“Excuse me?”
I face her then, wiping the sweat from my brow—but it wasn’t from the exertion of cutting wood. It was her. I know better than to say what I was about to say, but I can’t stop the words from coming out anyway. “We were snowed in. Things got intense. That doesn’t mean this—” I gesture between us, “—is a thing.”
Her face pales. She acts like I didn’t just cut her open, but I did. And I see it. And it wrecks me—because she’s been pushed aside before. But I had to stop this now.
“So you’re back to being the emotionally unavailable mountain man?” she says, biting off the words. “That was quick.”
“It was temporary. You knew that.”
“No. IthoughtI knew who you were. But now I’m wondering if all that honesty was just some kind of test to see how fast you could get me into bed.”
I look away. “You’ll leave, Sierra. Maybe not today, but eventually. And when you do, I’ll be the one left with the mess.”
She takes a long, shaky breath, and I brace for the fury I know is coming.
“You’re not afraid of me leaving, Hunter. You’re afraid of needing someone again. Of hoping. And instead of facing that, you’d rather burn it all down.”
My hands clench at my sides. “That’s not?—”
“It is. And you know what?” Her voice cracks. “I wasn’t asking you to promise anything. I was just asking you to stop pretending you don’t care.”
We stare at each other as her words echo through the trees.
She shakes her head and turns toward the cabin. “You don’t have to worry about pushing me away, Hunter. You already did.”
12
HUNTER
The cabin is too quiet—and not in a peaceful way, just empty. Like someone had taken the warmth and opened a window, letting it all escape a bit at a time. Sierra hasn’t said another word after slamming the door behind her hours ago. She hasn’t stormed off, hasn’t packed—there was nowhere for her to go. But the distance between us now was worse than if she’d left altogether.
I sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on my knees, staring at the wooden floor. I have no idea what to do—how to apologize, how to move on. I cut her deep, which, at the time, had been my intention. I wanted her to move on from me before I became even more invested.
Fuck it—before I fell even more in love.
I drag a hand down my face, my chest tightening in that awful, familiar way. The same way it had felt the day Jake was killed. The same way it had felt standing at the edge of that desert runway, watching a coffin get loaded without saying goodbye—and knowing it was my fault.
But this wasn’t war.
This was worse.
Because I’m the one who pulled the trigger this time. I’m the one who’s walking away from something good, something real, just to avoid feeling the hope that she’d say it back—or the despair if she doesn’t.
I sit here on the bed where I’d had her laid out before me just a few short hours ago. Where we’d laughed, cuddled, slept. Everything in this room still smelled like her—sweet, warm—and I wanted to hold onto it with everything in me.
But could I? I didn’t deserve anything she gave me, and if she were smart, she’d run from me. But I wanted to show her how good I could be for her. I wanted her to know I cared.
“I do care,” I mutter into the silence. “God help me, I care too damn much.”
And I realize that’s the problem. I care and just because some things had gone wrong didn’t mean I could’ve changed them. I can almost hear Jake telling me not to get stuck in this way of thinking. That fear was only as strong as I let it be. That I could rise above it any time I chose to.
Sierra could help me rise. But if I let her walk away without talking this out, it would be the next great loss in my life—and I couldn’t let that happen.
I stand, heart hammering, breath steady as the decision settles into my bones.
I’ve been running from any kind of connection for years. It was time to run toward something for once.
And I was going to start with her.
