Page 19 of Ensnared By the Mountain Man

“I’m not scared.”

“You’re terrified. So am I.” I reach up and put my hand on his chest, right over his heart. I can feel it hammering under my palm, fast and hard and alive. “I’ve spent my whole life giving myself to other people because I was afraid that if I stopped being useful, I’d stop mattering. You’re the first person who ever made me feel like I matter just by standing still. You saw me, Elias. The real me. Not the one who says yes to everything and smiles and pretends she’s fine. You saw the one underneath that, and you didn’t look away.”

His hand comes up and covers mine. His fingers are shaking.

“I’m not here to save you,” I say. “I’m not here because you need me. I’m here because I choose you. Because three days ago, I chose something for myself for the first time in my life, and it was you, and I’m not going to let you take that away from me because you’re afraid of what might happen someday.”

He doesn’t say anything. He stands there in the doorway with my hand on his chest and his hand on mine and the mountain quiet around us, and I watch his face and wait. Not the way I usually wait—patient and accommodating, ready to accept whatever someone decides to give me. I wait the way a woman waits when she knows what she wants and she’s not leaving without it.

His fingers tighten around mine. He pulls my hand up to his mouth and presses his lips against my knuckles, and the sound he makes is something between a breath and a word I can’t quite hear.

He steps back from the doorway.

He lets me in.

12

ELIAS

She’s in my cabin.

She’s standing in the middle of the room where the afternoon light cuts through the window. Her eyes are red and her jaw is set and she just said things to me that no one has ever said before. Not my crew, not my captain, not the therapist the department sent me to after the fire, who sat in a leather chair and asked me how I felt about what happened—like feelings were something you could file in a report.

Morgan drove up a mountain, knocked on my door, and told me she wasn’t here to save me. She told me she was here because she chose me. And the thing that’s tearing me apart right now is that I believe her.

I close the door. The sound of it clicking shut is the loudest noise in the cabin.

She’s watching me. Waiting. There’s nothing patient or warm about it—nothing like the woman behind the bakery counter who gives people whatever they need. This is a woman who has said everything she came to say, and now it’s my turn. No pressure. No deadline. Just standing there, steady, arms at her sides, giving me room to fall apart if that’s what needs to happen.

I think it might be what needs to happen.

“I went in after him,” I say. My voice sounds like it belongs to someone else. “The kid. The fire on Thursday. He ran into the building after his dog, and I went in and found him on the second floor and got him out.”

She nods. She already knows this part.

“It took maybe four minutes. Entry to exit. Four minutes, and the whole time my body knew exactly what to do. Where to go, how to move, how to breathe. I carried the kid and the dog down the stairs and out the front door, and everyone was fine.” I stop. Swallow. “And then I walked behind the engine and started shaking and didn’t stop for twenty minutes.”

She doesn’t move toward me. Doesn’t reach for me. Just listens, the way she listened on the lookout. The way she listened in this kitchen the night she made hot chocolate from a tin of cocoa powder I forgot I had.

“It wasn’t the fire,” I say. “The fire was nothing. I’ve been in worse. It was the four minutes. Those four minutes where someone’s life was in my hands and the only thing between him and a burn unit was whether I made the right calls.” My throat is tight and I’m looking at the floor because if I look at her right now, I’m going to lose whatever is holding me together. “I made the right calls. This time. And all I could think about was the time I didn’t, and then I started thinking about you.”

“Elias…”

“I started thinking about what happens when you’re counting on me. When it’s not a stranger’s kid in a burning house but you. Your life, your heart, everything you are. And I make the wrong call. I read it wrong. I fail you the way I failed Chaz, and you’re the one who burns.”

The words come out raw and ugly and honest, and I hate every single one of them because they’re the truth, and the truth is that I’ve been in love with this woman for six months and I almost threw it away because I’m more afraid of hurting her than I am of losing her.

Except standing here right now, looking at her, I realize those are the same thing.

“You told me you see me,” I say. I look up. She’s right there, five feet away, and her eyes are full and she’s biting her lip and she hasn’t moved, not once, because she meant what she said. She’s not here to save me. She’s here because she wants to be. “Nobody sees me. I spent four years making sure of it. Three towns, two thousand miles, a cabin on the side of a mountain with nothing in the kitchen. And you walked in with a bag of groceries and made banana bread and saw me anyway.”

Her chin trembles. Just for a second.

“I’ve been in love with you since the first morning you handed me that coffee and didn’t ask a single question,” I say. “Six months. Every day. I come in, you pour my coffee and you bag my muffin, our fingers brush for half a second—and I take that half-second to the station and live on it for the rest of the day. That’s how far gone I am. I’m in love with a half-second of your hand on a paper bag.”

She makes a sound. Somewhere between a laugh and a sob, her hand coming up to cover her mouth.

“I told myself that walking away was the right thing because I’m not safe. Because people who depend on me get hurt. But you’re standing in my cabin telling me you didn’t come here because you need me, you came because you chose me, and I have never…” My voice breaks, and I let it. “Nobody has ever chosen me. Not like that.”