Page 22 of Breaking His Exile

Some men made promises to keep you quiet.

Some men made promises because they’d already decided you weren’t worth the trouble of arguing with.

She wasn’t sure which kind Evander Cole was yet.

Breakfast was eggs from powder and oatmeal cooked on the camp stove.

He ate his portion standing up, his back against the wall, the rifle propped beside him. He’d put on a shirt, but he hadn’t buttoned it, and she saw the tattoos covering his chest. Skulls—five of them—in stark black ink, each one different, each one too detailed to be decoration. Names beneath them. Dates. She looked away before he caught her staring, but the image stayed with her, and she couldn’t help wondering what kind of man carried his dead on his skin like that.

She ate because she needed to, not because she wanted to. The oatmeal was plain, and the eggs were dry, but the coffee he poured into a chipped enamel mug was strong enough to strip paint.

Just how she liked it.

She wrapped both hands around the mug, but pulled back when she recognized the faded logo on the side.

Valor Ridge.

She lifted the mug, turning the logo toward him. “You lived there with River?”

Evander was looking at the map again, and went still, his spine stiffening.

“What happened?”

He didn’t answer.

“Please,” she said. “If I’m going to trust you, I need you to give me something.”

He was quiet long enough that she thought he wouldn’t. Then he straightened from the table and crossed to the window, his back to her.

“Walker Nash came to see me in Leavenworth. Three months before my release.” He paused. “I didn’t want to see him, but Walker doesn’t listen to no.”

“Leavenworth,” she repeated, and that knot of nerves tightened in her belly. “You were in prison.”

“Five years.” He didn’t turn around. “Court-martialed. I was a Recon Marine. Made a call I had no business making, and five men under my command died because of it.”

That explained the tattoo.

He fell into silence and didn’t seem inclined to continue.

“So Walker came,” she prompted. “Offered you a place at the ranch.”

“He picked me up from the gate. Drove me to Montana and showed me what he was building. Valor Ridge was only a few years old then, with a handful of residents. Boone Callahan, Jonah Reed, and your brother had just arrived, too.” He turned then, and the shadows under his eyes looked deeper. “I stayed two nights.”

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to be there.”

“But you stayed in Montana?”

A muscle jumped in his cheek like he was grinding his teeth. “I put a deposit on thirty acres at the edge of the property line. Built a cabin with my own hands and I was there until a flood took it out this spring.” He paused. “Eight years.”

She thought about that. Eight years alone, in a cabin he’d built with his own hands, with nothing but a dog and the long, cold stretch of Montana winter.

Why had a loner like that stepped between her and Rux’s knife without a second’s hesitation?

“What happened in forty-eight hours to make a man choose eight years alone?”

He stilled. Something in his face shuttered, closed, and she saw it before he could hide it—the flicker of something raw and terrible moving behind his eyes. Then Tilly’s head came up off the floor, and before Rainey could ask again, the dog bolted to her feet with her hackles raised. A low growl rumbled from deep in her chest.