davis meant safety. Peace. I don’t know how my brain convinced my heart he wouldn’t have been the first person I ran to. His arms always had me. Even if now it’s like a whisper of a ghost between us.
I return to my spot on the bed. The room is loft-like and cozy. A sturdy desk in the corner. A clawfoot tub set over glossy blue tiles. Slanted windows above the bed let the morning sunlight through.
I haven’t unpacked. My bag sits on a corner chair in the spacious room.
Everything about this return home seems so tentative. My baby, my choices, my freedom.
Don’t tempt a good thing. Wait it out. Plan.
It’s what I did for a week. After I found out I was pregnant, I planned my getaway, and I waited. I had been so careful. But Aiden was smart.
I won’t make the same mistake.
Plan.
Otherwise, I might do something crazy like run.
I pick up my phone and scroll through the news reports about my bakery.
Images of the charred wreckage of my bakery bring hot tears to my eyes, taunting me.
The investigators don’t think it’s arson, but they want to speak to me. An email in my inbox requests a Zoom or a phone call. My heart trips and I stare at the screen for half a second before I turn it off.
Nerves are a grenade of dread in my gut.
How do I explain this? Aiden will never let on that he was there that night. Then he’ll hunt me down.
“You fucker,” I tell my phone.
Part of me wants Aiden to chase me down. And part of me wants to hole up here at Runaway Ranch. I’m brave but scared. Broken, but whole.
I feel like some yin-yang of a woman.
Pocketing my phone, I exit the room and keep my gaze aimed forward as I walk down the hall, not wanting to run into Keena on my way out.
I pad down the stairs, taking in the great lodge. It’s even more beautiful in the daylight. Cognac couches and rustic rugs. Antler chandeliers and wagon wheel coffee tables. It fits the Montgomery brothers to a T—rustic and moody and masculine.
My breath catches as I stop outside the kitchen. It had me transfixed last night and damn if it isn’t stealing my heart in the easy light of morning.
Slowly, I walk inside. The kitchen’s been cleaned and there’s a bag of flour sitting on the shiny steel prep table that wasn’t there last night.
The invisible band wrapped around my chest tightens.
Coward. Worthless.
