I take another gulp of bourbon, waiting for the blissful haze to finally overtake me so I might be able to get a few minutes of sleep tonight, but just as I start to relax back into the chair, a twig snaps on the hill leading up to my cabin. I flinch, my body stiffening and going on high alert.
The glass in my hand trembles as I set it down and reach for my axe where it leans against the arm of the Adirondack chair Liam built for me. My palm slides along the worn handle, and another pop of breaking wood makes me tighten my grip on my old friend.
Gunshots echo in my head the same way they did across the mountain that night.
My shoulder aches from the recoil of my shotgun each time I fired it.
That same vise tightens around my chest with each step that brings someone closer.
It can’t be Killian…
He knows this land like the back of his hand and how to move through it without making a sound—which he also knows is the only way he would ever get close enough to my cabin before I disappeared into the woods rather than talk to him.
That’s what I’ve been doing for months since the attack on the homestead—avoiding him, avoiding Liam, avoiding their nosy women who can’t leave well enough alone and give me fucking space.
I’ve tried to protect them from how unstable I’ve been, tried to keep them at bay with assurances that I’m fine when I’m anything but…
It hasn’t worked because they just keep coming at me. But not like this—not so directly. Sounding like a herd of elephants moving through the woods. So, it isn’t my big brother making his way up the incline from his cabin toward mine.
Which means it can only be one other person.
Willow…
My stomach tightens along with my hand around the axe, but only because Willow poses the worst kind of threat to me.
She pushes.
Relentlessly.
Almost as badly as her pain-in-my-ass best friend does.
There isn’t any escaping either of them when they set their sights on getting something, and what Willow wants is for me to open up. She wants me to reveal all the dark thoughts and troubling feelings that plague me so ruthlessly—the absolute last thing I ever want to do.
I can’t put my bullshit on her when she’s already suffered so much. She doesn’t deserve that, and I definitely can’t handle another tension-filled conversation with her tonight. One where she pushes and I push right back and say or do something I instantly regret when I see the hurt look in her soft gray eyes.
Nope.
Not doing it tonight.
I push up from my chair, snag the bottle of bourbon from the small table beside it, and start to turn toward the steps that will lead to my escape route onto the mountain when another twig snaps closer. Too close. It draws my gaze into the trees. To the flash of blond hair, not the dark hair I expected…
Fucking hell.
Not Willow.
I thought it was bad enough when I was anticipating my sweet sister-in-law, but it’s so much worse.
She’s so much worse.
My night just went from shitty to absolutely fucking unbearable.
Raven weaves around the final few tree trunks and steps out into the moonlight, the only illumination on the dark mountain this late at night. Those sharp green eyes of hers that are always filled with so much judgment and animosity sweep over me—from the axe in my right hand to the bottle in my left. “Going somewhere?”
Her voice cuts through the air like a sharpened knife, grating on my every nerve the same way it does every time this woman opens her mouth. Those perfect pink lips of hers twist as she awaits my response, as she continues to dress me down without saying another word.
She may have made a career out of spilling them on paper, on spreading other people’s business around when it should stay private, but what this woman can do with her mouth is so much worse.
I grit my teeth until my jaw hurts. “That’s none of your fucking business.”
