Page 16 of Tracking Wolfe

I took a step toward him, and he stepped back, bumping noisily against the console table and rattling the little dish with his keys and sunglasses in it.

He held up his hands, his eyes pleading. And then, like a heavy theater curtain dropping all at once, his entire face shuttered. “I need you to leave.”

Panic squeezed my chest. “You can’t mean that. Not after⁠—”

He held up a hand to stop me from mentioning the kiss again. “There is nothing for you here, Wolfe. Please go. I’m… I’m sorry. For leading you on like that. It wasn’t my intention.”

His voice was steady, sure, the bass jangling uncomfortably now like someone had dropped the damned instrument on the floor and then kicked it in front of an oncoming train.

Trace’s rejection was a familiar through line, though. And I was used to letting it lead me away. It didn’t matter what I wanted. He would have to want it, too. And he didn’t.

Once again, I was alone.

“Yeah,” I said hollowly. “Yeah.”

I didn’t have any other words. Me, the songwriter who’d just won a fucking Grammy, couldn’t have put this feeling into words if I’d tried.

Heartbreak songs were a joke. None of them came close to what this felt like in real life.

“Yeah,” I said again, trying to lift the word up and make it shallow and fine. Always fine. “Yeah.”

Trace’s forehead crinkled. “Wolfe. You don’t want this,” he said, like it might become fact if he repeated it.

But I could have told him, it doesn’t matter how many times you sing the same song; that doesn’t make it real.

I nodded and tried to smile, to shrug, to pull on that old “I’m fine” coat again.

Because I was okay. This was my normal, after all. Being rejected by Trace Bishop was comfortable and reliable. Part of my identity.

As I opened the door and stepped out into the frigid Montana night, the coat settled around me almost comfortably.

Though the damned thing never did keep me warm.

4

TRACE, EIGHT WEEKS LATER

Coming off a winter training session in the backcountry was both brutal and a relief. Brutal because it was hard returning to a million missed emails and messages, piled-up SERA admin work, and my usual routine. A relief because I’d been off-grid in Yellowstone National Park for six out of the past eight weeks, and I could finally get warm and catch up on sleep.

The most recent search and rescue cohort had been amazing. We’d even worked a real SaR job on a missing snowmobiler, which had taken the place of our checkout drills and allowed every student to leave the program with real-life, hands-on experience.

But as I’d settled down each night in my freezing tent, I hadn’t been able to get Wolfe off my mind.

I’d fucked up. Royally.

I’d fucking kissed him.

Wolfe Marian was family. Untouchable.

Meant for protecting, adoring, but not touching. Never touching. Not like that.

But after six years of keeping my personal distance, white-knuckling to keep him firmly in the “Derek and Jude’s kid” category despite beginning to see him as so much more, I’d lost control for one fucking moment and tasted him.

And that kiss had changed everything.

It had turned the embers in my chest into a full-on raging inferno again after I’d semi-successfully banked those fuckers into submission six years ago. Had become brain wallpaper I couldn’t scrape off, no matter how hard I tried.

Now I had to live with the fact that I’d upset Wolfe. And worse, that I’d put my relationship with Derek and the rest of the Marians at risk, all because of my inappropriate attraction.