I stormed away more times than she did, unable to control my anger, or my frustration, or my own reaction to her. And sometimes because I knew she was right about whatever asinine thing we had started another battle over.
But she won’t win on this.
When it comes to me leaving, I won’t cave.
“Just let me go, Raven. Let me go back there where I can have some semblance of peace.”
She presses her lips together, considering me, examining me with those eyes that always seem to see far too much. “Have you slept at all?”
“Hell…” I scrub my hands over my face and shake my head. “No.”
“Me, either.”
I let my hands fall away and meet her gaze. “Nightmares?”
She shakes her head and takes a step toward me. “No. Just a bed that’s far too big and pillows that are way too comfortable and fluffy and a blanket that isn’t wool and scratchy and a mattress that’s very empty.”
My chest tightens.
“Connor, I haven’t slept since the night before you left the cabin. Since I fell asleep in your arms.”
Despite not wanting her to see how weak I am, despite not wanting her to know how utterly destroyed I’ve been the past two weeks, I shake my head. “Neither have I.”
With a little annoyed huff, she holds out her hands. “What are we doing, Connor?”
“What do you mean?”
She finishes closing the distance between us and places a palm against my chest, directly over my heart. “This. What are we doing? Are we going back to the way it was down here, where every time I see you, every time you come into town, we’re going to argue? Or are we going back to the way it was up there?”
Raven doesn’t need to explain what she means by that. We both know what happened, even if neither of us wants to admit it. Somehow, somewhere along the way—maybe during that brutal, forced hike up, perhaps during our arguments about me kidnapping, potentially when we finally had it out about the past and we fucked out years of tension, or ultimately, when we made love and connected in a way neither of us ever has with anyone else—we fell in love on the mountain.
I squeeze my eyes closed, all the emotions warring in me threatening to unravel the very real wall I’ve tried to rebuild the past two weeks after this woman so violently forced it down.
I’ve never been happier or more content than I was lying in that tiny bed with Raven in my arms. Even working on the cabin and knowing she was only a few feet away, doing what she’s best at, and that at any moment, she would walk out of that door and come over to check in with me was far more soothing to my soul than I ever wanted to admit.
But with those wonderful memories come the more complicated, violent ones.
How on edge I was.
How I almost hurt her that first night.
How angry I got with her.
How insistent I was that I was right about needing to be there, needing to rip her away from her life.
How wrong I was about being able to protect her.
“Raven…I-I have to go…”
Her eyes shimmer with unshed tears. “No, you don’t. Everyone here needs you to stay.”
“So I can snap at them? So I can be angry and on edge all the time? So I can dive back into the bottle and try to drown my nightmares?”
“You won’t.”
“How do you know that?”
She searches my eyes, pressing her palm more tightly against my chest. “Because you weren’t with me. Not up there. You weren’t even drinking after the first few days. At the beginning, yes, but?—”
