Page 12 of Saved By the Mountain Man Ranger

"Your editor asked about the angle." My jaw is tight. My hands are tight. Everything locked down because if I let it loose, I'll say something I can't take back. "And the angle is me."

"The angle is Marcus Farrell. It was always Marcus Farrell. You're in my notes because you matter to the story. Because you matter to me." Her voice cracks on the last word. Just a hairline fracture, but I hear it. "Those aren't the same thing, and you know it."

But the splinter's too deep now. Two days ago, she was a stranger with shaking hands and a city jacket. Now she's standing in my kitchen wearing my flannel, smelling like my soap, with my name in her notebook next to phrases like human cost and interview potential. Every word I've told her about Mrs. Farrell, about the mountain, about the silence. Cataloged. Filed. Ready to be turned into someone else's reading material.

"The pass opens tomorrow at noon," I say. "Your car's at Mabel's lot in town. Keys at the diner."

Her eyes widen. "You're asking me to leave."

"I'm telling you the road's clear."

"That's the same thing, Weston."

"No, it's not."

We stare at each other across the kitchen. The sun through the window cuts a line of light between us on the floor. Her eyes are wet. She's not crying, but she's close, and watching her fight it guts me more than anything she wrote.

"I didn't use you." Her voice is quiet. Steady. The investigator voice, but cracking at the edges. "I kissed you because I wanted to. I slept with you because I wanted to. Nothing in that notebook changes what happened in that bed."

My throat closes. Because I believe her. That's the worst part. I believe her, and I'm still standing here with my walls going up, brick by brick, because this is what I know how to do. Push people away before they can confirm what I already suspect. That I'm too much mountain and not enough man. That loving me means living in isolation, and nobody chooses that.

"Eliza." Her name comes out rough. "I can't be a chapter in your book. I've spent fifteen years becoming someone who doesn't need anyone. And three days isn't enough to undo that."

The silence lasts forever. Or maybe ten seconds. Then she closes the notebook. Slides it into her messenger bag. Buckles the flap.

"You're right," she says. "Three days isn't enough. But you're not pushing me away because of the notes, Weston. You're pushing me away because I got close, and that scares you more than any storm."

She walks past me, down the hallway, into the bedroom. The door doesn't slam. Just closes. Quiet. Final.

I stand in the kitchen alone. The sun is too bright. The coffee's gone cold. Her mug sits next to mine on the counter, and the space between them feels like a canyon.

My sat phone buzzes. A text from Colt.

Colt

Storm cleared. You alive up there?

I don't answer.

Instead, I pick up her mug. Wash it. Set it on the rack next to mine. Stare at them sitting side by side, two ceramic mugs drying in the thin mountain sunlight, and wonder how the hell something this small can make a grown man feel like he's drowning.

The bedroom is quiet. She's packing. I can hear the soft sounds of her organizing her bag, gathering her things, preparing to leave.

Tomorrow the pass opens. She'll drive away. The cabin will go silent.

And I'll be the man who stayed on the mountain because he was too scared to come down.

My ex wife was wrong about a lot of things. But the thing she said that cut deepest might've been the truest.

Too cold to love.

The words sit in my chest like stones. Heavy. Familiar. The weight I've carried up this mountain every single day for seven years, telling myself it was the altitude making it hard to breathe.

It was never the altitude.

Chapter Six

ELIZA