Chapter One
Reece
It always starts the same way—absolute chaos.
The sound of screaming metal isn’t actually a scream. It’s a groan—a deep, guttural vibration that starts in your teeth and settles in your bones. It’s misting out, high winds almost knocking me over as my boots slide on the metal catwalk of Level Three. I am the highest point of Deepwater Apex, looking down as the entire world below implodes.
The smell hits me first: pressurized brine and the choking, chemical sweetness of crude oil. Then comes the heat. It’s a physical wall, a solid force shoving me back against the railing. Somewhere above the roar of the blowout, Miller is shouting my name, but his voice is thin, like a radio signal losing its frequency. Static and fading in and out, and I am unable to get the station of his alerts tuned in right.
“Reece! Shut her down. Shut it down before the whole rig goes!”
I reach for the railing, but the steel is white-hot. I feel the skin of my palms sizzle, but there’s no pain yet—only the terrifying realization that the deck beneath me is no longer there. I’m falling. The black throat of the Gulf of Mexico opens to swallow me, and the fire follows, a blooming orange flower that wants to wrap me in its petals.
I bolt upright.
It is far too cold for me to still be out on the oil rig. There is no salty ocean air or heat from the licking flames. My lungs are a vacuum, straining for air that isn’t filled with smoke. I am gasping, a raw, ragged sound that echoes off the four wallsof my bedroom. My heart is a frantic bird trapped in a cage, hammering against my ribs so hard it makes my vision pulse.
I’m not on the rig.I repeat it like a mantra, forcing my eyes to track the familiar, mundane shapes of my life in the dim morning light. I do the same checklist I do anytime I wake up this way. I note several things around the room to ground me: the cracked plaster in the corner of the ceiling I need to fix. The overflowing hamper in the opposite corner. The digital clock on the nightstand: 04:12 AM.
I’m in Hollow Peak. I’m safe. I’m on solid ground.
I reach up to wipe the sweat from my forehead, but my hand shakes so violently I have to pin it against my chest. My palms are cold, but I can still feel the phantom heat of theApexsearing into them. I flex my fingers, staring at the callouses and the faint, jagged scar across my thumb—souvenirs of a life I have been trying to forget ever happened.
It is silent in the cabin, besides occasional crackles from the fireplace I left burning in the main room. It’s static, calm.Cold. Cold is good—it is better than the searing heat from the dream. I throw back the tangled sheets—damp and twisted like seaweed—and swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floorboards are so cold they further ground me in the here and now.
I stand up, my knees popping with a sound like a distant gunshot. I flinch, then catch myself, letting out a long, shaky breath. My whole body is a roadmap of wounds from a dozen days like the one I can’t forget. Only that day cost me a hell of a lot more than some bad knees and faded scars.
“It’s Saturday. You’re in your cabin, in Hollow Peak. Everything is fine. Get it together,” I whisper in the twilight of the morning.
I make my way to the bathroom, not bothering with a light. I know this path by heart. I lean over the sink and splash cold water onto my face once, twice, three times. I let the water run,the steady hum of the pipes acting as an anchor. The noises of the house further ground me as the dream begins to fade.
When I finally look into the mirror, the man looking back looks like a ghost that hasn't realized he's dead yet. Dark circles smudge shadows beneath my eyes, there is a hardness in my jaw that didn’t used to be there before theApexwent down. My hands and some of my forearms are littered with scars, but I fared a lot better than others.
I reach for the bottle of pills on the counter, then stop. The hum of the pipes changes—a subtle shift in pressure. To anyone else, it’s old plumbing creaking as it does. To me, it sounds like a valve about to fail. I forget about the pills as I bend over the sink. I can’t catch my breath at first. It doesn’t matter how long I have been off the ocean, off the rig, I still get that wobbling, waving sensation from time to time.
“On dry land. On the mountain. It’s Saturday,” I repeat as I draw a painful breath. “You have wood to chop before that storm comes. Provisions to get in town. You cannot stay here another day, hiding from the world.”
My reflection frowns back before I shake off the final touches of the dream and head for a shower. Beneath the steam, I try to wash away the bad start to the morning. The river rock floor is another good grounding device. As the hot water relaxes my tense body, I envision the water taking the bad memories, the dark dreams, and the guilt down the drain.
I am just starting some coffee after the shower when I hear footsteps on my front porch. I have not put a grocery order in and I am tucked too far off the main road for someone to find my cabin by accident. That was done on purpose, of course. After everything I went through, I all but cut the rest of society off. I curse as I head towards the door, figuring if it’s one of the logging guys here to bother me.
Throwing open the door, I start to rip my towel off my hips, to scare them off. “Hey, motherfucker you came at the.... holy fuck,” I hiss when I see what is waiting on the other side of that door.
There on my front porch, lit by the morning sunrise, is the sweetest ass I have ever seen. I say that mostly because it is the first thing I see. Round and wide, it is juicy as hell. My cock jerks beneath my towel, which I quickly cover myself with again. Not that it’s hiding my ten inch response to that ass. Turning, my sweet-ass visitor just keeps getting better.
“Someone has a filthy mouth,” the beautiful creature teases, her teeth nipping at her bottom lip. That mouth is just about as juicy as that ass. Focused on her lips, I note the little gap in her teeth. I like it. Bright green eyes stare up at me—oh, wait, no, she sees that I am tenting the towel—and as golden hair flutters in the cool breeze. “Don’t hold back on my account, big dick,” she teases, eyes flicking back to my now very hard dick.
“Who. Are.You,” I barely manage to get the words out as my gaze eats her up.
Not just her ass is perfection. Wide hips in tiny, tattered jeans, thick thighs I could bury my face in for days, and a waist curvier than the mountain roads fills her out. My gaze drops down her beautiful face with the full pink lips, a dotting of freckles, down, down, to a swell of perfect tits in a shirt that she has tied on one side. There is no hiding all those curves, and I am glad she doesn’t try to.
“Well, caveman, I am Rain. Here to brighten your day, if you will let me,” she cocks her head to the side, her green stare eating me up in return.
I must still be dreaming. That has to be it. There is no way this beautiful creature is on my doorstep right now. Not looking for me. No one iseverlooking for a washed-up roughneck who hides on his mountain like some sort of sad gargoyle. Mostdefinitely not such a beautiful woman in red bottom heels and drive—I glance behind her—yeah, that’s a Mercedes.
“Do I know you? Or...did...did,” I start to stutter as my throat closes on me. I almost can’t say his name. “Did Jack ask you to come?”
Now her head tilts the other way, and I get a flash of a tattoo that curves along her collar, up part of her throat. Fuck. I want to lick it. My dick jerks again and I turn, as if I can hide it. It’s on my second look that I see an entire sleeve of floral tattoos on her left arm, starting at her wrist. I want to kiss each one of them and ask her to kiss the tattoos that do a shit job of covering all my scars.
