“Oh no,” Brooke chimed in and plopped onto the foot of the bed. “That tone means something happened that she hasn’t told us about.”
Mallory peeked between her fingers. Big mistake. Both her friends grinned like they’d already won.
“This is about that man we caught a glimpse of, isn’t it?” Violet asked. Her eyes sparkled. “Isn’t it?”
Mallory sat up with a huff. She hadn’t wanted to tell them the whole story, but they were like a dog sniffing for a bone and were not going to let it go. “I almost fell off a cliff.”
Brooke blinked. “You say that like it’s not an important detail that we needed to know. How could you not have told us that already? What happened?”
“I slipped,” Mallory said quickly. “It was icy. Totally avoidable. And then…well…” She stopped.
“And then?” Violet prompted and leaned against the doorframe. “You’ve kept your secret long enough. Spill it.”
Mallory scrubbed her hands over her face. “And then that guy caught me.”
Brooke made a noise somewhere between a gasp and a squeal. “He did? Who is he?”
“A guide,” Mallory said. “Or… a local? I don’t know. Tall. Very… strong.”
Violet’s grin widened. “Strong.”
“Do not make this weird,” Mallory warned, though her cheeks were already heating.
Brooke clutched her chest in a fake swoon. “Too late. Please continue.”
“He just… I don’t know.” Mallory gestured helplessly. “One second I was falling, the next I wasn’t. He grabbed my wrists and yanked me back up. Like it was nothing; like I weighed nothing. Like…” She stopped again and frustration tightened her throat. “Like he had the strength of Hercules.”
The room went quiet for half a beat.
Then Violet sighed dramatically. “A true mountain prince.”
“All the makings of a romance novel,” Brooke added.
Mallory groaned and flopped backward onto the bed. “I hate you both.” They had been friends for so long that there was no danger of hurt feelings.
“Come on,” Brooke said as she pushed Mallory on the leg. “Our appointments to get a little pampering are in fifteen minutes.”
They didn’t stop teasing her all the way down the hall or even into the elevator. By the time they reached the spa, Mallory’s face hurt from blushing and she had no desire to get a massage.
“You’re not coming?” Brooke asked when Mallory slowed and hovered near the elevator doors.
Mallory shook her head. “I think I’m going to lie down. Clear my head.”
Violet gave her a knowing look. “Sure you are.”
“You two go ahead. Get your spa day and go to dinner. Just bring me back something.”
Mallory escaped back to her room and locked the door like the man himself might be hiding in the hallway. She refused to dwell on the sensations she had felt in her brief contact with Jakob. None of it made any sense.
Now, hours later, she stared up at the ceiling again, alone with her thoughts and the thick notebook lying half-open beside her. She reached for it and her fingers brushed the worn cover.Inside were clippings, scribbled notes, half-formed timelines. Meg’s name was written more times than Mallory could count.
The real reason why she was in Onyxheim.
The quiet hotel room mocked her. Mallory had learned the hard way what silence sounded like. It hummed in unanswered calls, in the empty chair at the kitchen table, in the way her phone never lit up with Meg’s name anymore.
Her older sister had vanished two years prior without a trace. No goodbye. No explanation. Just a phone that was powered off and a questionable trail that eventually evaporated. Mallory had chased every rumor she could find, every whisper that might mean something. She followed fake clues across county lines, sat through awkward interviews with people who turned out to just want their fifteen minutes of fame, and learned to hate the look of pity in strangers’ eyes.
Most days, she told herself she was being practical. Grief disguised as persistence. Hope dressed up as logic.
