I move toward the tree line—quiet, deliberate—every sense tuned to the mountain I’ve called home for eight years.
This is my ground. My rules. My woman inside that cabin. And the man coming up the road? He’s about to learn what happens when you hunt what’s mine.
I disappear into the pines.
Heart steady.
Hands steady.
Love steady.
And the tension coils tighter with every step—because the next hour will decide everything.
Whether we walk away together. Or whether the snow turns red.
Either way?—
I’m not blinking first.
TWELVE
SABRINA
The cabin feels smaller than it ever has. Every sound is too loud in the silence left behind after the storm: the drip of melting snow from the eaves, the faint groan of the logs settling, the hollow tick of the grandfather clock in the hall. I stand at the kitchen window with the curtain pinched between two fingers, staring out at the white expanse that used to feel like safety and now feels like a trap ready to snap shut.
The sheriff’s truck disappeared down the pass twenty minutes ago, its red taillights swallowed by the pines. Five minutes later, Beck stepped off the porch without looking back, rifle in hand, and melted into the trees like he belongs to them more than he belongs to me.
He didn’t kiss me goodbye.
He didn’t say I love you.
He only looked at me, long and steady, the way a man memorizes something he might never see again. Then he pressed the spare key into my palm, folded my fingers closedaround it, and said, “Lock it behind me. Don’t open it for anyone but me.”
The deadbolt clicked like a period at the end of a sentence.
Now I wait. Waiting is worse than fear. Waiting gives my mind too much room to imagine every possible ending.
I pace to the front door, pressing my forehead to the cold wood, and listen for footsteps that don’t come. Then back to the window. Then to the counter where the landline sits useless and the radio Silas left is silent as stone.
A low growl rolls up the mountain.
My stomach drops.
Through the parted curtain I watch a black SUV nose into the clearing, slow and deliberate, headlights off despite the bruised sky. It stops at the edge of the open ground, fifty yards from the porch, engine idling like a predator deciding whether to pounce.
The driver’s door opens.
A man steps out. Tall. Lean. Dark wool coat buttoned to the throat. Even from here the scar is unmistakable: a pale slash above the left eyebrow, the souvenir from the summer he fell off the garage roof chasing me with a water gun.
Ethan.
My brother.
He doesn’t move toward the cabin at first. He simply stands there, hands loose at his sides, head turning slowly as he scans the tree line. As though he already knows someone is watching.
As though he knows Beck is out there.
My throat closes so tightly I can’t swallow.
