Page 33 of Mountain Men’s Nanny

“Holly! Thank goodness!” I shrieked.

I stepped out onto the porch, remembering there were three sleeping lumberjacks and an exhausted little girl upstairs. It was cold, but bearable, more than bearable. It was warmer than it had been in days, and Holly’s groggy greeting was like sunshine on my face.

“Brie lives!” she cheered.

“Barely,” I admitted. “The weather has been so bad here that I couldn’t get any signal.”

Holly didn’t speak, but I could hear her breathing. The line hadn’t died, but I had the ominous feeling that something had.

“I’ve been trying to get a hold of you, Brie. Things have been crazy,” Holly said.

I thought things had been insane on my end. I’d been waiting to shock her with what I had been up to, but whatever was going on with her sounded more urgent.

“Talk to me, Holly. What’s happened? Is it Craig?” I asked.

It had been her boyfriend, Craig, for the past few months. He was working late, maybe texting someone, acting weird. Hating my best friend’s boyfriend was a role I took on the year I first met Holly, and it wasn’t one that could ever change.

“No, this is serious,” Holly sighed. “There have been some questions at work.”

The few seconds of silence felt heavy, and they stretched into what felt like an hour. Work. Questions. When people asked questions at a hospital, it was never good. It didn’t happen unless something huge went down, and someone was going to get into real trouble.

“Kiara’s parents have been coming to the hospital. They’ve opened an investigation into her death. I’m sorry, Brie,” Holly said.

It was as if my entire chest had frozen, like my heart was pumping ice. I stopped breathing, couldn’t stomach my lungs to go on working.

Here I was trying to put Kiara’s death behind me, but it wasn’t over, not actually. She had still died, and her parents couldn’t just move out of town and start again. Why did I think I could? Even though I knew I had done nothing wrong, the hospital only opened a full investigation if they thought someone had done something they shouldn’t have. Someone out there had reason to believe Kiara should have lived.

“Brie? Are you still there?” Holly asked.

“I am,” I said shakily. “I just… I’ve got to go.”

My breath caught in my throat, and even though my mouth opened and closed, nothing came out. Not a word, not a breath, nothing.

I clutched my chest, gasping for air until a guttural sound croaked out of my throat. I fell to the ground and couldn’t make it stop.

I crouched down on the porch, groaning and wailing. I didn’t know how long I had been there or when Gunner burst out of the cabin, shotgun in hand. The moment he saw me, he dropped the gun and fell to his knees beside me.

He bundled me into his arms and just sat there on the cold ground, rocking me back and forth. He didn’t ask why; he just held me until I could breathe again.

I opened my eyes, and suddenly it didn’t feel like the end of the world. The grief had come. It knocked me off my feet, but the instinct to run, to start over, to fix it, or even do anything about it was gone. The hurt I felt wasn’t because I felt like I had failed or that I wasn’t good enough. It was because a little girl had died, and her parents couldn’t let go. My cries were not for me. They were for them, and the daughter they could never get back.

I couldn’t have figured that out alone in my apartment.

Without saying a word, these men had put me back together and helped me see everything more clearly.

“Thank you,” I whispered.

“Anytime,” he said, kissing me on the cheek.

I looked toward the cabin to see Tobias standing with his hands in his pockets, watching us cuddled up on the ground. His face was blank, unreadable, and he didn’t turn away when I looked back at him. He just stood there. Watching.

I stood up, dusting myself off, and reached out my hand to help Gunner. He didn’t need it, but he still took my hand and jumped to his feet.

“After I change my pants, we’re planning our Thanksgiving feast,” I said.

I wanted to clear the target for some semblance of normalcy. Nothing was more normal than Thanksgiving dinner.

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